The Department for Education aims to build a stronger future for South Australian children by making our education system world class. The Department provides IT services and support to Schools and Corporate offices throughout the state.
As technology continues to play a greater role in educating and empowering young people, the Department sought to better enable teachers and educators by understanding how, why and when technology is needed in their roles.
Damien Zobel, Manager ICT Service Delivery at the Department, said “The needs of a teacher or school leader are recognised as being very different to that of a Departmental (corporate) employee in an office. The Department had a need to better understand their challenges, priorities and needs, so we can design future service models to meet the changing needs of our customers”.
The Department engaged BDO to develop a range of user personas, based on key IT service consumers within the School network, including School Leaders, Teachers, IT Support Staff and Administrators.
“BDO’s Digital and Technology Advisory team conducted a series of interviews with stakeholders from each group that enabled us to better understand how they use technology and services from the Department to deliver learning outcomes” Zobel said.
In order to represent the diversity in the South Australian Education system, feedback was collected from Schools in metropolitan, regional and remote areas of the state. The results of these interviews were collated and common themes identified.
The result was the creation of four fictional personas, one representing each of the user groups, highlighting:
- What is most important and rewarding in their role
- Which technologies they use today and how / when they use them
- What improvements could be made to technology to help them better perform their role
- How they currently use Departmental IT services
- Which services the Department can provide in the future to assist them in delivering learning outcomes.
“These personas will be invaluable in making sure The Department delivers technology services that support staff at every level to deliver world class education outcomes” Zobel said.
