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IT 112 Introduction to Help Desk Operations

Research Paper (this is roughly 30% of your Grade)

Assignment: You must complete a research paper for this course based on interviews you

have with 4 real-world help desk operations.

Requirements: The paper summarizes the information you collect from the interviews. It must

include a table showing the questions you asked and your notes about their

answers. In your paper briefly compare and contrast the 4 help desks concluding

with which one you feel is best and why. Finally, write one paragraph about what

you learned in the class and how it relates to your career plans.

Approach: Use organizations you already have a relationship or account with to gather your

information, i.e. City of Tacoma, Comcast, etc. Be sure to record the published

contact phone number for your choices.

The questions you are to use in your interview are listed in a table below. If you

encounter a help desk that will not provide all of the required information please

choose another one. You may find that public organizations tend to be more

cooperative then private organizations. Interviews in past quarters have been with

a wide variety of very helpful organizations.

Format: I suggest you format your paper into two separate files.

FILE 1 This is a research paper using the template provided.

The Word document should be of sufficient length to appropriately deal with your

topic and written in professional business manner. A template for the paper isposted in the Research Paper folder in Angel. The paper must be a

minimum of 1200 words, double space, 12 pt font, .5 first line indents, and

include APA style citations and reference page with a minimum of three

references. DO NOT USE websites like the following for references:

Wikipaedia, About, Answers, AskJeevies, etc. The paper must be submitted

via the Canvas Digital Dropbox in the Research Paper folder.

They are located on the 2nd floor of the TCC Library.

TCC Writing Center On-Line Resources:

FILE 2 The second file is the Excel spreadsheet that has the interview

questions listed. You may add additional questions to your interview but be

sensitive to the fact that the person you are calling may be very busy. Use the

Excel table below to organize your interviews and to collect and record the

information you gather from each interview.

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IT 112 Introduction to Help Desk Operations

Required InformationReference

Org. 1

Reference

Org. 2

Reference

Org. 3

Reference

Org. 4Name of the Organization

you contacted

Help Desk URL

Help Desk Person you

talked to

Help Desk Phone Number

List the Help Desk ServicesProvided (based on their

web site)

What are the ways users

contact them?

What Type of Help Desk is

this (use definitions from the

textbook)

Are Roles and

Responsibilities Defined on

their web site?

What Tools do they use to

communicate to users?

What Tools do they use to

manage Help Desk Calls?

Is the Help Desk

responsible for

Configuration Management?

Is the Help Desk

responsible for Asset

Management?

Did you find their web site

helpful - explain youranswer?

Conduct ing

Interviews:

When you talk to the help desk person you need to be very clear about why you

are calling and what you want. Dont be surprised if some tell you they do not

have time to talk to you. I suggest you use the following script to introduce

yourself:

Hello, my name is ____ and I am a student at Tacoma Community College. I am

enrolled in a Help Desk Management Class and am calling to ask a few

question about how youre Help Desk is organized and what technology you use.

Do you have the time to talk to me now?

Submit t ing

your paper:

Submit your research paper via the Canvas Research Paper Drop Box only.

Please post your MS Word paper and attach your MS Excel spreadsheet.

Criteria Achievement LevelAchievement

Level 1(0%)

Achievement Level 2

(40%)

Achievement Level 3

(70%)

Achievement Level 4

(75%)

Achievement Level 5

(100%)

Criteria 1

(100%

Weighting)

0 percent

No work

submitted, orwork

plagiarized.

40 percent

Work does not

adequately address thetopic, is drastically short

of required length,

contains grammatical

errors, is missingcitations, and/or

contains grammaticaland spelling errors.

70 percent

Work adequately

addresses the topic, isdrastically short of

required length, or

contains grammatical

errors. Citations areincluded but are not

academic in nature.

75 percent

Work addresses the topic

well, but does not meetword count or contains

grammatical errors. Does

contain the required

citations.

100 percent

Work addresses 100% of the

criteria required; word count,great topic coverage, spelling

and grammar, citations where

needed.

CAUTION: If these instructions are unclear you need to let me know as early as possible

during the first few weeks of class. It would be very sad if you realized too late

that you cannot afford to struggle with this assignment.