As part of the LIS Education & Training Team’s charge, we have developed an inventory of information and technology skills and knowledge needed by LIS staff, as well as College faculty, students and staff. On our inventory we also indicate why and to what extent the skills are needed and include some of the resources currently provided by LIS to support faculty, students, and staff. The team hopes to determine where educational and training resources are either inadequate or missing and to propose more effective ways of delivering essential education and training.
We reviewed a variety of sources including Helpdesk tickets, user logs, and the Middlebury website, and used our own experience with our constituents to come up with this list.
The team concluded that everyone at Middlebury should be expected to have at least an awareness and basic understanding of a large percentage of the computer skills and technologies identified, while some skills are needed by less than 5% of the community. We were surprised by the amount of educational and training resources already available to the College community. The problem is how to create awareness of and effective access to those resources.
The team is now working on the next part of our charge, which is to recommend how to build LIS staff development goals into the performance process; to work in cooperation with campus departments to identify specific information and technology training needs; and to make recommendations for training program development and delivery methods for faculty, staff and students. The recent Lynda.com trial is the first of a number of possible solutions we’re exploring that may be recommended to meet these needs.
Speaking of lynda.com – during the trial, I was impressed with the quality and ease of use of their training material. Has a decision been made whether to acquire long-term access to it yet?
No decision has been made. Feedback received has been very favorable so our team is working on a recommendation to bring forward.
That’s an excellent collection! A few suggestions:
I think we could add a few more items to the security section. It’s important to keep in mind that there are several laws (not just best practices) that dictate privacy and security. Thus my recommendation is to change “permissions, privacy and security issues” to “Privacy of Electronic Information – Laws, Regulations and Policies”. I would suggest that we mention these explicitly under “Wy needed”: HIPAA, FERPA, PCI, the Vermont Social Security Number Protection Act (I could provide a few more).
I’d also recommend changing “How to protect your computer from viruses” to “How to protect yourself online” (viruses are no longer the only threat and computers are no longer the only target). We should also be mentioning phishing emails and phishing websites explicitly under “Why needed”. As scary as it sounds, knowing how to distinguish a phishing email and phishing website is more important than knowing how to use an antivirus software. Nowadays, if your computer is infected there is little you can do to clean it, thus we should focus on prevention.
Thank you for putting this together!
I’m surprised to see there’s not much reference to the Hyperion reporting system in the inventory list. I’ve heard from several staff that they would like more training in this area. Maybe your statistics don’t support this idea but I would hate to see this overlooked.