Development of a student-driven information technology support service

Background and purpose: To share our experience of a partnership created amongst students, staff, and faculty in order to address a gap in campus information technology (IT) customer services provided to students. Educational activity and setting: Student reliance on a complex educational technology ecosystem requires a robust IT infrastructure; however, campus IT services are often stretched in terms of their capacity to deliver immediate customer support. Compounding this problem is the inability of campus IT services to address issues arising from pharmacy education specific hardware or software. A student help desk (SHD), a student-initiated technology user group was developed. The support provided by the SHD covers student devices to the level of ensuring access to required curriculum technological resources. Findings: Over 24 months, a total of 259 cases were addressed by the SHD. When examining the type of submissions, the top five requested categories included computer-based assessment, email synchronization, curricular management software synchronization, wireless printing and encryption. These results suggest the perceived value and confidence by students and faculty in the service provided by the SHD. Summary: The use of a SHD helped to resolve technology issues faced by students for curriculum engagement. Regardless of the challenges institutions may face in delivering their curriculum, students have the desire to be engaged in the governance of their curriculum. By creating a collaborative triad, this represents one example of how student motivation can be leveraged to conquer not just gaps in IT customer service, but potentially other programmatic issues within an institution.