New Commons has had a long relationship with the Information Technology people at Providence College. We've worked with them directly and we've worked with them as part of OSHEAN .

But our latest project has taken the "what's possible" at PC to a whole new level.

In the spring, several members of the PC IT group attended my Web 2.0 for Non-Profits seminar. One of them, it turns out, is a longtime online pal of mine from the Urban Planet forums. Apparently, he had been agitating internally to implement some web 2 tools to help the Help Desk run more smoothly. After the seminar, they invited us to embark on a project that has been more successful than I could have imagined. And I have a pretty good imagination.

The project began as a simple discussion forum for Help Desk techs to log their calls and share information. We also added what we thought would be a small wiki to let students, faculty and staff try to solve their own computer issues BEFORE calling the Help Desk.

That small wiki is rapidly becoming a big wiki. In fact, at the very first workshop in the project, the need for a self-help resource was immediately obvious, as was the fact that its scope would need to grow considerably. 

Help Desks in general have the unenviable responsibility to help users solve problems "on the spot." And little issues have a tendency to become big problems at times of stress - like at deadline. Like any user group, students, faculty and staff at PC don't really care about who is responsible for what. They just need their problem solved.

What does this mean at PC? It means that if students have trouble getting online when they're at the Library, they ask librarians for help. If a professor can't get the projector in a particular classroom to work properly, they call the Help Desk. 

Except the library isn't supposed to handle IT help, and the Help Desk isn't supposed to handle Media Services issues (what we used to call A/V). 

But that's just like a user - trying to get information wherever they can. 

What we decided at that first workshop was that the PC Self-Help Wiki would need to cover anything and everything except academics. So now it includes IT, Library Services, Media Services, Residential Life, Dining Services, Off Campus information, and Safety/Security.

What's really amazing is how fast it's grown. Yes, I know that wiki is Hawaiian for "quick." But this was REALLY quick. At our orientation session last week for the new crop of Help Desk techs, we spent 45 minutes working on the wiki. 45 minutes.

And it better than doubled in size. 

Plus, "the kids" so "get" this web 2 thing that they were creating content us old folks never considered. Bus schedules, on-campus events, even first-hand knowledge of where and when it's safe to go at night. 

Simply put, this is web 2.0 at it's very, very best - highly engaged users who care about the topic and want to share their knowledge.

The bonus: it will only grow and improve with time. 

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