Earlier, I suggested a way to prorate costs of a Tablet PC across academic transactions. Tim Wilson, The Savvy Technologist, posted notes about his class on Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) foundations.
Measuring performance is very important in the ITIL processes. My stack of materials has key performance indicators (KPIs) for each process. Here are a few examples from the Incident Management process (IM in ITIL-speak refers to what most people recognize as a traditional help desk/tech support request):
total number of incidents
mean cost per incident
incidents processed per service desk workstation
number and percentage of incidents resolved remotely, without an on-site visit
Does your school district’s IT department measure their performance like that? Mine doesn’t…yet.
ITIL calls for baseline data, performance changes, etc. Wilson’s considering developing indices for his school district. That’s good, very good! Kudos, Tim.
What indices do other school districts use?
Can you report what it costs you to teach a student to say /ae/ when he or she sees the letter a?
I’m continuing to work on those metrics. One that I posted about some time after the post you linked to I’m calling “learning opportunity cost” or LOC. That’s the cost of lost learning opportunity caused by a technical glitch. In my district we spend $7.70/student/hour of instruction. The cost piles up pretty fast at that rate when you start multiplying by roomfuls of kids.