During this week, while I shadowed help desk consultants they basically let me take over for them. The senior consultant sat next to me while I was in charge of the phone, email, and live chat.  I remember that during one of my shifts I got a live chat about using VoiceThread. VoiceThread is a new program that the school is trying to use which basically acts as a way of interactive learning in class. A teacher makes a post online and students can respond to it through text, voice and video recordings. This technology was just recently implemented, but I had used it for one of my DEC classes on Asian studies. The student was trying to upload a video to VoiceThread’s website through blackboard but he kept getting an error message. I told him to try uploading the video by going directly to the website instead of the link through blackboard. After a few minutes, he informed me that the video was uploading and then left the chat. I personally think VoiceThread is a pretty cool website because it strays away from the traditional text responses and instead promotes creativity as it allows for students to respond in other ways.

During my shadowing with help desk consultants, near the end of my shift I had a phone call about using MySBfiles off campus. A professor wanted to transfer over files from her computer to her MySBfiles account. In order to do so. I informed her about stony brook’s virtual SINC site where she could access the program. In the end I was able to her move the files over and ended the phone call. The whole process took about 30 minutes but an important part of being a help desk consultant is having patience when answering phone calls, live chats, etc. Patience is an essential skill in any type of customer service job because you have to work with a variety of different people. The role of a consultant is all about interacting with others and providing customer service to students and faculty alike.

During my shadowing with site manager senior consultants, they essentially allowed me to take over the front desk for the duration of the shadowing hour. So far, I’ve been taking attendance on SBconnect when I come in and checking for no-shows. The senior consultants had me practice asking attendance questions on SBconnect to check whether or not consultants were paying attention to their screens while working.

This week’s class we took a tour of the ECC center with Mr. Behzad where he talked to us about the functions of the different rooms throughout the center. First thing to note is that the ECC is where important data and servers are located thus it’s a very secured location with access id needed at every door and cameras everywhere.  The first room he showed us was the co-locate that is shared by different companies. The room contains servers that are maintained by the respected companies. Afterwards he brought us a variety of different rooms used for storing more servers, batteries, telephone connections, etc. Overall I found the tour to pretty interesting and exciting because as an information systems major, I plan to work with servers in the future. The TLT internship provides a great opportunity to explore parts of the campus that regular students would never get a chance to see, such as the ECC and Frey Hall testing center.