Springshare Standards: Quick Answers Additional Standards

Quick Answers is a student-facing knowledge base that contains frequently asked questions and their answers.  

Quick Answers is searched through the academicguides universal search, custom QA search boxes on academicguides sites, and the student portal search box. The Charlotte chat bot includes some Quick Answers but does not search the entire knowledge base.

Quick Answers are also embedded in academicguides websites and linked throughout Walden content.

The faculty-facing version of Quick Answers, Faculty Answers, is hosted in the faculty LibAnswers platform and managed by the Center for Faculty Excellence. The student department owners are also the faculty department owners, except for the Writing Center.

Department Owners:

• Academic Residencies: Juli Konopa
• Academic Skills Center:  Shawna Burtis
• Canvas: Karla Crowther
• Career Services:  Angie Lira
• Center for Degree Acceleration: Dana Ague
• Office of Research and Doctoral Services: Kristina Harris/Lisa Raymond
• Customer Care Team: Ellen Walls
• Student Wellness and Disability Services: 
• Field Experience: Cassie Albrecht
• Library: Jon Allinder
• Military Services: Ann Thao

All other content is managed by the Director, Content Management. The appropriate department owns and is the SME for their content.

This section outlines standards specific to Quick Answers, in addition to the Springshare Standards.

Note: We call the FAQs answers, which is part branding and part holdover from the previous QA version.  LibAnswers uses the term FAQs. Internally, FAQ, answer, and article are all interchangeable.  Please do not use the term FAQ with students or staff unfamiliar with Quick Answers

Question Title

• in the form of a question

• uses student's language, not internal jargon

 

Resources

• Add a new FAQ entry

 

Answer

• The first sentence answers the question. Subsequent content expands on the one-sentence answer.  The first sentence does not restate the question.

• Videos include a title and transcript

• More Information/Additional Resources header is bold

• More Information/Additional Resources links are bulleted

• Answer ends with a contact us email address appropriate to the answer

 

Resources

• Answer a question: the introduction
• Answer a question: the content
• Answer a question: more information links
• Answer a question: "ask for help" links

 

Topics & Keywords

• Add department and content topics

• Add keywords as needed, include common misspellings and synonyms

 

Resources

• Add topics & keywords
• Add the topics
• Add the keywords

 

Additional Resources

• Quick Answers Best Practices

• LibAnswers FAQ How To's from Springshare

  • Creating FAQs from scratch

  • Publishing FAQs