In the rush for classroom tech and training, don’t leave your soft skills behind.
In March, when most students left college campuses and almost all instruction went online, all of us in education were all left wondering what the Fall semester would look like. Would students be in class? Would instructors teach from home or in class? And for AV tech managers, how much time and money do I have to get rooms ready for hybrid instruction?!? Don’t get me wrong, hybrid classroom setups with lecture capture and streaming existed pre-COVID 19 and many of us had installed, were already installing, or were planning on installing these systems already. The pandemic just shifted urgency and made what was once optional in some spaces necessary in almost all spaces.
Although stressful, in many ways I’m sure we were up to the challenge. Classroom technology is what we do, and most of us are shameless gear nerds who already had rooms mentally laid out long before the marching orders were given for the rooms. Yes, there was scrambling and convincing decision-makers and hard deadlines…but that’s most weeks for us, even if they are magnified under these circumstances.
Something that I hadn’t previously prepared for, and that I was thrust into week 1, was how these changes would affect my end-user. As it turns out, professors don’t attend the same tradeshows tech managers do, map out rooms for technology purposes, or daydream on the next great tech in the room. While we were looking at hybrid teaching classrooms long on the horizon, they were simply thinking about teaching.
We are in a very unique position in the tech management world working with higher ed. To an integrator, we are the end-user. But to faculty, we are the integrator, and they are the end-user. Working with vendors trying to get rooms done all summer can make us get pretty comfortable with the end-user hat. That’s not to say we’re not thinking about how the faculty will be using the equipment as we move through installations, but it is easy to not consider where their minds are at and what they are preparing for.
For many of them, the preparation was simply for the unknown.
We had about a week between 59 rooms being finished with either full installations or on a mobile cart. Five days for faculty to be in rooms and get training on equipment they had never seen or used before. It was a scramble to get those 59 rooms done, and hitting my deadline of August 17 for classes to start August 24 felt great. I knew we’d be getting a lot of calls week 1, and that was fine. The main goal was accomplished. I would take part in some training with the Provost’s office and wait for the semester to begin.
Week 1, Monday, August 24, we’re ready to go and…not many calls. Some calls, but pretty much the rate we had in February when the Spring semester was already a month in. Tuesday morning, the same thing. Did we really install that well? Were the instruction sheets that perfect? Did we create the dream remote learning environment?
No. But it wasn’t just that.
It was that afternoon, about a half-hour before I was going to leave for the day when I got an email. It was not a congratulatory email. It was from a professor who needed to let go of some anger and frustration from their first two days of classes. In it was A LOT OF CAPS, a lot of !!!, and even included that they had considered resigning their position that day. I checked our tickets and talked to our workers and they said they got calls but resolved the issues. They were not aware of any further problems. I called the professor directly and we met the next morning. Many frustrations were getting the class started, then sharing content, then seeing who they wanted…standard training issues that happen when someone is new to the technology. No big deal. Then came this:
“I just want to teach. I miss my students.”
That was it. That was what I had missed setting all of this up. I have been doing AV in some form or another for 20 years, and higher education for ten. I have been trained by the best both formally and informally. We in the tech world know the tech and in many ways live for it. Most faculty, simply put, do not. Nor do they want or care to. They just want to teach. And right now, they are all missing their students. Learning classroom technology is difficult and stressful for many faculty under relatively normal circumstances. Add our current environment into the mix, and that difficulty and stress get amplified.
It was a great time to reassess goals. It was time to forget “is the technology working correctly?” Time to implement “are we helping teachers teach?”
I made a few calls directly to deans and professors to check on how things were going and realized that things were not as smooth as our lack of calls and help tickets suggested. Many teachers did not report issues either due to frustration, embarrassment, or didn’t want to “waste your time.” I assured them that it isn’t a waste of our time, in fact, it is quite literally what my team was there for.
If our only contact with our end users is when they are having issues in class, then the context will always be technology and fixing issues in a tense environment. Getting in touch with our end users out of classrooms allows us to ask how they are engaging with their students, and “how can I help you teach.”
An integrator I work with who almost solely deals with people in tech told me in jest the other day that I’m his end-user, and he didn’t want my end-user. Which I understand. But I do want my end-user. I’m not here to get the best tech in rooms or to get the coolest displays up. I like that, but that will never be a reason to be in higher education technology. I’m here to help the teachers teach, and need that reminder now and then.
Learn more about the Higher Education Technology Managers Alliance (HETMA) and become a member at https://www.HETMA.org. Follow HETMA on Twitter at @HETMA_org.
Craig Shibley
Founding Steering Committee Member
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.