There was also some notable interest in e-mail, operating systems, campus network, and data security topics. It was also apparent that faculty desire intermediate and advanced levels of training particularly for general software and online research. These two were first choice of 31 and 30 faculty respectively. No other format was the first choice of more than 4. When looking at the respondents second through fifth choices there was also considerable interest in demonstrations by faculty peers.
Faculty seem to prefer the afternoon hours for such training opportunities.
However, there was no clear consensus regarding the time of year they are offered. This may indicate a need for these opportunities to be scheduled on a regular ongoing basis throughout the year. With regard to the factors influencing effective support service the faculty indicated that the most important is the addition of professional staff. The second most important factor is the provision of a professionally staffed help desk. The third most important factor is assigning student workers with special support training to each department.