Consistency and Convenience: Use of Canvas in Help Desk Staff Training

Training Help Desk staff well is both critical to the success of the Help Desk and time consuming; using Canvas to create an online training course makes that training more consistent and convenient. Quality training creates a superior customer experience, ensures consistent documentation going to other departments in IT, and results in less time spent following up on unclear tickets. However, good quality training is time consuming, difficult to schedule, and needs to be repeated with new staff members often. University of Wyoming IT Help Desk has found that creating an online course with Canvas allows for a consistent, high quality training experience that can be repeated as often as necessary and is available the moment a new staff member starts. Recordings of presentations, screen capture, and quizzes allow staff members to learn at their own rate and test their knowledge before working with customers. In the limited time since launching the Canvas Help Desk course, UWIT has found that tickets are documented more consistently, even experienced staff members have filled in holes in their knowledge, and the time spent training new staff members has decreased and become more focused on individual questions and concerns. Usage of the course is now expanding to other teams and content is always being added. Canvas has proven to increase both our effectiveness and efficiency in training.