CCUMC: The Consortium of College and University Media Centers

Moderator

Lisa Stephens, University at Buffalo

Charge

Provide a forum for the discussion of administrative issues such as professional standards, personnel, budget, customer services, and other issues as deemed relevant by the participants.

Topics of Discussion

The focus of this session will be determined by reviewing listserv archives and polling membership prior to the conference.  Special attention will be paid to organizational change and administrative relationships among libraries, IT, media and instructional support centers, and how these relationships impact service delivery, institutional cohesion and ultimately our CCUMC identity.

Conference Session Report

This interest group was attended by 50+ members.  A quick poll indicated fairly even representation from small, medium and large institutions.  The moderator solicited topics for discussion in advance of the session via the CCUMC listserv (and archives) as well as through informal on-site interviews.  The following topics were presented to focus discussion:

• Learning Space philosophy & practice
• Team building
• Working with facilities and capital planning
• Leadership training (specialist to generalist)
• Service desk practices
• Strategies for managing difficult employees
• Value-add of “media style” customer service

Based on information received prior to the conference, Stephens introduced a model to encourage discussion that may represent convergence of CCUMC-centric themes applied to campus-wide learning space initiatives, suggesting that our collective expertise in these matters may prove helpful to individual campus planning efforts.

Learning Space philosophy & practice

Key discussion point:  How do I convince senior leadership (i.e., Provost) that a Learning Spaces committee is important?  It was written into our IT plan; however, it has not received broad support.

Buy-in and collaboration is critical!  Learning space design holds huge implications for cost and interdepartmental communication/collaboration (e.g., facilities, provost, faculty, central and departmental IT, media support, libraries, residence halls).  There are a variety of approaches for how pressure can be applied to spearhead a campus wide committee(s) that may address learning space (and information commons) initiatives; but it’s critical to have cooperation between at least three major players: facilities and capital planning, chief academic officer (or high level designee) and information/instructional technology.  Sometimes plain old competition (and comparison) with peer institutions can help drive adoption and convince leadership that investment in learning spaces is critical to the institution’s future. 

Advisory groups can help facilitate buy-in.  If a stakeholder is not directly represented at the table, focus group and survey data can be presented as a proxy.  Several campuses have a teaching facilities committee that began with faculty concern that not enough technology was uniformly available in centrally supported classrooms.   Standards then become critically important to provide a common user interface as faculty move from room to room or building to building.  This reinforces the need for careful, incremental planning and cooperation between those who are funding initiatives and operational implementation.

The Educause Learning Initiative (ELI) has been at the forefront of understanding learning spaces.  The “Oblinger Report” describes the integration of media technology into new applications.  This includes cafes, proximity to residence halls and a shift from individual work to group work.  CCUMC members are already immersed in how to best create and display instructional content.  Learning spaces are the next developmental step where students begin to interact with content differently.  The Oblinger Learning Spaces e-book (www.educause.edu/learningspaces) provides references and examples of how a number of institutions have adopted these strategies to enhance student learning. 

There is strength in numbers.  Two groups that have power to influence policy and budget on campus are faculty and students.  When students complain and faculty pass resolutions, better equipment and planning often follows.  Grassroots efforts frequently take hold. The following strategies were suggested:

• Start a blog to gather student feedback
• Guide the blog to encourage detailed information about the “end users”
• Conduct focus groups
• Initiate or partner with faculty and student groups to conduct surveys
• Form your own small committee (or task group)
• Get facilities and planning engaged in these efforts (or you won’t get far)
• Write joint letters to senior leadership to demonstrate collaboration and cooperation across boundaries.     
• Be aware of when accreditation reviews are underway, these reviews often shake loose discretionary funding to enhance learning spaces and showcase facilities.
• Talk with deans and department chairs.  Senior academic leadership is more inclined to help initiatives when they are receiving similar messages from multiple sources.

This was followed by discussion of how general classrooms are defined.  A wide variety of how funding, policy and campus governance impacts this definition were reported:

• Comes out of standards from the Classroom Facility Committee
• Defined by the consistency by which faculty are scheduled in the same classrooms semester-to-semester.
• By how departments cost-share with central initiatives
• By how the senior leaders fund building initiatives to encourage central/decentralized partnerships, often driven by scheduling practices.

Service Desk philosophy and practice

Key discussion point: Some campuses are working toward a single point of contact for campus-wide help desk services.  What policies are guiding this adoption and how are knowledge databases and student/professional training being managed?

These are interesting relationships fraught with challenges.  Many are still working through best practices to provide “just in time” information to a variety of users.  This topic seemed to be influenced by the size of the institution.  Some comments clustered around the following themes:

(Please refer to JoAnn Guilmett’s presentation: Finding Common Ground at Plymouth State University)

Library help desks (particularly at smaller schools) are integrating limited IT support (password resets, ID card verification/re-authorization, computer help and repair referral).  This requires a significant buy-in and investment in staff/student training.  Cross training of staff, tied to performance appraisal is critical.

Many reported significant difficulties when existing classroom technology/media service desks were integrated into a larger “one size fits all” IT help desk.  One participant reported that their media service desk “got in trouble” by the administration for “fixing stuff” that the IT people are now supposed to be responsible for, but are not responding adequately or quickly.  There were many stories shared about the critical response time so that a faculty member did not lose class time due to computer or projection issues.

One larger school seemed to be managing a single-point-of-contact help desk very effectively, but it was attributed to a good referral system that did not cause the end-users to wait.  A call is originated to the help desk, but then immediately placed over to the “old” classroom technology help desk that has distributed support with standardized equipment and spares for “hot swapping.” 

The following strategies were shared:

• Advance planning is necessary to determine response flow
• Role of students needs to be defined, they need access to locked spaces to respond quickly and effectively.
• Dispatching is more appropriate for classroom support, not the help desk. 
• Encourage distributed departments to provide funding to central services in order to standardize on projectors, PC’s, distribution equipment etc. to save on back end support.

Team Building

Key discussion point: Does cross-training really work? 

• Going from specialist to generalist has led to some frustration. 
• Faculty and students don’t care where help originates from or what the bureaucratic boundaries are – they just need transparent help.
• Our leadership needs to create policies to support those needs.
• Influence others on campus as a good example.  Our expertise should help other support organizations understand that often times a form of “friendly hand-holding” is necessary in very non-technical terms.
• When policies dictate departmental integration, understand that it takes people time to understand and appreciate new ways of working, and a few people will never adjust, or require more intensive training/counseling.

Strategies for working with challenging employees

Key discussion point: faculty treat student support differently than full time staff.  Obviously we can’t afford full time staff at the ideal level.  What’s the best way to deal with a) rude faculty and b) rude staff/students?

This may be influenced by whether your campus is a union or non-union shop and whether you’re working with contractual agreements and procedures.  Regardless of formality, it’s a good idea to have:

• Service Level Agreements (SLA’s): formal agreements between a service provider and department that detail (with signatures) who is responsible for what tasks and how problems/issues are escalated when unresolved.
• Service Level Statements (SLS’s): general service statements that uniformly apply to all recipients about what they can expect from the service provider.  These statements should be prominently displayed or available on web sites.

It is helpful when “politically neutral territory” is defined such as a learning commons.  These spaces are often created as the result of partnerships that are formalized at high levels, so nobody feels as if their “turf” is being invaded – there is an equal distribution of “winners” and “losers” within older cultural definitions.  It’s critical to provide service without politics.

Abusive behavior by faculty (or staff) is unacceptable.  Sometimes a faculty member is known to have a reputation for being impatient or rude, in which case it’s common sense to dispatch a full time staff person or a “known quantity or reliable” student if that particular faculty member initiates a support call. 

Leadership is required in these cases.  The student or staff who has been treated rudely needs to know that their supervisor is “sticking up” for them, or at least following up to investigate the circumstances.  If a faculty member shows a pattern of rude or abusive behavior, that person’s dean or department chair needs to be informed of the transgression, with the understanding that possible consequences may include no longer accepting service calls from that individual (though it was not clear if that policy would be acceptable at all institutions).
Transparent signage is helpful.  People’s cell phone numbers or pagers (sometimes along with photographs) are posted in pubic spaces as the “go to” people when printers run out of paper, a computer malfunctions, etc.

It’s very helpful when senior leadership makes a strong statement regarding mutual respect as an institutional value.   One participant reported that the only item that faculty and professional staff could mutually agree upon as a common value was the inclusion of this principle in their five year strategic plan.

Regardless of professional status or appointment, if a staff member (or student) is not providing adequate service as defined in their job description, then an escalation and documentation process is necessary.  Strategies include:

• Incident review with a supervisor
• Documentation trail
• Professional development if warranted
• Documentation leading to more severe consequences, potentially including dismissal.

Cross training and team membership creates a new class of problem.  Sometimes the “problem” employee is from a different unit who you do not have direct supervision over.  In this case clear policies tied to appraisal and review need to be defined in advance, so all team members understand that 360 degree appraisals allow for team member feedback. 

It’s critical to keep an eye open toward underlying problems.  Some problems are systemic in nature.  Be sure to dig deep enough into problems and not act on first assumptions that a staff member or student may be the root of a problem, especially if there have been demonstrated problems with that individual in the past.

Fact-finding includes good documentation, often facilitated through a trouble-ticket software system.  It’s important to identify incident patterns in order to grasp larger systemic issues.

Value-add of “media style” customer service

Key discussion point:  There seems to be a senior leadership trend in thinking that media centers are no longer necessary and should be “swallowed” by IT departments.  Sometimes this leads to better budgets for media centers, but often results in a lower standard of service delivery and consultation with faculty to understand what their instructional challenges are.  How do I get my campus leaders to understand the value media centers bring to campus, regardless of name or alignment?

(Please refer to Peter Nordgren’s presentation: Values and Silos: Finding Common Purpose as Organizations Converge)

Clearly there are cultural differences that are apparent between IT and media services.  Good leaders understand how to capitalize on both.  It’s important to have good dialogue between the different units in order to develop common goals and values.  This includes valuing and understanding WHY each group has different core competencies, and recognizing that people are rewarded in different ways for those core competencies. 

There are several good books written by Patrick Lencioni that have been helpful:

• Five Dysfunctions of a Team
• Death by Meeting
• Silos, Politics and Turf Wars

It is important to provide respectful evidence to your campus leadership regarding these values as opposed to expecting them to be familiar with what you do.  Documentation of both service complaints and compliments are helpful, as well as service metrics.  It also helps when influential faculty members carry the torch on your behalf as opposed to singing your own praises.

Conference Reports Archive for Members