GCC 2007 – 2008 Innovation of the Year Application

Title:  Faculty SIS Training Materials:  Quick Reference Guide (QRG) and Matching Online Tutorial

Team from Glendale Community College:

Karen Russo, Coordinator of Client Support     Stephen Williams, Chair of Department of Biology
(623) 845-3492                                               (623) 845-3621

Executive Summary:

We blended faculty needs using a veteran department chair with the innovative skills of our training coordinator to design a unique set of Faculty SIS Training Materials that include a Quick Reference Guide and matching Online Tutorial.  Many of our sister colleges and the district office have adopted our materials.

Description of the Innovation:

Issue -The materials provided by the MCCCD Student Information System (SIS) team for District-wide faculty, department secretaries and administrators did not match the security levels or preferred SIS information established by Glendale Community College (GCC).  The District materials were not written from a faculty perspective and covered menu choices that the faculty were either on longer seeing in the new SIS or were not going to be used by GCC. The District materials were quite extensive (43 pages) and had very useful information, but users have often complained about having to sort through too many pages to find items they needed.  The team’s solution was to design custom materials for GCC’s Departments including Chairs, Faculty, Secretaries and Academic Affairs Administrators that covered the necessary topics while being brief and to the point.  In addition to the custom materials, a matching online training component was developed to reach faculty, both residential and adjunct, who might not be able to attend the in-person training sessions on campus or who prefer online materials.

Quality - The development and implementation of the GCC Faculty SIS Quick Reference Guide (QRG) and the matching Online Tutorial http://www.gc.maricopa.edu/ted/facsis has provided over 800 faculty, department secretaries and administrators at Glendale Community College a visual, colorful, easy-to-follow, step-by-step process that blends screen shots and script in a unique way to allow faculty and staff to easily navigate in the intimidating and massive database of the new SIS. 

Efficiency - This new way of presenting workshop materials will change the way we present workshops in the future.  These materials will serve as templates for future training both in SIS and in many other areas.  The materials provide faculty and staff with easy steps to navigate in the new SIS Faculty Center and to find student information in a six-page Faculty SIS Reference Guide.  A matching Online Tutorial provides access to training for faculty and staff who could not attend the in-person training and/or prefer to receive their training online.  The ADA compliant Online Tutorial has also been used to train a deaf instructor who did not have an interpreter available for in-person training.

Cost Effectiveness - Having an Online Tutorial that matched the SIS Quick Reference Guide reduced the man-hours needed to conduct in-person training sessions, reduced the resources needed to support those in-person training sessions (rooms, computers, electricity, and paper handouts) and allowed us to train over 800 faculty and staff in a period of only two weeks.  Even with offering twenty 90-minute workshops, we could have in-person accommodated only about 400 faculty and staff over these past two weeks. We would have had to double the cost to the college for the team of three trainers to add 20 additional in-person workshops. The Online Tutorial is offered at no additional cost to the faculty or to the college.  Over 25% of GCC’s faculty have successfully completed the Faculty SIS Training Online Tutorial that includes assessment exercises that measure the users SIS knowledge and navigation skills.  
     Savings were also realized by not mass copying the 43 pages of original materials we were given at a cost of $1.72 per set.   We reduced the number of pages from 43 to six and were able to copy our materials in color on white cardstock at a cost of 80 cents per set.  We expect to distribute over 800 sets of materials this semester, realizing a savings at GCC of $640 in copy costs alone.

Creativity - We have not seen workshop materials in any of the other colleges or at the District Office that have been created in this fashion combining the efforts of faculty and trainers to provide a short, but thorough, navigation tool that is easy to follow with screen shots and text in both a paper and matching online format

Timeliness - The new SIS system is one that is continuously evolving and changing so by that very nature, we had almost no lead-time to develop these materials. Some of the processes have still not been finalized. In order to present the most current security levels and processes to our faculty and staff, we waited to finish the workshop materials the day before our Faculty SIS Training workshops were to begin at a time when all of our sister colleges were separately planning their own SIS Training workshops with slightly different security levels and processes, so no one set of materials emerged that provide for our needs from either the other colleges or the district office. We were not sure of all the Security Levels that our faculty will have in the new SIS, so we decided to focus on just what faculty needed to know to transition to the new SIS after February 19th. All of our materials are posted on the Client Services website.  Supplemental materials will be added as needed.
     We concentrated on the Faculty Center with the Class and Grade Rosters and on the Campus Community with its link to search for contact information on our students, such as phone numbers, addresses and emails.  We want our faculty to communicate easily with their students through a variety of communication modes.          
     Because our materials were only six pages, we were able to make only enough paper copies for workshops one day ahead.  We are currently on our 5th draft with subtle changes made to increase the quality as we receive feedback both from our faculty and from faculty and staff at other colleges and at the district office. The online training allows us to easily update and change materials as needed. 

Learning - We have already shared the workshop materials with the other campuses, and many of them are using our materials for their Faculty SIS Training.  We are approaching other areas of SIS in a similar fashion as we develop the guides and matching online tutorials.  We have already surveyed our faculty and staff to determine what information they used in the old SIS and what information they wanted but could not get in the old SIS. We have translated that information to choose the screens needed in the new SIS by secretaries, faculty, chairs and administrators and to develop Business Objects Enterprise reports from the new SIS database.  All of our future training materials are being developed using the model we have created for the Faculty SIS Training.

Collaboration - Tremendous collaboration existed between Client Support (Karen Russo), Faculty (Stephen Williams) and Enrollment Services (Mary Lou Massal and Mary Blackwell).  We also collaborated across schools – suggestions were incorporated about the Class Roster from another campus.  We feel we have raised the level of excellence in training and development at GCC and this is already spreading to other colleges in MCCD.

Replication - Many of our sister Maricopa colleges have requested (and been granted) permission to use our Faculty SIS materials.  The GCC Faculty SIS training team developed and implemented a Faculty SIS Quick Reference Guide (QRG) and a matching Online Tutorial to over 800 faculty and staff from GCC.  These training materials used a very visual, colorful, easy-to-follow, step-by-step process that blends computer screen shots with applicable text.  The response to the training materials has been so positive, that we plan to present all of our continuing workshop materials on the new SIS to secretaries, chairs, and administrators in a similar format. Here are some of the comments that we were given permission to quote, which emphasize the quality and usefulness of the materials we developed: