Monday, September 26, 2005
Documenting Documentation
I'll admit it. Writing documentation is not that much fun. I do my best to keep it up to date and to add new information as necessary. But it's not the most intellectually stimulating thing to do. Occasionally, I can enlist a student to write some for me, but I usually have to do major editing.
Ostensibly, the documentation I write is for my local community, to assist them with the software we provide for their use. However, when I check my stats, I generally find that 98% of people visiting those pages are from elsewhere. My most popular help document, CD & DVD burning, regularly gets a couple of hundred hits a day, none from local visitors.
My local clientele, of course, have the advantage of being able to call and email me directly and find out what they need to know. And I certainly don't mind helping people directly. I also offer workshops on a variety of topics, many of which I have written extensive documentation for. For the locals, there may well be something about the personal touch that they find appealing and so they shun the impersonal documentation.
Not everyone learns well from just reading a series of steps (accompanied by pictures). Though I'm working on creating screencast versions of all the existing help documents, those, too, may not meet everyone's needs. With so many different computers, software versions, and browsers, there are almost always gaps in the documentation.
All that said, I often wonder how beneficial it is for me to put effort into writing and maintaining documentation for an audience that doesn't use it. If everyone who needs help is going to call me or email me anyway, wouldn't it be better for me just to spend more time by the phone or computer? That, too, seems like a poor use of my time. There seems to be tension, then, between my wanting to provide help and my need for those seeking help to be more self-sufficient so that I can spend time in planning and thinking about the direction of educational technology at Bryn Mawr. In a small environment like this, I think this will always be a tension.
educational technology, documentation
Ostensibly, the documentation I write is for my local community, to assist them with the software we provide for their use. However, when I check my stats, I generally find that 98% of people visiting those pages are from elsewhere. My most popular help document, CD & DVD burning, regularly gets a couple of hundred hits a day, none from local visitors.
My local clientele, of course, have the advantage of being able to call and email me directly and find out what they need to know. And I certainly don't mind helping people directly. I also offer workshops on a variety of topics, many of which I have written extensive documentation for. For the locals, there may well be something about the personal touch that they find appealing and so they shun the impersonal documentation.
Not everyone learns well from just reading a series of steps (accompanied by pictures). Though I'm working on creating screencast versions of all the existing help documents, those, too, may not meet everyone's needs. With so many different computers, software versions, and browsers, there are almost always gaps in the documentation.
All that said, I often wonder how beneficial it is for me to put effort into writing and maintaining documentation for an audience that doesn't use it. If everyone who needs help is going to call me or email me anyway, wouldn't it be better for me just to spend more time by the phone or computer? That, too, seems like a poor use of my time. There seems to be tension, then, between my wanting to provide help and my need for those seeking help to be more self-sufficient so that I can spend time in planning and thinking about the direction of educational technology at Bryn Mawr. In a small environment like this, I think this will always be a tension.
educational technology, documentation
