Summer (is anything but a) Break
I’m guessing for most of us, the Summer of 2020 was a blur. Sure, we knew in March what we would have to do and had ideas on how to get there, but money, buy-in from interested parties, and/or marching orders weren’t given until around July. You did a nine-month project in six weeks, and kudos to you for that. But let’s never do that again, deal? Deal.
Now you’ve had a semester of chaos under your belt (and yes, all semesters are chaos, but I’m speaking to this particular chaos). You were able to get things lined up for Spring with a little more time and had the Fall as a crash course. You’ve also been involved in roughly 700 webinars about gear and what’s next. Now, while we get spring up and running, it’s time to look at the summer installs.
I’m guessing a lot of these pitches will be along the lines of “This is the thing I was asking for last summer, but we didn’t have the resources for it. It’s still the right option.” For me, I will include “Turns out that thing you wanted does exist, but now we may have the time to do it.” One thing that I will focus on before any of that though; what does my end user want?
More specifically, what did my end-user not realize they wanted until they were thrown into remote teaching without much warning and now have a semester of experience?
For me, and I’m guessing some of your experiences follow, getting up and running for the Fall semester was all about technology needs. Which makes sense. We are the tech managers and had to find a way for everyone to be set up for remote learning. In many cases, it was rushed and very cut and dry. Here is what you need for remote learning…now get to it.
For summer prep, it is now all about how to help teachers teach. Don’t get me wrong, it’s never not about that, but sometimes we have to focus on the “tech” part of our titles to help faculty the most. Now, we get to focus on the “manage” part of our titles. What did teachers do differently than you expected? What tech did you think would be all the rage that they didn’t end up using at all? What tech did you dismiss that is something everybody now wants? What can be accomplished or assisted with by actually removing a technology?
I have a few from each of the above on my list. For summer 2021, streamlining rooms for the most efficient, effective methods is my goal. For fall, there was a lot of throwing equipment in rooms because one thing will work for this, and this other item for something else. Working with the provost’s office, we can together work out which specific pedagogies are using which technology in place, and which need something completely different. A lot of times, what they thought they wanted or would use turns out to be not used. And a lot of times, what I thought they would want turned out to be not used.
My dad was a teacher for 40 years. When I was discussing the Fall 2020 semester with him, he said “well there’s no way to predict the technology.” Which, to an extent, is true. And I think as tech managers that is a trap we can fall into, to focus on the technology. But our goal shouldn’t be predicting technology, it should be fulfilling needs to help teachers teach. For us, this includes technology as part of our jobs, but only to the end of supporting faculty. As we look at summer and plan (knowing our budgets having probably been pre-determined), let’s remember to take the first step of anticipating and determining needs before landing on the technology.
Craig Shibley
Director of Multimedia Services, California Baptist University
Craig Shibley has been in the AV industry for twenty years, and in higher education for ten. He currently serves as the Director of Multimedia Services for California Baptist University in Riverside, CA. Craig is a HETMA steering committee member and the founder of CheckMyAV.com, an all in one AV testing resource and blog. Feel free to reach out to him on Twitter @craigshibley.
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