IT 112 – Introduction to Help Desk Operations
Research Paper (this is roughly 30% of your Grade)
Assignment: You must complete a research paper for this course based on interviews you
have with 4 real-world help desk operations.
Requirements: The paper summarizes the information you collect from the interviews. It mustinclude a table showing the questions you asked and your notes about their answers. In your paper briefly compare and contrast the 4 help desks concluding with which one you feel is best and why. Finally, write one paragraph about what you learned in the class and how it relates to your career plans.
Approach: Use organizations you already have a relationship or account with to gather your information, i.e. City of Tacoma, Comcast, etc. Be sure to record the published
contact phone number for your choices.
The questions you are to use in your interview are listed in a table below. If you encounter a help desk that will not provide all of the required information please choose another one. You may find that public organizations tend to be more cooperative then private organizations. Interviews in past quarters have been with a wide variety of very helpful organizations.
Format: I suggest you format your paper into two separate files.
FILE 1 – This is a research paper using the template provided.
The Word document should be of sufficient length to appropriately deal with your topic and written in professional business manner. A template for the paper is posted in the Research Paper folder in Angel. The paper must be a minimum of 1200 words, double space, 12 pt font, .5 first line indents, and include APA style citations and reference page with a minimum of three references. DO NOT USE websites like the following for references: Wikipaedia, About, Answers, AskJeevies, etc. The paper must be submitted via the Canvas Digital Dropbox in the Research Paper folder.
They are located on the 2nd floor of the TCC Library.TCC Writing Center On-Line Resources:FILE 2 – The second file is the Excel spreadsheet that has the interview
questions listed. You may add additional questions to your interview but be sensitive to the fact that the person you are calling may be very busy. Use the Excel table below to organize your interviews and to collect and record the information you gather from each interview.