An Online Help Desk System to Help Students in Learning

Abstract

This paper reports about a field study done on online helpdesk system for General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University (KDU) and about the system prototype which was built according to the analysis of gathered data. When considering the current learning process prevailing at KDU, when participating in lectures, students do not get a chance to present their problems to the lecturers very often. Therefore, we address the problem of not having an opportunity for the students, to solve their problems that arise during the lectures. To overcome this problem, a Web Based Help Desk System was introduced for KDU. Through this Online Help Desk System, students will get the opportunity to present their problems to the relevant lecturers, whenever they need a further clarification on any subject material. Students are facilitated by the option to choose the priority level of a question. So, unlike other help desk systems, this system will ensure that each question posted on the system will be answered as soon as possible according to the priority level preferred by the student, by notifying the lecturers by an email. The accuracy of the provided answers will be assured since, only the authorized lecturers of KDU have the eligibility to get registered to the system as an answer provider. When developing this Online Help Desk System, the focus was given to build a system, which will give more time critical and task sensitive online help.