About TIPs
Background
These Technical Instructional Pages (TIPs) were developed for the use of
students, faculty, and staff of the California State University system.
Duties of the computer lab management staff (including lab coordinators, instructional assistants,
student assistants) and help desk staff
are becoming greater and greater, due to limitations of staff size, budget restraints,
and the utilization of more computer programs with greater complexity. There is a
strong need for online instructional tutorials, resources, how-to’s, and FAQs, which
can be used by students at any CSU campus from either home or in a university computer lab.
The purpose of this project was to research and develop accessible instructional web pages
for students, faculty, and staff of the entire CSU system that would cover the most commonly
used applications.
The staff of many CSU computer labs have become more involved in taking over the help desk duties,
not just supporting students, but also faculty and staff to a greater extent. There are several
reasons for this including budget, staffing, and application complexity issues. Due to the increased
demands put on the lab management staff, it has become necessary to find non-time intensive ways of
providing this additional support.
Many of the same technology support issues and questions are repeated over and over.
Unfortunately, the built-in help menus that most applications provide do not cover everything
and much of what they do provide is not always clear to a student.
The most efficient and economical way to solve this problem is to provide instructional
web pages, which provide answers to the most common technology
issues of students and staff. CSU staff can feel free to print these out as handouts or
incorporate with their own web pages if they desire.
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