One of the most frequently asked questions at the Edmonds Community College library reference desk is, “Can you help me log in to a computer?” Our students have varying levels of technical proficiency and for many of them creating and remembering complex usernames and passwords is a new and daunting requirement. Some of their passwords expire on a regular basis and need to be changed. This catches many off-guard and may temporarily restrict access to their accounts. Students must also remember multiple usernames and passwords to access multiple on-line services. Many confuse their campus network login, their Blackboard login, their enrollment services (registration, grades and unofficial transcripts) login, and their login for off-campus access to the library’s online resources. This issue is being recognized across campus and librarians are not alone in recognizing login proficiency as a barrier to student success.

Faculty and staff in several units have identified login issues as a barrier to student success and decided to address the issue. In fact, several efforts at training and support are already in place across the departments. Taking care not to compete with or overlap these existing programs, some the librarians, Student Services staff, and Academic Computing Staff got together to try and find a solution.

During our first meetings, we realized right away that our original focus on login issues was a little narrow. After hearing stories from several different departments about the kinds of barriers students faced, we decided to expand our login project into a technology basics project. We kept a focus on the various online accounts students need to access, but rather than limiting our efforts to successfully logging in, we broadened our outcomes to include basic technological proficiency. We specifically targeted students who might not have the confidence or experience with technology to understand and follow written instructions.

We decided to take a two-pronged approach in addressing our areas of concern. First, we offered a series of seminars the first week of the quarter. The various collaborating units each created a seminar to address a specific area of need. Academic Computing Services presented an overview of the students’ network accounts, the library offered a session on basic file management and another on accessing online library resources, Student Services offered a session on online registration and how to access Student Services online, and the Technology Resource Center (faculty technology support) offered students a sessions on effectively using Blackboard. Secondly, we opened the library instruction room for drop-in support for students with login issues the first week of the quarter. Before and after the scheduled sessions faculty and staff from the participating units were available to give hands-on assistance and instruction on an as-needed basis.

Our publicity campaign included emails to faculty, sandwich boards, handouts at student advising sessions, web advertising on the home pages of the library, Blackboard and Student Computer lab websites, and flyers, signs and announcements in the library.

After completing our week of intensive technology support, we assessed how our experiment fared. Overall, we were satisfied with the success of our project. Students who attended were able to get hands-on support in the areas they needed and were able to demonstrate proficiency in accessing their student accounts before they left. We also created some tutorial materials that will be available on-line to help students who did not attend the seminars.

Our biggest disappointment was with attendance. None of the sessions were particularly well attended. While this meant that there was an abundance of hands-on help for each student that did attend, attendance did not warrant the level of staffing we provided. Considering the low attendance, we found two likely reasons for the low turn out. First, most of the students during spring quarter were returning students who were now very familiar with the College’s online services. Second, this spring the library provided a new computer lab assistant who was also able to help students with the various logins. While we realized that holding the workshops in spring quarter might result in a low turnout, we also thought that starting this experiment during spring quarter would give us an opportunity to prepare for the Fall and what we anticipate will be a large population of new students who are unfamiliar with the College’s online systems and login processes.

Faculty response to the technology basics series was very favorable and several reported gratitude for being able to refer students to us. Also, in the process of collaborating with several units to create this project, the participating faculty and staff were cross-trained in supporting access issues pertaining to other units. This will likely increase our ability to help students at the moment of need without referring across campus for support. As we go forward with in future quarters, we will likely adjust our staffing levels and increase our marketing efforts. Specifically, we are hoping to take a more targeted approach with our publicity campaign and are considering targeting new students with emails and mailings and placing the publicity on the screensavers for the student access computers.

Despite less-than-stellar turnout, this project has created a lot of interest going forward. The collaboration between the various units was very encouraging and will only strengthen our individual support efforts in the future. Faculty members have responded favorably and we expect more referrals in future quarters as word-of-mouth and our marketing efforts increase. Finally, there was a great deal of satisfaction in the effectiveness of our support of the students who participated. Students who dropped in for support were able to get the help they sought and demonstrate proficiency in accessing and using their online accounts at Edmonds Community College and our learning objectives were met. In future quarters we will be able to repeat this project in a more efficient and sustainable manner.

Nicholas Schiller
Part-Time Reference Librarian
Edmonds Community College