Friday 5 October 2012

Collecting enquiry data from Student Information Points

We are now at the end of our fourth week and so far so good.  The Student Information Points have been operational at the three sites every day and we have dealt with hundreds of enquiries.
One of the most important aspects of the enquiry service for me from the beginning was that we needed to record the enquiries in some sort of way.  I wanted to ensure that we collected the data in one form or another from the start.  The two main reasons for this were that I wanted a record right from the start which would show what we were doing i.e. the activity of the service in so much as it could be measured.  Secondly because I suspected that this was something that wasn't necessarily being recorded in other areas and would be of interest further down the line.
Collecting and presenting data can easily become an enormous task, never ending in fact and this was something to consider.  What I wanted was a quick and easy way with the basic requirements that it took less than 20 seconds to record an enquiry (preferably less than 10) and that it could be used by more than one person simultaneously.  An additional requirement was that, if possible, it would be saved automatically.
Therefore we decided to use a Google form.  In the past I've used them for the 'user' to fill in but for the Student Information Points we are using them for the team on the desks to fill in to record an enquiry that they have been asked. To start with I created a form based on the ideas from the team.  Our SIP service was due to start in Freshers Week, and it did, but because it is a new service we didn't know what questions were going to be asked.  So we guessed and it turned out that we were quite close to what we needed.  We used version 1 of the form for Week 0 (Fresher's week) and Week 1 and then updated the form to reflect the questions that had been asked.  So we now have data from two lots of two weeks - there are not many changes between version 1 and version 2 of the form so much of it can be compared across the 4 weeks.
It has been surprisingly trouble free.  All the team have been able to access it and use it from the 3 different physical sites on a variety of computers and laptops every day.  It has proven to be quick enough to fill in even for the simplest enquiries such as directions.  Ok, it's not sophisticated but we don't need it to be. The fact that it saves automatically into the spreadsheet has been useful and then we can export the results and collate and analyse them.  The rest of the SIP team have been brilliant at doing this and producing graphs and  reports - much quicker and more efficient than me :)
In the future we will review and develop the way we collect the data from the enquiries.  We need to consider how we need to protect the data if we start having enquiries that contain details about individual students rather than general enquiries.  We need to look at how we use the University systems and how we integrate the data that we collect with other systems.  I expect that we will  also need to review our data collection methods when we receive feedback from presenting our information to the interested parties.
But for now, it works.

3 comments:

  1. Great stuff Claire. I'm going to point Lynn in the direction of this post, she is still working on our enquiry sheets. The eventual aim is to automate them, any chance at a look at your form please, to see if we can crib anything?

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  2. Yes, I'll send you a copy of the form or share it with you so you can have a look.

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  3. Hi Claire, Glad to see you are fitting in well in your new job. Having followed your blog in your previous incarnation, (like Tracey) I'm still involved in libraries. However, unlike Tracey, I have never worked with you or even met you. I would however like to see an example of an enquiry sheet. Any chance you could send me one or make it available via your blog?

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