New Standards for Student and Faculty Support

Yesterday’s support for students at universities was departmentally focused; information was highly segmented allowing the communication to become fragmented and often ineffective. Today’s students are quickly becoming frustrated with this type of structure and expect the environment to be more student-centered. You might wonder what I mean by this; it is common for today’s students to go to one location to get resolutions to complex issues throughout their high school careers. High schools are offering comprehensive access to online academic resources, have coordinated student services, and have encouraged collaboration. One can just count the number of smartboards in high schools or review the online student portals offered to find the difference between the student experience in high schools and in universities. Graduation from high school results in the student entering a different support environment that is based on business practices founded in the past decade.

Today's university support services are in need of change. Some examples:

1. A student must call multiple customer support centers to get help on a single issue, such as getting support for an online class. It is not uncommon for the student to be expected to call three areas looking for that support: the Information Technology department, the teaching-learning support center, and the academic department.
2. The library and the teaching-learning center support the faculty member in offering online courses. The student is often expected to know what services each group offers to call the right department.
3. Central Information Technology departments and academic departments offer support services, many times supporting different systems (email, course management systems, collaboration systems). The result is a student being expected to learn all the systems offered by any department.

To correct this, the Chief Academic Officer must establish a standard for faculty and student support. This effort is similar to the centralization of IT ten years ago and for the same reasons: efficient and effective customer services. Today’s technology-experienced students and their parents are demanding a support organization that makes sense. The university that figures out how Apple and Best Buy can satisfy the masses will be able to grow and expand despite declining budgets.

What should be the Chief Academic Officer’s first steps to determine if the university is providing relevant services and support to students and faculty?

1. The university needs to contract with an independent customer service consultant that uses a formal methodology to analyze if the student and faculty services are relevant. The methodology should also provide the CAO with facts on the quality of support being offered. It is clear higher education offers significant support; it is not clear that the faculty or students consider the support relevant in today’s environment. A formal analysis can take the emotion out of the services and support issue and provide a foundation for change.
2. Count the number of groups that offer students and faculty support and attempt to itemize what each support organization is offering. An organization that has 2-3 locations to contact to get support is questionable; any more than three is unreasonable.
3. Spend personal time with students and faculty, determine what is really happening and how well the library, Information Technology, and teaching-learning center are meeting the needs of each group. Focus groups suggest the students and faculty opinions are much different than the leadership of the support organizations.
4. Look at organizations like Google, Apple, Best Buy, and Target and ask yourself what they are doing to be so successful in the eyes of the customer.

Students and University Technology Support Services

An interesting convergence of events during the past three weeks has resulted in this blog post. In the past year it has become evident that most research universities are struggling with student technology support, among the issues:

1. Is the university IT department relevant for today’s students? Most feel that if they are offering the minimal number of services, they must be relevant. Time to ask the students what is relevant in 2010; is the campus meeting the requirements of the present day student?
2. Is the library relevant to today’s students? Does today’s investment in information resources (the library staff) need to be reexamined? Never thought I would ask this question so directly.
3. Does today’s university have the appropriate relationship between campus departments to remain relevant in a technology and information rich environment?

Several weeks ago, the campus IT group spent time with students in two focus sessions. The first glimpse of student impressions was in a senior level marketing class, and the second was a focus group between IT and interested student government leaders. Both groups resulted in similar student perspectives. First, the students did not know who offered technology support on campus and did not feel it was relevant to know the source of services. Second, the focus group had seven seniors/graduate students, and of the seven, only 3 had ever attempted to contact the campus IT department and only one had ever visited the customer support center during their tenure at the university. Third, students all agreed that anything online was preferred to going to a campus department, including the library. It does not take a genius to recognize today’s IT organizations are using yesterday’s methods to meet today’s students requirements, and it does not appear to be working.

The second event was the release of the latest Project Information Literacy Progress Report from the Information School at the University of Washington. The report recognized that students and university professionals are not in alignment. The student is focused on efficiency, and the university departments are focused on thoroughness. Two outcomes were evident in the report: 1) students want to acquire information online and 2) students rely on instructors first, not the library staff or IT staff. As universities focus on retention and graduation rates, Chief Academic Officers must ask several hard questions:

1. What must be done with the university research library to make it relevant to students in a search-oriented, information rich world? It is clear that students are not going to use the traditional methods encouraged by the library staff, so what is next?
2. Today’s IT departments are offering support services the students are not using. Why? Are the services relevant? Are the methods of offering the services relevant?
3. Students are using online library resources and are using the services offered by IT, but the student is not connecting the online resources with the available human resources. Should the CAO consider future organizational alignments that address the students use of technology and library resources? If yes, what would the organization's mission and goals state?
4. Is today’s information resource staff relevant? If it is, why are today’s students not connecting with the professionals? What can be done to bridge the gap between services and professionals in the minds of the students?

Throughout the year, we will address these issues on this blog and will suggest directions the CAO follow to ensure the university is meeting student needs.