drc help me help you julie rorabaugh

8/8/2019 DrC Help Me Help You Julie Rorabaugh

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A Plea to Blackboard Users:

Help Me, Help YOU!

by Julie Rorabaugh, Cowley College

Introduction

This article contains fun yet practical tips for faculty to use when contacting their technical support personnel, or “Techies,”

during high stress semester start-up periods and throughout the year. This is also relevant for students.

You will learn how to:

• Give complete Information

• Take screen captures

• Ask for help BEFORE total frustration occurs

I think my fellow tech support peers would agree that an email or two has come across their desk like this before:

“hi! i cant get in my clas i hv a test 2nit plz hlp! [email protected]”

Or even better:

“Can you restore some old course content for me? I think the ones I want were from a couple of years ago, in the fall…o

maybe spring. No rush…classes don’t start for two days! Luv ya!”

These are just a couple of examples of some of the requests for assistance that have come across my virtual desk at

one time or another over the years. As August looms, signaling the beginning of fall classes for many institutions in North

America, I thought it might be helpful to share some tips to help YOU help your support personnel (i.e. “The Techies”) and toexpedite your assistance from such with minimal loss of life, limb, and sanity on everyone’s part.

Information Overload Please!

Though the rst example above is from a desperate student (is there ever any other kind?), and the second is from a faculty

member, they both have something in common. It is going to take more than one simple email or phone call to solve their

problems.

Let’s start with the rst one, shall we? Although undoubtedly she IS a “hawt grrl,” she has neglected to give me some basic

information so that I can proceed. Hmmm…a name would be a good start! First and Last… maybe even a Student ID

number? How about a course title or even an instructor’s name? Ironically, this came to me on a Help Desk Ticket, where sh

indicated that she’d prefer to be contacted by phone, but you guessed it, she didn’t enter her phone number. Though I would

have loved to help, the lack of information made it impossible. A quick summary of the problem with your contact informationis essential to helping your Tech Support diagnose the problem. The small steps you can take upfront can save you a lot of

time and heartache later on.

On to the second example, faculty and support personnel often have a kind of symbiotic relationship. We’ve been in the

academic trenches together, shared tips, techniques, and snacks at Professional Development workshops, migrated to

different Learning Management Systems (LMS) together, and normally we feel a cheerful camaraderie when communicating

by phone, email, or in-person. All of this, however, is subject to change during the months of August and January. Your usua

jovial Techie may display the less endearing characteristics of an attack-trained Rottweiler due to the stresses involved in the

job. The faculty member in the above example, while thoughtfully stating that there is “no rush” and warmly declaring their

“luv” for me, has just raised my stress level with this last minute request which additionally is lacking in essential information

Instead of sending me a list containing specic course and term numbers, and doing so even one or two weeks in advance

of semester start-up, they have now made it necessary for me to send a return email, asking for more information.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking away. One email usually leads to two and two leads to a BAZILLION (ok, maybe that is aslight exaggeration), but you get the point. The rst day of classes rolls around and there is a potential we’ll have some

angry students who have eagerly entered the class only to nd it unprepared. And no amount of “luv” is going to move this

instructor ahead in the queue of teachers who asked for their courses to be restored in a timely manner. (Note: It is rumored

that gifts of dark chocolate “anything” have been known to secure preferential treatment with support personnel. I cannot an

will not speak to this!)

Help us Help you better and give your Tech Support a break. Send them the complete information, the sooner the better.



www.blackboard.com


Washington, DC 20001-37961-800-424-9299




Help Me, Help YOU!


Pictures, Good... Videos, Better!

I’ve received countless emails and phone calls from students or instructors saying that they attempted to do something on

their computer or in their course and got an error. Euphemisms for getting an error could be phrases like: kicked me out,

went wonky, freaked out, crashed, Fatal Error…is that bad? stalled out, hung up, etc. While these descriptions are quite

charming, they really don’t tell me anything about what happened and what the user was doing at the time.

That old adage about a picture being worth a thousand words… well it’s TRUE! Learn how to take screen captures

of abnormalities that may occur. Is it an error that you keep getting consistently? Make a short video of your actions,

including narration. You don’t need special software to capture a basic image, just your PC keyboard’s “PrtScn” or “Prt

Sc” (Print Screen) button and an image editing program. On a Mac, you just need to know the correct keystrokes. You

don’t even need the image editing software. To make videos, you can get your hands on a FREE program called Jing by

TechSmith, which is available for Windows and Mac OS X. Jing also captures screen shots like a champ and has some

wonderful interfaces for sharing your images instantly by using email or even social networking sites. And let me reiterate,

it’s FREE!

Sending pictures or videos has a double benet. First, they will help your Techie to quickly zero in on your problem.

Second, they will serve as evidence that you’re not crazy when the aforementioned Techie cannot get the error to replicate

and they start muttering things like “PICNIC” (Problem In Chair, Not In Computer) under their breath. This also ensures

that you don’t have to re-explain yourself if the Techie has to pass along the issue to another member of the team.

Once you master this, teach your students (especially online students) to do the same! There’s a good chance that your

support personnel will be so pleased with you, that maybe they will bring YOU something dark chocolate-y!

The 20 Minute Rule

I can usually count on one topic coming up consistently during any conversation that I have with faculty members and that

is time or the lack thereof. So why waste your precious time that time could be put towards educating students instead of

trying to gure out how to do something that has you stymied. Are you afraid we’ll laugh at you? Ok, we might, but that’s

what we’re here for…not to laugh, but to HELP you!

If you can’t gure out how to do something (create an announcement, change a font, zip a le, etc.) in 20 minutes, get

help. Email or call your expert. Your stress level is only going to rise as you see the minutes tick by on your clock while

you fruitlessly look around for an answer. Many are the times that I’ve answered the phone only to hear a frazzled facultymember say, “I’ve been trying to do this for two hours, HELP!” It really doesn’t make things better when I give them a

quick or simple solution, and a rapid reinforcement of the tenets of the 20-Minute Rule. Just think, if they’d have called

one hour and forty minutes earlier, they would have had much more time to spend on other pursuits and been in a better

mood.

That said, please understand that your Techies may have lives of their own and they may not be available on a 24/7 basis

It has been my experience that there is a relationship between the urgency of the “educational emergency” and the time of

day or day of the week, i.e. the importance and frequency seems to escalate after 5PM from Monday-Friday, and on every

weekend.

The 20-Minute Rule is still applicable after hours (and no, I’m not giving out my home phone number). There are many

resources that you can turn to when your personal Techies are off-duty. Most software applications and LMSs have robust

knowledge bases built right in. If I were in charge of dusting their virtual bookshelves, I’d be sneezing and covered with

grime. These resources are terribly underutilized! In most cases, a quick click of the “Help” button will get you to the rightplace. What do you think your experts do when they say they’ll call you right back with an answer? They look it up!

Many institutions also have after-hours Help Desks. Try them out and direct your students to do so also. Finally, why not

post a question to the appropriate forum at Ask Dr. C? Your friendly and knowledgeable Doctors are located all over the

globe, encompassing a plethora of time zones and they are not averse to making online house calls.

http://discussions.blackboard.com/

http://discussions.blackboard.com/



www.blackboard.com


Washington, DC 20001-37961-800-424-9299




Help Me, Help YOU!


Conclusion

Semester start-ups can be challenging times for EVERYONE involved. A bit of understanding, respect, and patience goes

a long way to ensure a productive and happy semester. Use these tips not only during peak stress times, but throughout

the rest of the year, and…

Help Us Help YOU

We’ll be dog-gone glad you did!

No, I am not above going for the cheap pun, and also inserting a cute puppy picture.

Peace,

Dr. C Julie

drc help me help you julie rorabaugh

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