In business, few things are as expensive as downtime. When technology fails, the costs have been calculated to be as high as $9,000 a minute. While we can’t put a price on learning and perform the same calculation in education, the point remains: Time is precious.
As technology and devices become widespread, we need to be cognizant of the impact this will have on learning. In a recent Bayview Analytics survey, 72% of teachers reported their students use tablets or laptops daily. Ensuring device availability, however, is just the beginning. The real challenge lies in the maintenance and upkeep that these computers and tablets will require. Broken screens, lost devices and sudden malfunctions throw a wrench into the learning process, resulting in less time for students to learn and teachers to instruct.
According to a 2022 study, device downtime is a significant problem for teachers and IT leaders. The findings revealed that, on average, 57% of US educators help replace student devices at least once a week, taking away valuable teaching time. What’s more, Incident IQ found that in a 2023-24 sampling of 1,775 school districts with a total of 11,113,381 students, the average district received 13,659 repair tickets, and each ticket took an average of 11 days to resolve.
This is learning downtime when valuable classroom time is lost due to the need to repair or replace a malfunctioning or broken learning tool. At this point, the entire learning process has to come to a halt. Troubleshooting can be incredibly time-consuming for students, teachers and IT specialists. Students fall behind on their work when their computer or tablet is down, and teachers have to file repair requests and communicate with IT instead of teaching.
How to minimize learning downtime
In today’s classrooms dominated by and dependent on devices, our challenge is clear: to ensure these tools are always ready to work whenever and wherever we need them.
First, schools must become better at managing requests and resolving them quickly. The key is moving from manual processes to workflows with streamlined help desk ticketing. With automated help desk ticketing, the tasks of IT staff, administrators and teachers become more efficient. For example, teachers can request help and provide specific information about their technical problems through self-service portals. By improving communication, an automated process can help the IT department better understand issues and find speedy solutions.
This is exactly what happened at Davis Joint Unified School District in California. Scott Thomsen, director of instructional technology and learning, sought a solution to manage devices after his district transitioned to one-to-one. Support needs at all levels had increased, so Thomsen needed a solution to improve communication and resolve help tickets more efficiently. His district utilized the data analytics capabilities of Incident IQ to improve communication and make proactive decisions that were data-backed and transparent. From this new information, Scott restructured his support team, enabling them to help students and teachers more efficiently.
Our research reveals that teachers need a teacher-friendly request workflow to spend approximately 30 minutes requesting assistance and managing help requests. With the use of an accessible help ticketing program, school districts in 2022 were able to save an average 1,250 hours of instructional time and 500 hours of time spent fixing devices.
From streamlined help ticketing to proactive asset management
If automated help desk ticketing reactively resolves learning downtime, a proactive response lies in asset management solutions. With these solutions, schools can more efficiently manage their resources, minimize loss or theft, optimize asset utilization, expedite device distribution and tracking, and ensure timely maintenance. Maintaining comprehensive records can also help promote device stewardship, as students are more likely to receive the same device the following year.
Furthermore, asset management software can record ownership and inventory levels and show where devices are located across districts. This enables IT professionals to quickly identify where teachers and staff need support and ensure students have functioning devices. IT teams can assign and organize backup devices for students if needed. The result not only limits learning downtime but also streamlines solutions and minimizes data silos. School districts and IT teams have better visibility over mission-critical information, leading to quicker resolution times for technology issues. IT leaders are empowered to effectively oversee and allocate technology resources and share analytics with key stakeholders.
A proactive asset management approach was especially needed for Hawthorn District 73 in Illinois when it was refreshing student devices last spring. Luke Bruschuk, technology support supervisor, analyzed historical data from their asset management platform to decide which devices to purchase during the refresh. Through this analysis, Bruschuk discovered that Chromebooks in his district had a much higher repair rate than iPads due to students being harder on these devices. Bruschuk knew that every time a device was being repaired, it was not being used for learning. These insights were instrumental in guiding the district’s purchasing decisions for the device refresh and would not have been possible without sophisticated asset management.
The bottom line is that classrooms depend on effective technology to support student learning outcomes. By optimizing processes, we can enhance the learning experience for both teachers and students and lighten the load for all involved. In doing so, teachers and leaders can remain focused on what matters the most — the learning and development of students.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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