The eLearning Centre of Kemi-Tornio University of Applied Sciences serves all the schools associated with the Lapland University Consortium and with the Lappia Municipal Education and Training Consortium. Users of the learning environments in use at these organisations regularly convey requests for technical and/or pedagogical support to us. They can do this in person at the eOK office in the Minerva building in Tornio, or via telephone, or email, or the Moodle messenger, or some other channel depending on their need and the urgency of the issue at hand. We at eOK receive the requests and often assign them to the best person for the task, so as to use our (wo)man power in the most efficient way. Hence, users often get a response from someone else than the eOK staff member they initially contacted. In very busy times of the year we also practice triage, that is, less pressing matters are put aside for later consideration, so as to allow us to spend time on the most serious issues first. Nevertheless, we strive to take up and hopefully solve every support request that reaches us in the most expedient manner.
Sometimes, however, the processing of support requests is unnecessarily delayed due to the fact that many users do not include sufficient information in their calls for help. During telephonic or face-to-face support requests, the required information can be elicited from the user, if there is time to deal with the request on the spot. In email-based requests it is another matter altogether and incorrectly worded messages often have us do detective work that is not directly related to the support request, such as browsing different databases to ascertain the (probable) identity of the sender of the request! Frequently, the help requests also do not specify clearly enough where a certain problem occurs and what exactly occurs. You will understand that the alarm call that Moodle/iLinc/the Blog “does not work” does not give us much to work with.
In order to improve our service, we would like to encourage users to follow a few guidelines whenever they contact us with a request for support. These apply in particular when users send their requests as email or Moodle messages:
- Use the Moodle messenger, or else the school email. Doing so will relieve you of the need to specify your username in the organisation or group you belong to and in addition it will prove to us that your password for the school network (Lappia or LUC) is still valid. Too often do we receive requests for help from which we cannot easily deduce the identity of the sender, either from the message text or the email address. Furthermore, when sending a support request send it to a support person on duty (see www.etukipalvelut.fi) and/or to the general eoppimiskeskus email address to increase the chance of it being noticed quickly.
- Specify in your message where the problem you are experiencing occurs. When dealing with iLinc, mention whether the problem occurs on the login page, when joining a classroom, or inside the classroom (mention which classroom). When dealing with Moodle, specify which page in which activity/resource in which course is concerned. When dealing with Lappia Blog, identify which page in which blog, and when dealing with Lappia Wiki, name the wiki page where the problem occurs.
- Describe with some detail what does not work as expected on the page concerned. What did you do and how did the environment respond? It is especially useful to us if you can supply us with the text of possible error messages.
- Finally, it is often helpful for us to know how you access the learning environment. In other words, what operating system your computer runs (i.e. a version of Windows, Mac OS or Linux) and, in particular, what browser (Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari or Opera) you used when the problem occurred.
If all users would observe these four elements in their support request, we would be able to respond more swiftly. Still, even though the eLearning Centre provides service from 08.00 hrs. in the morning to often 21.00 hrs. in the evening and sometimes even during weekends (mostly via email), users should not have unrealistic expectations regarding the speed with which certain problems can be solved. Some problems may be due to server or network issues and those can only be addressed during normal office hours. Other problems may require code fixing, which can take even longer. Finally, some problems we may not be able to solve, when, for instance, we cannot reproduce the issue in our test machines (This usually concerns problems due to the specific software configuration in the user’s computer and such problems can then usually be bypassed by using different or updated programs). Nonetheless, we strive to respond to all support requests within 24 hours, if not with a definite solution then at least with suggestions for a work-around or an alternative approach to the issue.
Summing up, the eLearning Centre is at your service; help us improve!