Cross-posted to http://www.educause.edu/blog/borwick/SummaryRibbonsintheSkyACustome/173072.
Julie Leary and Amy Martin from Towson University gave this presentation, "Ribbons in the Sky: A Customer-Focused Approach to Implementing Change."
Originally I was confused by the title. "Ribbons in the Sky" refers to Office 2007 and its new "ribbons" that show up at the top of the bar. This presentation was about a successful training program to support an Office 2007 transition and to improve the reputation of the IT department.
Key takeaways:
- Departments will set up their own (decentralized) IT shops if they feel IT is overstepping its bounds or not listening
- By showing through a department-by-department roll-out the pain of not having enough RAM, Towson University got permission to add RAM to machines that otherwise could not support Office 2007, which also became a perk for people to upgrade
- Appoint an "upgrade coordinator" and create a marketing packet explaining the upgrade
- Meet users where they are: talk about the benefits, e.g. the decreased file sizes of Office 2007 files
- Training should be task-based rather than tool-based: how do you mail merge?
- Training is also a sales pitch
- Provide a virtual environment for people to try out new software and to refer to previous software versions
- Training teams could be the owners of knowledge management
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