In the last month, my role (and the roles of many of my colleagues) has changed. I am now the Director of User Services, thus there is much to get up to speed on and blogging about educational technology things seems a little unnatural. (I assume I will return to that topic in the future but we’ll have to wait and see.)
In the meantime, I have felt drawn to blogging as it has been a great avenue for working out things before going live but have not found the right thing (or voice) to write. For some reason I haven’t felt comfortable working through the ideas publicly, even though I know that doing so would produce clarity. Anyways, I’m over that (or forcing myself to be over that) and blogging again as to minimize my stammering in meeting I must now attend.
How all the changes came to be was through a reorganization that redistributed the Office of Educational Technology staff to meet the needs of the new organization. Two instructional Technologists moved to the library to assist with the library becoming the center for teaching and learning on campus and the other two instructional technologist (me being one of them) joined with the Help Desk Manager, a Senior Technician and a User Support Specialist to form the User Services Group. While it is unclear exactly what will become of it I do know that for our group to be successful we need to share our expertise and help educate the college community to become more self-sufficient in their technology use. Fortunately, this group consists of a great group of professionals with the right skill sets in hardware support, project management, instructional design, needs assessment, and providing front-line technology support not to mention a sincere commitment to excellent customer services.
I know that many of you that follow my posts are much more entrenched in teaching and learning than what I will be in my new position but I hope that you will continue to follow and challenge me to bring good teaching/learning practices to the support structures I will develop with my new colleagues. If you know of people in user support or help desk management would you mind pointing me towards them, their blog, or them to my blog.
Thoughts, Experiments and Experiences 
Congratulations on your upgrade (?) – you and I are in similar boats with our organizations evolving around us. My trip went just the opposite of yours – I was the User Support & ResNet Coordinator and now I’ve moved more towards the EdTech side of the house in my role as Coordinator of Learning Technologies. You may want to check out the ResNet (http://resnetsymposium.org/) and SIGUCCS (http://siguccs.org/) groups as both have good support structures around their respective missions of user service.
Congrats on the new position. I know I’ll be following your work still. I think we all end up doing a fair amount of “user services” no matter what our real titles are.
*Congratulations*! w0000000000000000t!
Congratulations, Director James. This is huge boon for user services. I for one will be reading avidly to find out what role social software might play in changing the logic of user support. What is more germane to a social network than others trying to help one another out with tech based issues. How would you harness some existing software and sites to fashion a knowledge base and make it vibrant and, dare I say, enjoyable. Great use for a wiki faq/tutorials/blog, etc. I don’t know, but I would love to be a part of you thinking it through, as always.
[…] Thoughts and Experiments » Need to Get Back to Blogging or A Forced Post to Return to a Good Habit How would you harness some existing software and sites to fashion a knowledge base and make it vibrant and, dare I say, enjoyable. Great use for a wiki faq/tutorials/blog, etc. I donâ??t know, but I would love to be a part of you thinking it through, as always. Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]