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ERIC Number: EJ931805
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011
Pages: 7
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0271-0560
EISSN: N/A
Knowledge Sourcing in IT Support Services
Workman, Sue B.
New Directions for Higher Education, n153 p35-41 Spr 2011
Indiana University (IU) provides great support for the technology the community needs to teach, learn, and conduct research. Rather than limiting support by defining a rigid support matrix, IU has chosen instead to utilize knowledge management technology to provide self-service for repetitive information technology (IT) questions, and focus precious human resources on issues that are new or that need logical intervention. People may have heard of crowdsourcing, community sourcing, and open sourcing. IU is knowledge sourcing, a form of intelligent crowdsourcing. "Crowdsourcing is a distributed problem-solving and production model. Problems are broadcast to an unknown group of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions. Users--also known as the crowd--typically form into online communities, and the crowd submits solutions. The crowd also sorts through the solutions, finding the best ones" (Wikipedia Contributors, 2010). The idea behind knowledge sourcing is to collect and distribute the knowledge of the community to gain efficiency and effectiveness. IU's goal is to apply crowdsourcing for a particular IT support solution, that is, to eliminate repetitive problem solving for known issues; provide consistent answers; and maintain data in a single repository for editing, updating, and reuse. In short, IU wants to use technology for what it does best--repetitive use--and save its valuable human resources for problems that are either new or require human intervention. Although knowledge management can apply to any content, IU's goal is a system for IT self-help. This article discusses how IU uses technology and knowledge management to provide abundant leveraged IT support.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Indiana
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A