Summary
This project has been a fantastic motivator for creating change at Keystone College, one that may not have been possible without the direction from the EMDTMS program, the guidance of the Full Sail staff, and the support of my critical friends. After conducting the cycles of research in the learning environment, and witnessing the incredible results and acceptance of the training website by the campus community, I am confident in the future of this project. I feel that more and more users are being made aware of the resources that are now available to them on the campus technology. This training system can serve to make users aware of the features and functionality of the software products utilized at Keystone, and promote a more productive e-learning environment.
The research conducted for the project’s literature review did lead me to believe that the increased availability of support materials would assist in the adoption of an institution wide CMS system. As this process comes to a close we are now able to re-direct specific support tickets to the Media Services website for training materials. I feel that the average number of support tickets has significantly diminished as more users are utilizing the tutorials. As of the beginning of October 2010 the website has had 943 visits and 1700 viewed pages since it’s inception in mid-March 2010. Below is a report of the average Media Services site usage as well as a visitors overview.
I understand the various areas that were overlooked through the implementation of this research. Consideration should have been made to document any changes to the amount of support tickets received before and after the study. The overall change in the use of the Blackboard Learn system has been documented, however there is no foreseeable way to surmise from this data if the Media Services support site had anything to do with the increase of the active users or courses in the system.
According to this data there was:
11.6% Increase in Average Instructor Users over the course of one year
12% Increase in Average Student Users over the course of one year
31% Increase in the Average Number of Active Courses over the course of one year
The future of this project lies in further populating the site with a full library of support tutorials addressing the needs of all technology support on campus. I would like these to include video trainings on classroom equipment, screen-capture tutorials on software and web applications, as well as links to other support websites. I would also like to incorporate a bulletin board software called pHpBB to communicate information about new product features, conflicts, and known issues to the campus. Our institution is also now piloting the use of Moodle as a free alternative CMS. It would be interesting to further this study on an entirely new e-learning system. The tracking data collection will also need to be fine tuned to more accurately depict which trainings are proving useful and which need to be redesigned. I hope that this system grows and develops it will be a valuable asset for our traditional and distance learning educational models.
Kurt Sussman
As a service department, data representing usage of support provided is critical in order to respond appropriately to the needs of a campus community. Prior to the reformulation of the Media Services website, we responded to need based on implementation drives; if we adopted a software platform or hardware solution for a given need we would evaluate the basic components of the technology that users would have to know in order to use it. We would then produce it, and make it available. With the data and tracking now in place, we can respond appropriately, or perhaps more accurately, by seeing what areas are being viewed the most, and perhaps offering additional workshops to these specific areas. In addition, departmental assessment in the area of self paced e-learning can now be performed, and gives us hard data as we plan for the growth and support of our department.
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