From the issue dated May 26, 2000

Distance Education Transforms Help Desks Into '24-7' Operations Colleges say they must provide technical support for a variety of schedules and time zones By JEFFREY R. YOUNG You can count on some things to be open at all hours: convenience stores, copy shops, diners, hospitals. Some distance-education help desks are joining the list of operations with graveyard shifts. More and more colleges are extending the hours in which they provide technical ALSO SEE: Colloquy Live: Join a live discussion about providing 24-hour technical support to students, Thursday, May 25 at 2 p.m. Eastern time. support for distance education, offering late-night, weekend, or even around-the-clock services. Although operating technical-support centers that never sleep can be expensive, some administrators say that students are demanding the service, and that ready technical help is essential to fulfilling the promise of "anytime, anywhere" learning. After all, online students -- many of whom also hold full-time jobs -- are most active at times when traditional college offices are closed. And as American universities attempt to draw a worldwide audience for their online programs, administrators are becoming all too aware of time zones: When the business day ends in New York, it's morning in Sydney. "When we look at when students log on, it tends to be all over the clock, and substantially in the evening hours," says Mary Beth Susman, chief executive officer of the Kentucky Commonwealth Virtual University, who predicts that round-the-clock support will become the norm for virtual universities. Some smaller distance-learning operations and those that serve mainly local populations say they don't need to provide that much support -- at least not yet. Most colleges and universities that are moving toward "24-7" support -- 24 hours a day, seven days a week -- are hiring private companies, which can serve hundreds of colleges from the same technical-support center. In fact, supporting online learners is becoming a big business, with several companies developing call centers focused on that market. Players include such companies as Nortel Networks, Intellimark, and the United Parcel Service's business-communications division. Some of the services charge institutions per-minute fees for each call or e-mail message that comes in, and a typical price is 60 to 90 cents a minute, officials say. Over the course of a year, a college with many online students could pay hundreds of thousands of dollars. Among colleges, universities, and for-profit operations that have set up 24-7 support for distance education, or plan to do so, are Mercer University, which operates the e-Mercer program; NYUonline, a for-profit company created by New York University; Jones International University; the University of Maryland's University College; and hundreds of institutions that have signed up with software vendors that offer the service as part of package deals. Among those vendors are Collegis, Convene, eCollege.com, Eduprise.com, and JonesKnowledge.com. Other colleges are pooling their resources to offer 24-7 support through regional collaborations. The Southern Regional Education Board's Electronic Campus, for instance, has committed to offering round-the-clock support within the next few years. "The benefit of participating in online education is this 'anytime, anywhere' concept that is very appealing," says Karen Ford, director of client support for Convene. "Well, technical support has to be available anytime, anywhere as well," she adds. So far, the number of requests arriving on the graveyard shift is low, according to Ms. Ford and others offering such services. Convene, which now supports about 90 institutions with almost 10,000 students from its call center in downtown San Francisco, gets only "a few" e-mail or telephone requests at three or four in the morning, Ms. Ford says. Even so, some college officials say that the quality of technical support will increasingly become a deciding factor for students shopping for virtual courses. "Distance education is going to be very competitive in the future," says Dan Daniel, chief information officer for NYUonline, which is seeking a company to provide 24-7 support for its courses. "We think customer support is going to be one of the main differentiators among institutions." Colleges with smaller online programs are unlikely to have the money to pay for high levels of support. "There's little doubt that that's a service that students want, but it's very hard to gear up to that," says Sally Johnstone, director of the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications, at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. "The reality is that few colleges and universities can afford 24-7 coverage for technical support." Some institutions have developed creative ways to answer questions that arise when their technical-support services are closed. At Virginia's Shenandoah University, the School of Pharmacy's distance-education program relies on a Web-based discussion board for after-hours questions, and the school encourages its students and staff members to refer to the discussion board whenever they hit a snag. "The students will reply to each other," says Evan T. Robinson, director of distance education at the pharmacy school. "It's an extremely efficient way to do technical support." The most common problem that online students encounter, according to many help-desk staff members, is not being able to log in, usually because of a forgotten password. The problem is the online equivalent of being locked out of a classroom while a professor is lecturing -- an unlikely scenario in a traditional course. Most log-in problems are easy to resolve, however, and if a technical-support staff member is on duty, each request can be handled in a matter of minutes. The number of calls and e-mail requests a technical-support center receives every day can fluctuate drastically, rising and falling with the rhythm of a semester. On a typical day, eCollege.com's help desk -- which serves about 150 institutions -- receives 250 to 350 calls, although on some days only 50 to 100 calls come in, says Greg J. Eiselein, the help-desk manager for the company, which is located in Denver. But during the first week of classes, a flood of more than 700 calls a day isn't unusual. Linda Gallagher is a training and support specialist for Penn State World Campus, the distance-education arm of Pennsylvania State University. She says students she talks to range in technical ability, so diagnosing problems is tricky no matter what time students call. "It's kind of like if you go to a doctor with a cough," she says. "It could be any number of things, so we ask lots of questions, such as, 'How old is your browser?' They might need to update their browser to load a Web page properly." Some online students just call technical-support lines for reassurance. "Sometimes it's just a comfort level," says Mr. Eiselein, of eCollege.com. "A student who's never taken an online course and has just submitted their answers will call and ask, 'Did it save?'" Many distance-education students submit their questions by e-mail instead of by telephone, and some services promise colleges that such electronic questions will be answered within three or four hours. One reason students choose to use e-mail is that many have only one phone line and don't want to log off of an Internet connection to report a problem, officials say. Some help desks have even set up live chat rooms where students can interact directly with support personnel while still online. At night and on weekends, many technical-support centers are equipped only to answer what are often called "Level 1" problems -- common complaints that are relatively easy to resolve. "Level 2" problems, which might require changes in software or consultation with a professor, generally must wait until traditional business hours. But for problems that are really serious -- if a virtual university's network crashes, for instance -- support-staff members have been known to wake up their bosses at home. On a recent Saturday at about 7 p.m., Viqar Basheer phoned the technical-support line at Maryland's University College when he had trouble posting a comment on the online discussion board for his organizational-design course. Mr. Basheer is working toward his M.B.A., and he squeezes in course work whenever he can, generally at night or on weekends. He says his problem was fixed within two hours, while he was still doing his homework. "I think it is critical that you can get things straightened out right away, so you can get back to being productive," he says. Mr. Basheer's toll-free call was fielded at a technical-support facility in Mechanicsburg, Pa., operated by Intellimark, the company that University College hired to handle its distance-education support. That phone call -- a typical one -- cost the university about $20. The institution, which has more than 13,000 online students, has an annual support bill of about $250,000, says Curtis White, associate vice president for information technology and acting chief information officer at the college. Mr. White and other officials say the primary benefit of extended support service is helping students overseas. "We're a worldwide organization," says Mr. White, who notes that many of the college's students are U.S. military or government employees working overseas. Until about a year ago, the college's technical-support center operated from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., Eastern time. Now it's 24-7. "We quickly realized that our student population was growing in numbers and also growing in demand," he adds. At Penn State World Campus's support center, a world map hangs prominently on one wall. It's a reference for employees who need to compute the local time of callers in distant lands. "If we're returning a call, we have to take care to make sure we're not calling at 3 a.m.," says Ms. Gallagher, the support specialist. Penn State's support center is open on weekdays from 8 a.m. to midnight, Eastern time, and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends. So far, language barriers haven't been much of an issue, because most American institutions conduct their online courses in English. But support-staff members say they get the occasional e-mail message in a foreign tongue. "Sometimes we'll get an e-mail that's all in Spanish or all in Hungarian, and we have to get a translation on that," says Benjamin Floyd, manager of technical customer service for JonesKnowledge.com, in Englewood, Colo. The company has employees who speak those languages, but seeking a translation slows down a response. Some colleges are forging intercontinental partnerships to serve their students. To support both online and traditional students, for instance, Australia's Macquarie University is working with the London School of Economics and Political Science. Matilda Kolandaisamy, manager of the information-technology help desk at Macquarie, says that when one of the support centers is closed, calls are automatically routed to the other center. Because of the difference in time zones, the centers manage to provide 20-hour-a-day service on weekdays, even though London's center is open only from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time, and the Australian center operates only from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. local time. Beyond their efforts in distance education, colleges are also struggling to provide on-campus students with more technical support, because those students, too, are using computers more and more. But distance education seems to be moving more quickly toward the 24-7 model. Gary Ellis, director of distance learning and instructional technology at Southwest Missouri State University, says online operations are generally providing better technical support than traditional university programs. "Most distance-learning programs, even if they're not 24-7, are still going a mile or so further than what traditional campuses are doing," he says. "And students appreciate that." Some college officials foresee a day when virtual universities will offer all of their services -- from registration to book sales -- around the clock. "This whole call-center and help-desk thing is going to go far, far beyond just the support of the learning mission," says Richard A. Skinner, president of the University System of Georgia's distance-learning program. "As you see a larger percentage of students enroll in distance learning, you're going to have to provide them with those services" in a timely manner. But even virtual universities that run 24-7 services take at least a few days off. "We are closed on Christmas and Thanksgiving," says Ms. Ford, director of client support for Convene. "I'm not that much of a slave driver." http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Page: A49 Easy-to-print version E-mail this article