We are glad you’ve decided to join us on the adventure of becoming a DKC consultant. In your work as a consultant you’ll provide important support to your fellow students in their pursuit of completing digital projects both in and out of the classroom. So, what will we be doing this semester?
Connecting
Like any job one of the first steps is learning the culture, work flows, and people.
The History of the DKC
It may or may not have crossed your minds, but why does UMW have a Digital Knowledge Center? Many schools do not have a center like this. Here is a post written by the founding Director of the DKC: UMW’s New Digital Knowledge Center (and my new job)
Where You’ll Find Us on the Web
If you haven’t spent much time on the DKC site I recommend getting familiar with what we have there as it as rich resource that explains many of our services and links to lots of resources.
You can also find us on Instagram. This is used mostly for advertising our upcoming events and our hours.
Communication
We use Microsoft Teams as our communication platform. We recommend using both the desktop application and the mobile application. However you go about it this is the best way to communicate with your fellow DKC consultants and the DKC Director and Associate Director. Additionally, updates on things going on in the Center can be found in the channels. During the training course you should use the Hello Goodbye channel when clocking and clocking out and checking in on the DKC Staff Training for relevant information.
Getting to Work
Teams is a great hub for finding a lot of things you’ll need when you are working. Each channel in the DKC Teams will have a dashboard that links to many useful places including Asana, which you will use to keep track of tasks that are assigned to you. Any time you come into work opening Teams and Asana should be the first thing you do after clocking in.
Learning the Tools of the Trade
DKC Supported Tools
It probably goes without saying that one of the biggest things you’ll need to learn are the tools that the DKC supports. We can’t cover them all in a semester, but we make sure you are ready to tackle the biggest ones.
Take a look at the comprehensive list of all the appointment types we offer. You’ll notice some appointments are very tool specific while others could encapsulate a couple of different tools.
As part of your job as a consultant you’ll be expected to learn new tools and gain greater expertise after your initial training. We’ll spend time this semester talking about ways you can go about learning new tools and practicing it as well. Some strategies for learning new tools consist of:
- Booking an appointment with a consultant who is already proficient in the tool.
- Reading the DKC Tools Guide for the particular tool you want to learn.
- Identifying a project that you want to complete the necessitates learning the new tool. This is often done in partnership with the Director and Associate Director.
- Finding online resources like YouTube videos to walk you through getting started.
Learning how to Consult
At some point in your life you’ve likely helped someone learn something or accomplish a task by giving them advice or demonstrating how to perform a task. Over the course of the semester you’ll get opportunities to see how consultations work and perform some yourself through:
- Shadowing — where you’ll actively observe a consultation
- Mock consultations — where a current DKC staff member will play the part of a student who needs help.
- Real consultations — while you aren’t obligated to start taking consultations in the spring, if the occasion should arises in the later part of the semester and you’d like to do some we can do that too.
As we go through the semester we’ll ask you to reflect about your consulting style. Every consultant starts at different places both in knowledge of tools and teaching ability. A big part of this semester is continually reflecting on what you do well and how you can continue to improve in areas you may need to work on.
Consultant as a model
One of the things we want to emphasize that as a DKC consultant you don’t have to know the answer to every technology question that comes through the door. Your role is to model the attitude of how to approach questions or problems when the answer may be unknown. Here is a quote from the DKC’s founding director:
I believe it is a very powerful moment when a student sees that what makes the DKC tutors special is NOT that they know everything but that they trust themselves to figure it out.
Martha Burtis, “Why Every EdTech Group Needs a DKC“
This is our goal over the course of the semester. We want you to build confidence not only in your knowledge of tools, but in your ability to tackle problems you might not know the answer to.
There is a lot more we could talk about, but I’m sure you are excited to get started training. So let’s go!
