Monitoring a Technical Service - How to?

[garethedmondson]

Hi,

In a move that is going to upset some people in work I have been asked to knock up a questionnaire that asks a variety school stakeholders (staff/pupils/support staff) their opinions on the technical support service they get within the school.

I've never done this - even though we monitor unofficially the work being done it has never been made official.

So if there are any line managers out there who have technical staff working under them (ooer) have you ever created a questionnaire that can be given out to the staff/pupils etc?

If so - could I have a look?

Cheers everyone,

Gareth

[f21970]

Hi Gareth,

To the initiated, this is not as scary as it sounds and it acts as a driver to improve services. I collate an annual survey asking just what you want, amongst other things. Basically, I've taken the elements of the ICT Mark and turned it into questionnaire form - this covers more than just technical support. It also covers teaching and learning resources, confidence of teachers in using technology, CPD, leadership & management of technology, ICT vision, as well as the more basic technical support element of things.

To take technical support in isolation is probably skewing the vision, as it depends upon a lot of factors. For example, if not enough focus is placed on CPD in enabling the staff to become e-confident, then this has a serious knock-on effect for technical support - e.g. more requests for 'PICNIC' faults (Problem in Chair, not in Computer), which wastes tech support time leading to longer fix times and all round dissatisfaction. I can give a thousand other examples!

The elements which you are interested in as stated in your post are as follows:
(all are rated from 1 to 4 on Ofsted-like scale, with 1 being outstanding, 2 good, 3 satisfactory, 4 unsatisfactory)
- Availability of ICT resources within the school
- Reliability of ICT resources within the school
- Quality of technical support
- Response of technical support

I would say, though, is that what you really want to find out is whether you have the right resources in the right place, are they of the right quality, and have you employed folk of sufficient technical skill to look after them (in terms purely of tech support). However, I think you'll find, given a bit of reflection, that tech support is only a small part of the picture.......

What's scarier to folks is my desire to create 'end of module' questionnaires where pupils can feed back what they liked about the module, what they thought of the teaching and learning, and how the module could be taught better........

[garethedmondson]

Thanks for the reply with this. I haven't got around to getting anywhere. I take all your points on board.

However - the SMT have asked specifically for me to ask the staff about the technical support given by the school technician. What do they think of the service.... what do they think of how their queries are answered and so on.

I'm going to look at the SRF this week

Thanks again,

Gareth