Teaching workshops to college faculty, staff, and administrators

ABSTRACT

HELPING USERS become self-sufficient is one of the primary functions of academic computing in a college or university computer center. One-on-one consulting, the teaching of literacy courses and workshops, along with the distribution of documentation and newsletters, are some of the methods employed to help the user attain this self-sufficiency.

I have worked in academic computing at Temple University in Philadelphia, Trinity University in San Antonio, Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, and Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland. At these institutions, most of the aforementioned methods of helping the user attain self-sufficiency have met with little success. Manuals and newsletters are distributed for free, or for a small amount of money, to faculty, staff, and administrators. Even though users eagerly accept the written material, they rarely read it as can easily be inferred by the questions they later ask. Consulting is made available, but there aren't enough staff members to handle all of the needs for one-on-one consulting. The success of computer literacy courses often depends on work done outside the scheduled class time. At one institution where I taught literacy classes, the courses generated tremendous initial enthusiasm but that enthusiasm waned once the term got under way.

Of all of the methods I have used to help the users become self-sufficient, workshops have been the most successful. This success can be measured by the types of questions workshop participants later do or do not ask relating to the topic that was taught.

In this paper, I will draw upon my experiences in academic computing at the four institutions at which I have worked. At these colleges and universities, workshops have typically been two-hour sessions for groups of ten to twenty people. I will examine some of the reasons for the success of workshops, the evolution of the techniques I have used, and the rules-of-thumb I have developed for giving successful workshops.

Index Terms

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • Management of computing and information systems

      • Project and people management

        • Computer and information systems training

        • Project staffing