Mid-South Instructional Technology Conference
Teaching, Learning, & Technology
Transforming the Learning Environment
April 4-6, 2004
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Patricia Early |
Abstract
Managing multiple student workers in a lab environment can present a variety of challenges, including how to coordinate different work schedules and job responsibilities while fostering open communication and community within diversity. This session will explore using WebCT as a value-added tool for directing the information traffic of the lab, library, media center, or other facilities by using calendars, discussion groups, content modules and shared documents.
Description
In computer labs and other facilities that employ multiple student workers, a variety of challenges are presented by the diversity of student schedules, responsibilities and talents. Student workers come and go according to diverse class schedules and may work in different areas of the facility engaging in multiple and unrelated tasks. Through all this, it is the supervisor's role to find a method of communicating events, goals, directives and tasks in a way that engenders seamless and productive operations.
WebCT provides an easily-accessed tool for enabling communication between the supervisor and the student workers as well as between the student workers themselves without the need for the supervisor to serve as the single conduit of information. WebCT and similar programs, such as Blackboard, are often available through school or state site-licenses. Provided as a distance-learning framework for course instructors, WebCT is often overlooked as a management tool for non-course specific facilities, such as general use computer labs, libraries, media centers, and other support units.
WebCT contains a set of well-conceived course tools that can be easily adapted for use as management tools. Shared calendars are used to communicate upcoming events as well as the related set-up instructions or preparatory details. Discussion topics can be generated by the site designer to reflect management concerns such as technical problems, instructions, absences or shift changes, policy implementation, etc. Student manuals, forms, instructions for equipment use and other items can be stored in content modules. All these tools can be accessed at any time and from any computer with an internet connection.
In addition to the use of WebCT as a management tool, the creation of a student worker community and fostering student worker ownership of initiative and responsibility will be explored. In content modules, students are provided access to as many tools for their success as possible, including manuals and rubrics for evaluation. By having scheduled events visibly posted with the necessary set-up instructions, student workers not only know at the beginning of their shift (or even the day before) what will be expected, they also have the direction needed to prepare the lab environment for the event without the direct oversight of the lab supervisor. Initiative is encouraged and rewarded through praise and formal evaluations. Because students begin to gain ownership of a facility where their efforts are rewarded, they begin to see their coworkers as their peers, and helpful advice and information is shared via the discussion threads between student workers.
This session will address considerations for WebCT site design and demonstrate how WebCT is being used in the Language Acquisition and Resource Center at Georgia State University. The primary audience will be supervisors and managers of labs and other similar facilities, but anyone who supervises multiple student workers would find the presentation valuable.