During its busiest week of the year, the first week of the semester, Information Technology Services (ITS) is working to tailor its tech support to different University of Idaho customers, as services for students and faculty split and services for faculty decentralize around campus.
The ITS help desk in the Idaho Commons will continue to serve faculty and staff for the time being, but UI’s ITS is in the process of converting the desk to serve students’ needs only, Brandon Gardner, the help desk’s new supervisor said.
Later this semester, Gardner said new and returning help desk staff will receive training focused on student needs. There will be a greater focus on navigation of Blackboard Learn (Bblearn), VandalWeb, and Outlook. Advice on accessing university-provided programs like Microsoft Office and Sophos Antivirus, as well as general troubleshooting will also be provided.
“There wasn’t really anyone besides faculty who could provide good support for students with questions about Bblearn,” Brian Cox, director of customer technical support services said.
The help desk is getting a new name and will be rebranded as the Technology Support Center.
Services for faculty and staff have been split between eight regions on campus, overseen by ITS Customer Support Manager Ben Kirchmeier.
Pete Varney, VandalSphere support manager said it will take a while for university employees to get used to the new system, but that it will allow for more specialized service in the long run.
Cox said decentralizing faculty and staff services will decrease the amount of time required for ITS staff and their customers to get to each other and allow ITS staff to focus their services on the individual customers.
Cox said the changes began with a new funding model, implemented July 1 by Vice President for Infrastructure, Dan Ewart. The previous model required ITS charge individual departments an hourly rate for service for their faculty and staff. Now, all departments prepay for IT services. Cox said the new model, though it has greater potential for inequity between departments, is largely beneficial and saves time in paperwork and administration.
“Already, those desk-side support staff are seeing about 15 percent of their time they would be spending doing paperwork documenting their work doing other work instead,” Cox said.
Cox said some areas of campus already had their own individual IT staffs and the model seemed viable for use around the rest of campus.
Varney said those with their own staffs will keep them, but will have ITS available for additional support to fill any gaps.
With only one new hire and some software being retired, Cox said the ITS budget has not changed significantly. Instead, staff are being retrained and further specialized to make better use of their time. Cox said currently, ITS employs 69 full time staff and about 36 temporary staff and will soon employ around seven to 10 students on work study.
ITS will hold information sessions for faculty and staff looking to learn where to go for help setting up their classrooms with the technology they need Aug. 29 and 30 at different locations around campus.
Nishant Mohan can be reached at [email protected]