AM1

8:30-noon

Filling a vacancy is an opportunity to add strength and vitality to your employee team, but given inadequate planning and execution, it can just as easily be a disaster waiting to happen. Learn to determine knowledge, skill and attitude requirements and to understand institutional, state and federal guidelines to assure that the process meets legal, as well as ethical, requirements. Learn how behavioral interviewing can provide insight in predicting an applicant's future behavior and performance. Collect tips on motivating and managing students to create successful student employees in a working environment that doesn't jeopardize their first priority ... being a successful student.

Course Highlights:

• Define position & determine desired personnel characteristics
• Advertise, evaluate responses, select interviewees
• Create interview plan, prepare & conduct interviews
• Conduct record checks, make selection, extend offer
• Train, Schedule, Monitor & Evaluate Performance

Who should attend:

Anyone involved in the hiring process, including those who: write job descriptions, prepare vacancy notices, handle advertising, conduct interviews, extend job offers and manage student staff.

Instructor:

Linda Hutchison is an Information Systems Project Leader at Iowa State University's Academic Computation Center. She has been involved in employee selection since 1983 and has interviewed hundreds of job applicants for User Services positions. Her graduate work includes study in personnel selection and evaluation. Linda has presented tutorials on employee selection at four previous SIGUCCS Conferences. 

Scott Siler is a Manager of Technical Support in Notre Dame's Office of Information Technologies. He has worked with student employees in the campus computer clusters and ResNet programs for the past seven years. Scott has presented at two other SIGUCCS conferences and also at the SIGUCCS Management Symposium.

AM2

8:30-noon

Adaptive or Assistive Technologies are mechanical, electrical or computerized tools for enhancing the routine functioning of people who have physical limitations or disabilities. The Adaptive Computing Technology Center at The University of Missouri-Columbia was created in order to utilize such technology for the purpose of computer access. As the field of Adaptive Technology has grown, the options and availability of technology has increased. Therefore, adaptive technology can range from advanced voice recognition and speech feedback systems to simple trackball and keyboard adjustments. Understanding the resources and technology available can increase an agency's ability to meet its adaptive needs.

 Another increasing concern in the workplace is the effect of repetitive motion syndrome injuries on productivity, worker's compensation claims, and lost time from work. Individuals are being injured earlier and earlier in their academic careers. As computing professionals, what is our obligation to students using the computing sites as well as to our own employees and ourselves. What issues need to be discussed when designing personal or shared work space?

Who should attend:

Anyone interested in learning more about adaptive technology, anyone managing computing facilities or designing effective work environments and labs.

Instructor:

Keith Vessell, coordinator of the Adaptive Computing Technology Center at the University of Missouri-Columbia, will describe the results of adaptive computing research done at the ACT Center and discuss specific adaptive technologies. He will also answer questions on ADA compliance.

Glenda Moum, manager of user services at the University of Missouri-Columbia, will lead a discussion on the role of ergonomics in lab and work space design with a view toward prevention of future disabilities. 

AM3

8:30-noon

With the bewildering change in technology and changes in customer expectations, the Help Desk is positioned to be a supercharged 'front end' for the campus IT organization. A properly empowered and equipped Help Desk can do wonders for your organization and for the productivity of your community. Traditional Help Desks are transitioning from computing related, reactive sites to customer focused service centers that can bring multiple resources to bear to solve problems. Many universities are realizing the strategic importance of an empowered help desk -- one that can maximize the productivity of faculty, staff and students. Unfortunately, most of us don't have any idea of what it takes to get there.

Learn tips and techniques for leveraging your Help Desk with other campus resources to create a world class help desk.

Course Outline:

• People - how to turn them into your customer champions
• Process - how to create scalable and distributable processes
• Technology - tips on choosing, automating and unleashing technology
• Innovation - tips on how to keep making it better
• Resources - the multiplier effect

All interspersed with examples from our experiences at Duke University.

Who should attend:

Directors, Managers and front line staff from the following areas: help desk, customer support, publications, training, and second or third level support.

Instructor:

Philip Verghis, Manager of Customer Services, Office of Information Technology, Duke University, North Carolina. Philip was named a Service 25 innovator in 1995 by Service News magazine for helping to set the standards for computing support. He oversees the Help Desk, second level support, site licensing and parts of the student computing organization at Duke University. In his spare time, he maintains the Help Desk list FAQ, a resource for hundreds of customer support professionals from around the world. He has consulted for universities and companies around the world in the area of re-engineering help desk support and services.

AM4

8:30-noon

Through a combination of lecture and participatory exercises, this workshop reviews common guidelines for user-centered interface design and introduces techniques for incorporating usability testing as a design strategy.

Topics covered will include:

• Screen design and layout
• Design and structure of information
• Appropriate terminology
• Navigational aids
• Usability testing
• Analyzing test results

Who should attend:

This workshop is intended for anyone who is currently developing a Web site or is involved in planning, designing, or creating a Web site.

Instructor:

Cynthia Schultz, Online Coordinator
Computing Services - Education Program
Indiana University - Bloomington, Indiana

PM1

1:00-4:30 p.m.

Over the past two years, the Publications and Information Group of Academic Technology Services (ATS) of Cornell University, has produced a strategy for re-structuring our offerings to take advantage of both traditional and new electronic publishing options. Our tutorial reviews the planning process.

We will share our ideas about what kinds of information can be migrated to the Web and what needs to remain in paper, offer tools for effective ways to analyze your own technical documentation needs and requirements, and show you what we have done at Cornell. Using selected hands-on exercises, we will offer basic technical writing techniques and templates that you can adapt for use in your own environments. We will conclude with information on what we learned throughout our process and on training modules we are developing. The new training modules allow writers and editors to train others throughout their universities in the rudiments of technical documentation.

Tutorial Outline:

• Introduction
• Planning-How to Analyze Your Audience for Communications
• Planning-How to Determine the Best Medium (Web vs. Paper)
• Technical Writing Techniques and Templates
• Conclusion-the Next Generation of Issues

Attendee will leave seminar with:

Samples from our planning and implementation process. Suggestions for templates. Approaches that could be easily adapted to their own environments. Samples of training offerings to allow others to execute simple documentation strategies.

Who should attend:

Communications managers, user services managers and consultants, managers, and information technology support staff in departments interested in migrating and maintaining materials on the Web and/or understanding the resources required.

Instructors:

Teresa Craighead, Senior Technical Writer/Consultant
Charlotte Kiefer, Technical Writer
Nancy Flynn, Manager, ATS Publications (backup presenter)
Charlotte has taught in a university setting as part of Cornell's Learning Technologies Program (LTP) and our Academic Technology Center courses for Cornell faculty. Teresa presented at SIGUCCS 96. Nancy presented at Educom 94.

In addition, the ATS Publications Group is in the process of developing training modules on this subject for Cornell University's Technology Training Services programs for support providers. Our publications and web materials have won numerous SIGUCCS awards in 1995 and 1996 and a CASE Bronze Medal in 1995. You can view our work at http://www.cit.cornell.edu/cit-pubs/.

PM2

1:00-4:30 p.m.

There are many benefits to using a problem tracking system to keep track of incoming support calls. However, commercial packages cost a significant amount of money, and many schools do not have the resources to devote to developing an in-house solution. This tutorial will discuss these issues and point out some of the various options available. Enigma will be presented, a problem tracking system developed in FileMaker Pro 3.0 at Bucknell University. Enigma has numerous useful features such as problem escalation and automatic assignment; e-mail notification; client profiles; ticket age tracking; and customizable reporting features. Attendees will come away with a full working copy of Enigma that they can modify for their own organization.

 Course Outline:

• What is a problem tracking system? What are the benefits of having one?
• What are the options? What's out there? Commercial vs. Home-Grown
• Demonstration of features of Enigma, a FileMaker problem tracking system
• Discussion of Enigma's structure (e.g., files, fields, layouts, scripts)
• Discussion of how Enigma might be modified for different support models

Who should attend:

Individuals interested in implementing a problem tracking system, especially those who cannot afford to purchase a commercial system nor spare lots of staff time for in-house development. FileMaker Pro experience a plus.

Instructors:

Susan Hales, Client Services Group Leader, Bucknell University.
Sue spent seven years at Brown University providing end-user computing support to faculty, staff and students. She then moved to Atlanta where she worked as a database developer for Information Management Inc., a computer consulting firm. After two years, she gratefully moved back to higher education where she belongs! For the past two and a half years she has served as Client Services Group Leader at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA. 

PM3

1:00-4:30 p.m.

For many of us, convincing faculty to use new technologies is still a challenge. After the first few faculty members adopt new methods, it often seems much more difficult to recruit the next wave. Studies indicate that people tend to fall into categories that adopt changes at differing rates; by understanding these differences, we may be able to direct our efforts more effectively. This workshop will examine research on the stages that people go through in deciding whether to adopt a new idea, the characteristics of an idea that determine how quickly it is adopted, and the ways communication channels affect how quickly changes are made. Case studies will show how the theory applies to the real world, and attendees will be able to apply the theory in their own settings.

 Topics:

• Characteristics of people who adopt changes at differing rates
• Stages people go through in deciding whether to adopt a change.
• Characteristics of an idea that affect how quickly it is adopted.
• Communications channels -- how mass messages and interpersonal exchanges affect the way an innovation spreads.
• Case studies -- applying the theory.

Who should attend:

Anyone trying to disseminate new ideas or techniques. Special emphasis will be placed on applying the theory to academic computing.

Instructor:

Janet Cottrell, Information Resources Specialist, University of Vermont. Janet has worked in editing, technical writing, and design for over 15 years, primarily in university computing services, and is a past webmaster of UVM. She recently completed an MLS degree at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies.