As an eLearning Content Developer (ECD) at DePaul University, one of my roles is to provide faculty support for all courses using Desire2Learn. Whether that is providing D2L training sessions, building content, or answering any D2L technical questions. One of the biggest challenges that I face as an ECD is figuring out when I might be providing “too much support.” I’m sure any faculty reading this at this point are thinking how could there ever be too much support? But I believe there needs to be a balance between providing the support faculty need and also giving them the right amount of encouragement to be able to eventually answer their own questions.

When I first started working at DePaul, I would fix every issue that an instructor brought to me without providing the instructor an explanation of how I fixed the issue. On one hand I did help the instructors and answered their questions but I also missed the opportunity to give the instructors the necessary tools to see if they could fix the issue on their end. One of my major goals in the past year has been to encourage them not to rely so heavily on the school’s support team, but to have confidence in their own abilities to be able to fix any issues that might occur in their course. I have been blown away by how many instructors have come back thanking me for providing the instructions on how to do something as they preferred to be more self-reliant.

As a support team member, it’s much faster to do something on your own than provide the instructions, but it’s less rewarding for you and the instructor. The support team should be there as more of a cheerleader rooting for the instructor, rather than a place where things get quickly fixed without any opportunity to learn  or teach something new.

I’m very curious how other schools handle faculty support for their school’s learning management system. What model do you use? Does your school have a support team? If you are an instructor, what would you like to see from the support team? Feel free to share your thoughts/stories in the comments below.