How a school district's IT team cuts training & documentation time by 70%

Learn how the IT team at Community Unit School District 300, an Illinois school district, trains 3,000 faculty members on tools and technology in a fraction of the time.
70%
Reduction in time spent training and documenting processes
Industry
Education
Employees
3,000
Location
Illinois, USA
"Scribe is a game-changer. It eliminates the need for multiple steps, such as taking screenshots, cropping, annotating, and writing instructions, just to provide a single step for the end user to follow."
Jahan Rodriguez
Director of Information Services

Summary

  • Community Unit School District 300, a large Illinois school district, used Scribe to improve tech support for 3,000 faculty members.
  • The team reduced guide creation from 30 minutes to just 10 minutes, enabling rapid updates for software changes.
  • Scribe's Guide Me feature aids faculty in following complex processes seamlessly, ensuring consistency and ease of use.
  • Scribe's analytics allow D300 to track guide engagement, helping them refine and adapt documentation to user needs.

Challenge

A school district's IT team struggled with time-consuming processes for creating training materials, impacting their ability to support the faculty's tech needs.

Community Unit School District 300 (referred to as D300), a public school district located in the Chicago area, spans 27 schools and 20,000 students from pre-K to 12th grade. They have a dedicated IT department responsible for helping 3,000 faculty members access and use various technologies and tools.

It's no small feat — made even more difficult by an arduous process of building training and process materials. With the help of Scribe, they no longer waste hours taking screenshots and video screen shares with Camtasia and WeVideo, or manually creating how-to guides.

Scribe's revolutionary solution has alleviated headaches and transformed D300's workflows for the better.

Solution

Multiple teams in the IT department found new ways to transform their workflows and boost efficiency.

The initial rollout of Scribe focused on three teams who were feeling the highest degrees of pain around documentation and IT training.

  1. Student Information Specialists: This team focuses on training end users to effectively enter required information and data into the student information system to accurately report to the Illinois State Board of Education.
  2. Help Desk Specialists: These specialists are responsible for providing service and support for technologies employed by staff and students — including digital curriculum applications, informational data systems and classroom/instructional technology.
  3. Digital Learning Coaches: This team assists teachers in integrating technology into instructional programs. They aid in both planning and implementation.

Time savings

70%

Reduction in time spent training and documenting processes

Results

D300 transformed how they manage knowledge sharing, documentation updates, and faculty training with Scribe.

By simplifying the creation, maintenance, and accessibility of how-to guides, Scribe empowered D300's IT team to save time, improve accuracy, and enhance learning experiences for faculty members.

Improving knowledge base content

D300 recently implemented a new knowledge base. With Scribe, they successfully incorporated comprehensive how-to guides into every page, ensuring faculty members were equipped with the knowledge to navigate their new processes.

Before Scribe, the process of building these guides was extremely time-consuming. It involved taking screenshots, cropping, annotating and writing instructions.

This process required approximately 30 minutes per guide, sometimes even stretching to 1 or 2 hours for additional review. With Scribe, they have significantly reduced the time investment to just 10 minutes per guide.

Furthermore, Scribe's ease of use allows the D300 team to customize their how-to guides based on unique faculty needs, emphasizing district-specific processes and procedures.

Scribe’s analytical data allows the D300 team to monitor how many views a Scribe has. This has been extremely valuable in helping the D300 team see the success of each guide. Alternatively, when a guide is not highly viewed, they can solicit user feedback as to why and implement needed updates or changes.

"Scribe has transformed a previously
daunting task into a manageable job."
Marti Whitehouse
Student Information Specialist

Reduced document maintenance

A persistent challenge that the D300 team faced was the ever-changing nature of their software. This meant that much of the effort invested in creating how-to guides became obsolete when the user interface or processes changed.

Scribe enables the team to effortlessly maintain up-to-date documentation. When a change is implemented in D300’s PowerSchool Products (their Student Information and Learning Management Systems), affecting the majority of initial steps in their Scribes, they no longer lose hours creating new documentation. The team can promptly re-capture the first step of every Scribe in just a few seconds, ensuring all documentation remains current.

Recognizing the inevitability of software changes, Scribe is a seamless solution for keeping documentation relevant and accurate.

Improved ability for faculty to learn

When the registrar sends out a 30+ step guide on how to enroll students, other members of their district are able to easily follow along with the ‘Guide Me’ feature.

Clicking ‘Guide Me’ takes the viewer to the website the process is on, where they can scroll through the Scribe in a side panel. This ensures nobody has to switch tabs and can easily follow the process all the way through to completion. Guide Me can also launch on-screen guidance, showing a faculty member exactly where to click on their screen.

The D300 team is able to use Scribe to better support the district faculty in enabling everyone to correctly follow processes. So far, the team has created 425 Scribes that have been viewed 4,100 times (and counting!).

Scribe has given the D300 team superpowers and allowed them to provide better support in less time.

Ready to try Scribe?

Scribe automatically generates how-to guides and serves them to your team when they need them most. Save time, stay focused, help others.