Working on service provider relationships, thinking through campus units and connections (January 2015)

The beginning of winter quarter brought a number of new referral projects to InTRO, due in part to increased outreach efforts! Six new projects came our way this month. Four of these projects have been completed, one other has been referred out. One project, in progress, is waiting for responses to plan and proceed, Our referrals continue to be broad and diverse, with need spread across so many areas that no clear pattern has yet emerged. January referral topics, for example, included tech device assistance, resource access to support a webinar, course maintenance or development, and outreach to other service units.

Following up from last month, however, all referral projects are now coordinated through InTRO’s customized RT queue! This has been working very well–several faculty members have already e-mailed the queue directly. We’re still thinking through what information should be collected via RT, and hope to prompt a larger conversation about archiving and records management procedures among other technology service providers on campus as time permits. But the queue is up and running!

We were finally able to corral marketing and communications personnel from both Academic Extension and the UO Libraries for an off-site brainstorming session, with the goal of continuing to improve our branding and outreach efforts. Over drinks and drawing materials, we discussed digital signage, postcards, e-mail bursts, and pop-up events. So watch out for a postcard in your mailbox sometime in the future, or for signs about InTRO to show up on UO’s Four Winds screens.

We also held our long-awaited “renegades’ working lunch” on January 7. The on-going focus group of innovators from UO faculty and technologists came together to discuss current projects and topics of interest. Attendees from Global Education announced initial plans for an educational technology conference with a gaming focus, targeted to both K-12 and higher education professionals and planned for Fall 2015! Given the rich discussion at this kickoff event, we intend to continue to host lunches on a quarterly basis. If you’re reading this and you’d like to join the renegade lunch group, please e-mail us!

Service provider inventories and research into the digital education “footprints” of comparator institutions continue, in preparation for InTRO’s first annual report. As we collect this data, we are structuring it visually, creating not only charts of comparison but sample organizational charts, based on what we’re seeing at other research universities.

We look forward to seeing what February brings!