A support team that comes to you
Science professor Jonathan Kellogg needed help with Connect, and he needed it fast. The two Integrated Sciences courses he signed on to teach had an overwhelming amount of material in Connect to sort through and update before classes began. As a new UBC faculty member, Jonathan felt daunted.
“How do I manage this monster of a web space? And pare it back to what the students actually needed?”
Jonathan spent many stressful hours trying to figure out how to fix the content problems on his own. He found that Connect presented a steep learning curve.
“It was challenging to say the least.”
As the start of term loomed closer, he heard about the Learning Technology Rovers (LTRs), a student team trained to support faculty and staff one-on-one in using UBC’s learning technology tools.
Jonathan worked with the LTRs over email, on the phone, and during in-person meetings to resolve his issues. Each time, the LTRs helped him move past roadblocks in Connect, whether this meant updating complex permissions settings or simply clearing his cache.
“I always left feeling better and like I was going to figure out how this all worked.”
With LTR support, Jonathan’s confidence in using Connect and tackling his course content grew. He realized he could apply what he’d already learned when new problems popped up.
“I got into kind of a rhythm and figured out ‘okay, here’s the pieces and parts where I’ve got flaws and here’s what I’ve learned, so I can fix a lot of that’.”
A month into the term, Jonathan was fully up and running on his own with courses in Connect. He recommends the LTRS to anyone in a similar situation.
“If you’re having any issues at all with Connect, it’s nice to know that there’s a resource—somebody to email and somebody that you can physically go see—and they’re not on some other campus or far, far away. They can even come to you.”
Faculty and staff looking for similar Connect support with the Learning Technology Rovers can email their faculty LTRs to get the conversation started.
