My original thoughts before the Thursday of the 9th week were that Help Desk might be less taxing than Site Managing. I have been proven wrong. Rather, that is dependent on how much help is needed at the time. Taking 2 calls and helping someone in person, for example, is difficult in any light. For myself, still getting the hang of doing this takes time.
In terms of helping users, I make sure I make a distinction between helping professionally and personally. For example, when I help a friend understand content in a course, I can explain things colloquially and be fine, but this is not right in a professional environment. This is—I believe—the area I most have to work on, since I always help people as if they were classmates. In a professional environment, I can’t make assumptions about what the other person knows.
I figured this out when taking a call about Digication – the other person was a student, so I’ll say I got… lucky using my old ways. Another user, however, was not. I changed the way I attacked the issue at hand such that all parties understood and were on the same page, and successfully resolved the issue. The main point here: Adapt and overcome, solve each problem in the way that gets the fastest and best solution.
Another aspect I’ve learned about myself: I usually generalize each (computer) problem I face so I know how to solve all issues of that type later. Usually I keep that to myself. While shadowing, I spoke the reason out loud, and didn’t realize it was never seen from that angle before. This might lead to TLT being able to provide that same generalized solution now. Another key point: Speak your mind, if it’s something relevant, not mean, and possibly new—you never know who knows what.
However, at the same time generalization is nice, it can’t be taken for granted. Often, if I taught something, I do it differently each time so I personally see the differences and can adjust as necessary. A catch with this I didn’t think of: Now there’s x people knowing Method α and y people knowing Method β, which doesn’t help for standardization. A stronger reason of teaching Method α each time is that statistics can be done for every time that method is taught, and there’ll be a stronger case on what needs to be changed, based on averaged feedback.
