Body
Device management
Distribution process
Rolling out the program involves performing mundane tasks, such as receiving, storing, and recording serial numbers, tagging assets, and imaging or loading the school’s planned software applications, even disposing of all the boxes and packing material. When there are large numbers of laptops to distribute, these tasks can overwhelm a short-staffed school IT department. The equipment manufacturer or local IT partner can take care of these tasks, either for a per-unit fee or as part of the price of a large implementation. Planners should consider what works best for their school. Is this the best use of staff time? Is this something the internal staff can manage effectively, or should the planners consider outsourcing it?
While the initial imaging of a laptop’s hard drive (installing standard applications) happens before distribution occurs, reimaging is needed whenever laptops’ hard drives become corrupted or the image changes from year to year. There are a number of ways to tackle this ongoing maintenance. In one method, the staff attaches the laptop to the school’s network and pulls down the correct image.In another, the management software works to keep the laptops’ image in a steady state and requires no intervention from staff.
Yet another plan is to have a self-service process in which the user holds down a function key on start-up and the laptop restores itself to a previously defined state. All these have pros and cons. Planners should decide which would work best for the district.
Lessons learned and best practices from schools that have implemented digital learning programs recommend the following regarding technical support, backup, and network planning.
ü Implement a battery-exchange plan.
ü Provide written usage guidelines and establish security measures.
ü Provide on-site docking and recharging stations.
ü Plan on a three- to five-year equipment life.
ü Standardize hardware and software throughout a school, district, or program
ü Establish technical specs based on project goals.
ü Make software upgrades and imaging easy.
ü Establish plans for maintenance and support.
ü Install instructor workstations and management tools that permit teachers to view students’ screens during class time and that make it easy for them to transmit and collect assignments wirelessly.
ü Buy the best affordable machines.
Help desk
Responding quickly to teachers’ and staff’s problems is important because in a one-to-one program, the technology is central to the delivery of instruction. Technical problems cause stress and frustration for the teacher.
Teachers have to be able to make tools work easily; a help desk is one way to address this. Many schools and districts employ a student-support approach for help desks and other means of troubleshooting.
Creative student scheduling opportunities are unique to each school to provide time for students to help.
For example, students can be assigned times within the school day to help troubleshoot across the school. Often this involves earning course credit for this work. While students provide troubleshooting techniques, they are in a position to learn strategies and intricacies involved in implementing technologies. The notion is to employ students’ expertise to support uninterrupted access to technology. By arrangement and according to a schedule, students are available to respond to help-ticket requests and to give general or targeted classroom support.
Common terminology for this approach is creating a student SWAT team. An on-site educator or IT leader directs the program and enlists students who wish to form a structured group for advancing the use of technology at their school. Students increase their technical skills while assisting other students, teachers, and the community with technological knowledge and troubleshooting.
Decision points
What are the options for establishing a help/service desk?
ü Will it be a generalized help desk provided to a wide base, or will it be specific to your program?
ü What will the hours of operation be? A 24/7 operation will be much more expensive than one that operates during the school day. You may consider choosing a middle-of-the-road solution in which live personnel are available during the day and phone operators are available during off-hours.
ü Who will be able to call? Is this intended as an escalation point for the school’s technical staff, or will teachers be in calling directly? Will students and their families be able to call? The larger the audience, the more calls and the higher the level of service to your community of users, but at a higher cost.
ü What is the number of devices and applications that this help desk is responsible for? Are the applications just the standard off the-shelf applications, or are education-specific and custom applications included? Keeping these numbers down will cut your costs but may also be detrimental to your users.
ü What are the metrics that you want monitored in order to ensure a good end-user experience? Average number of rings before the telephone is answered, or the time before it is answered by a person? Number of callers who hang up (abandon rate)? Percentage of problems resolved on first call? Percentage of calls resolved by analyst callbacks? These are just a few of the variables to investigate and to establish targets for.
Help-desk practices
Whatever you decide is the scope of its responsibilities, a service desk should adopt industry best practices that adhere to ITIL standards. It should be the sole point of contact for help to reduce complexity. Having a single point of contact puts end users in control of how and when they get support. The service desk should provide a seamlessly integrated continuum of level 1 to 3 support to promote efficient use of time, better service for teachers and staff, and the measuring and meeting of service-level agreements.
Levels of support
Level 1: Includes initial response to the call and the logging of all service requests into a database but is also designed to troubleshoot and resolve most service requests to return the teachers and staff to productivity quickly. Requests that cannot be resolved quickly are routed to the appropriate Level 2 group to resolve. Other Level 1 actions are performing password and queue resets, delivering “how to” support for shrink-wrapped and the school’s custom applications, and managing call queues to see that no service request is overlooked or unresolved.
Level 2: Addresses requests that require specialized or in-depth expertise. Level 2 resources means deploying technical support personnel who possess expertise in specific problem or application areas and serve as an escalation path for Level 1.
Level 3: Designed to handle the most difficult requests, this level of service typically deals with changes in software code, environment, or scripts. As such, Level 3 service may not be provided directly by the service-desk staff. They will log, track, and manage such requests and will route them to the appropriate internal or external group, usually a senior systems engineer.
