What's an EPSS?        

The coiner of the term, Gloria Geary, calls an Electronic Performance Support System:

"...an integrated electronic environment that is available to and easily accessible by each employee and is structured to provide immediate, individualized on-line access to the full range of information, software, guidance, advice and assistance, data, images, tools, and assessment and monitoring systems to permit job performance with minimal support and intervention by others." (Geary, 1991)

Think of an EPSS as any computer program that makes a job simpler or easier to do, provides "Just-in-Time" information necessary to do a task, or helps a person decide what to do when confronted with a complex problem.

Of course, most institutions already have performance support:  training, documentation, and help desks.   An EPSS isn't designed to replace those functions, but rather to augment them in a way that requires a minimum of support from other people.

 Parts of an EPSS

A Typical EPSS might have these parts:

1) Tools: productivity software
2) Information Base: on-line reference information and databases (often supplied by the users themselves)
3) Advisor: an interactive expert system or "coach" that guides a user through performing procedures and making decisions
4) Learning Experiences: computer-based training (CBT), nowadays often delivered over the web and called web-based training (WBT).

 

 What  We're Doing      

At CogSim, one of our long-term goals is to build an EPSS to help faculty members do their jobs more quickly and easily.  Here's what we're doing in each of those areas:

Tools-- Think of the tasks nearly all professors face:  for example, writing syllabi and/or objectives and giving feedback to (and getting feedback from) students.  That's where our "myTA" helper programs come in.  We're writing programs that work over the web to speed up and improve basic teaching tasks.  Several of these programs are already available (just click the "Back" button on your browser to give them a try) while others are in development. 
Information Base-- CogSim's Resource area contains a wealth of information on grants, conferences, and university information sources. 
Advisor-- we're constantly adding step by step streaming media guides that walk a user through every step of complex procedures. For example, check out this WebCT Help Page.
Learning Experiences-- We offer workshops on a variety of software programs from Microsoft Office components to courseware development packages like CourseInfo, WebCT, and FrontPage.  See our Consulting page for details.