7:30am – 9:00am Registration and Coffee

9:00am – 9:15am Welcome and Introduction
Speaker: Liz Hamblett, Director of User Support, Assumption College

9:15am – 10:10am Teaching Users to Fish: How QU switched from the typical Help Desk Model
Speaker: Bill Murphy, Technology Center Manager, Quinnipiac University

Students and Faculty are constantly hooked into the internet and in this day and age, everyone wants things done 10 minutes ago. That includes Technology Support. People don't pick up the phone anymore, people want to text, email, or fix the problem themselves. 4 years ago QU merged the Help Desk group and the Media Services group into one department and had a chance to change the way technology support is given and did just that. Following the mantra: teaching clients to fish instead of just giving them the fish, QU was able to change the way people receive technology support. This presentation will present our support model and then some of the benefits and tough points of changing our support model.

10:10am – 10:25am Break

10:25am – 11:20am User Support in an Integrated Teaching & Learning Program
Speaker: Martin Schreiner, Head of Maps, Media, Data and Government Information, Harvard College Library

This presentation will discuss an emerging programmatic collaboration based on a multimedia lab and multimodal authoring service initiated at Harvard University in 2010. The collaboration integrates academic technology, the library, and faculty in supporting students with their multimodal curricular work. The ultimate aim for this program is to maintain an evolving and proactive service for our users with a “blended” staff and a cross-unit commitment to the program.

Some of the principles discussed in the presentation that underlie the goals for maintaining and evolving proactive user services include:
- Understanding your users so that they can understand you.
- Understanding the creative process in users’ learning and applying it to ongoing learning for staff training.
- Creating a collaborative environment for learning—where everyone is always learning from one another.
- Supporting content creation by users (the by-product of learning) and actively building upon this content for maintaining relevant user services.
- Seeing that every staff member understands their role as an advocate for the services provided.

11:20am – 12:15pm BU Medical Campus IT Orientation Anti Phishing Campaign
Speaker: Matthew Maderos, Associate Director Client Services, Boston University

In January 2014 BU Medical Campus was hit with a very complex “spear phishing attempt” which resulted in over 45 people having their pay checks compromised resulting in tens of thousands of dollars lost. As a way to educate our staff BU Med Campus IT now is part of every BU Med Campus Orientation where we educate new employees about Phishing, two factor authentication, and how we are using secure certificates to help combat fake web sites that steal personal information. Since this launch of this project the number of people falling for scams like this has dropped but the number of people reporting false emails has increased. This talk will provide an overview of the BU Med Campus “Phishing Scam” and an overview of our HR Orientation presentation

12:15pm- 1:15pm Lunch

1:15pm – 2:00pm Putting Users in the Driver’s Seat
Speaker: Liz Hamblett, Director of User Support, Assumption College

This presentation will talk about educating users through hands on experiences. Often in IT, when resolving an issue, we take over the user’s computer and don’t include them in the resolution we provide. Sometimes this is necessary. But, what would happen if we took the time to allow the user to be part of the solution, conversation, and allow them to learn as we fix a problem? Allowing users to stay in the driver’s seat and learn as we fix opens a door for collaboration and proactive education. It also provides them with the opportunity to be self-sufficient when an issue arises in the future. This presentation will talk about how including the user in the solution process benefits the user community and the Help Desk. It will also talk about how learning styles should impact how we support our users.

2:00pm – 3:00pm Round Table Discussions
Attendees will have a chance to discuss their takeaways from the day, their own ideas, their own successes, and challenges.

3:00pm End