News & Updates

Technology Assistance in the Classroom

By Kristin Strohmeyer

June 19, 2020

One of the myriad of questions LITS has received regarding teaching this fall is what kind of technical assistance will be available for faculty. The professional staff will simply not have the bandwidth or person hours to help each one of you individually for each class, and we are working on how we can best support you in other ways. 

There are several options being looked into at this point:

LITS, well, Abbi, will be offering more Zoom workshops for faculty on how to better manage their Zoom experiences.  We may also look into continuing the “Zoom buddy” program that was so successful last spring.

Another option, within Zoom, is for faculty to assign roles to their students such as “Chat Supervisor,” “Waiting Room Manager,” and so forth.    

We are planning on hiring more student employees, in addition to our Digital Media Tutors, to augment how we can support you while teaching. Departments may wish to consider hiring their own fleet of students or use existing TA students, who know your subject area, who we can then train to also assist in your classroom. Many first year courses have mentors assigned, and they could assist as well.  If you do not have a mentor for your FYC, I encourage you to talk to the Dean of Faculty. 

We will continue to communicate about more solutions to help you with the technology in your classroom. 

Please know that we are working diligently to make sure the fall semester is a successful learning environment for both you and your students.

Any questions, please let us know.