It's been about a month since we adopted Office 365. With that change, all employees and students grades 5-12 gained access to cloud-based email, calendar and document management. After a month, it seems timely to pause and assess the transition. Keep in mind that all my observations below are anecdotal, gleaned from daily conversations about Office 365. It's my plan to more formally survey our users, but I want to wait to get past the initial learning period.
In considering this wholesale move to cloud-based software, I would divide users into three categories: students, teaching faculty and non-teaching employees. Students generally have adapted to the system without much fuss. I saw some eyes roll with the realization that there was yet another password to create and remember. Many students were also not especially keen about the length of their user names. In this system, the user name is the full email address, and many students have lengthy user names. Students, as a group, are reluctant email users. And if they're checking email, their first instinct is to look at an already established personal account. (Personal accounts are generally gmail accounts.) So getting students to check a school account can be a challenge. But one of the advantages of Office 365 is that it links other functions to email, notably document creation and storage. The idea that students have 24/7 access to Word docs (and Excel and PowerPoint) is valued by students. By default, they open the program that also opens their school email.
Our teaching faculty have quickly adapted to the new system, but not without some reservations. Email, in general, is considered a very positive part of the change to Office 365. Previously, virtually all faculty regularly checked email at school and at home. But the two displays were totally different, and the programs acted differently. Now, in Office 365, the interface is identical all the time. That change is much appreciated. Faculty seem less comfortable using cloud-based document management. Creating and working with a new document, like a Word document, is a bit different than in the past. Questions about whether or not to download documents or simply work in Office 365 persist. Understanding when best to share a document is a work in progress for many users.
Non-teaching employees have probably encountered more hurdles than other users, and are understandably less enthusiastic about the change. Tasks that formerly might have taken one or two steps might now take two or three steps. Emailing large groups (e.g.: all the parents in the school) required a work-around that was not obvious at first glance. Many of our non-teaching employees are what might be termed "power users" of the system. They are in offices everyday working on their computers. They become masterful at particular software products. When change happens, it's especially challenging to these GSBers because there's no real time to learn the new software. Their work continues every day. so they learn as they work through problems, and in the process lose some short-term efficiency. I'm confident that soon enough, today's challenges will become tomorrow's dim memories, but in the meantime, I'm particularly aware of this group's transition.
I'd remind everyone that the change to office 365 was done for good reasons. You can review the reasons by jumping to my August 11, 2014 post. I know that we've gained a rock solid system for GSB that will serve us into the years ahead. But transitions are always challenging, and this one is no exception.
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