Page Comparison

Questions and Flow for Support Staff Interview and Observation

Flow

1. Introductions
2. Why we're here: we've been asked to design a next generation tool for the management of courses within a Learning Management System
3. What we'll ask: your day, your frustrations
4. After the interview, we'd like to observe you setting up a course.
5. We may ask you some follow up questions.

Overview Questions

1. What's your title?
2. Can you give us a two sentence job description?
3. Tell us about your responsibilities and typical day
4. What would you say is the main goal in the task(s) you have?
5. What's your favorite aspect of your job?
6. What don't you like about your job? What's tasks would you rather not have to do?

Activity questions

General

1. What's your role in supporting faculty?
   • What kind of support requests generally come in?
   • What are the top three kinds of support issues you have to deal with?
2. Can you talk generally about how students sign up for and switch classes? What's the beginning of the term like? How far into the semester can students switch courses?
3. Do you have cross listed? What does "cross listing" that mean?
4. What does the term "section" mean to you?
   • How do you handle sections?
   • What are your section types?
   • How often do students switch sections?

CMS-related (if there is an existing product)

1. How do you handle the creation of a site for your course?
2. How do you handle content, if any?
3. With regards to course syllabus information, does your cms support uploading of a local file as well as entering text right into the syllabus page? Which option do you use?
4. How are students added and dropped from the site?

Other general question if they haven't come up:

Opportunity

• What things waste your time?

Priorities/Goals

• What makes a good work day? A bad one?
• What is the most important thing you do?
• What does your boss think is important?

Support

• What kind of training do you receive?
• What kind of training do you give to faculty and TAs?

Connections

• Who do you go to when you have questions? (specifically, for local admins)
• Who else do you work with to get things done?
• Who else provides information to you and to whom do you provide information?

Final Questions/Wrap-up

1. Are there any less frequent tasks you do that I might not have observed today?
2. Follow-up on interesting points

Observation

• Environment Observations
• Observations/General