Kathryn Fletcher’s research while affiliated with West Virginia University and other places

West Virginia University (WVU) employees and students use a variety of online survey tools for research, polling, and feedback. In addition to these uses, survey tools have been used to develop complex online forms with workflows and email notifications, program reviews that allow collaborative responses over a six-month period, online tutorials with built-in quizzes, and ballots for student body elections. This paper focuses on WVU's "off label" uses of its most popular survey tool, Qualtrics, and includes a few best practices gleaned from lessons learned.

At West Virginia University, Information Technology Services provides centralized enterprise resources and services, while additional independent IT groups provide support for individual colleges and units. ITS Advanced Support is a second-tier specialized support team of eleven individuals with diverse skills that supports over 80 software applications. In addition to responding to escalated and specialized support tickets, we serve as application administrators for select systems and participate in testing new applications and software upgrades. In this paper, I will summarize the creation of our multi-purpose Advanced Support Team, describe what we do, and explain how our team fits in the ITS organization chart and support processes. I will describe what is working well and the challenges we face juggling multiple roles and support topics.

In 2013 West Virginia University consolidated a few individually purchased college and individual licenses for Qualtrics survey software into a single campus-wide license that includes all of our colleges and regional campuses, to be implemented as a campus standard and enterprise solution for our campus. Due to some staff reorganizations over the past two years, I and the other Qualtrics brand administrators at WVU are all new to this administrative role. In this paper, I plan to share lessons that I learned while (1) participating in developing and documenting new business processes, (2) transitioning to serve as the main brand administrator, (3) cleaning up user accounts that had not been actively managed for years, and (4) working with the Qualtrics vendor, local group administrators, my IT colleagues, and campus users as we refine a set of best practices for product usage and administration. Although this paper discusses a campus-wide implementation of Qualtrics survey software, I feel that the lessons I learned during this process could be extrapolated to the development of best practices for other products or IT services.

Often one thinks of mentoring being used to prepare a mentee for a new position, where the mentor has a job role similar to the goal position. However the ACM SIGUCCS Mentoring Program has always been open to other types of mentoring relationships, where the mentor is the "guide on the side" to help a mentee reach one or more goals during the 10 month mentoring period. In 2016, Trevor and Kathy applied for the mentoring program, requesting to be paired up. Trevor, who has past experience as a mentor (to someone else) is the mentee of the pair while Kathy, who has past experience as a mentee with a different mentor, is serving as a mentor for Trevor. Our goals for the year do not include seeking promotions or attaining a professional certification. Although one of us is ostensibly the mentor, we both plan to learn and grow from this relationship. We decided to keep track of any challenges and life lessons we encounter during this year and share our thoughts at the conference for the benefit of those considering applying for the program in the future.