Office Hours and Drop-Ins

Background

STS partners with DesignLab to host STS Office Hours at College Library. These take place in the DesignLab office space, which is immediately to the left as you enter the computer lab area on the 2nd floor of College Library. The shared Office Hours desk shift arrangement is meant to ensure students can receive both design consultations from DesignLab as well as get help with the technology/software aspects of their work from STS.

STS Office Hours take place between 10am-7pm, Monday through Fridays (exact times and days vary each semester), and are scheduled as two-person shifts. The goal is to have at least 1 trainer who is comfortable with Graphic Design/Media Production and 1 who knows Programming/Web Design/ Data Science topics (or 1 trainer who is comfortable with all these topic areas) for as many shifts as possible.

DesignLab Staff

The main DesignLab point of contact for trainers at College Library is Associate Director Mandy Morrow. She is a full-time staff member like Pete and Naty, and she works in the glass-walled office facing the DesignLab consultation desks.

There are also 6 consultants for DesignLab who change every academic year. These staff are also fellow students (mostly doing graduate-level work) and are more or less peers of the STS trainers.

You are encouraged to introduce yourself to the staff members the first time you meet them, and to say hello when you start your shift (if they aren’t busy helping other students).

You can see the team here: DesignLab Staff

What do DesignLab and STS each cover?

DesignLab and STS provide similar services, but the topics that each group focuses on are different.

DesignLab provides design consultation for students, faculty, and staff on topics that relate to the presentation and effectiveness of different digital (and sometimes physical) media.

This includes things like:

• Aesthetics (e.g. colors, font choice, overall look and feel)
• Information hierarchy and clarity (e.g. is it clear what a poster is supposed to be communicating? Does the flow of a video essay make sense?)
• Overall effectiveness of the medium (e.g. should this be a poster or a slideshow? Does this need to be video or would an audio essay be better?)
• Recommendations of technology tools (e.g. suggesting InDesign for a brochure layout, Canva for an infographic, etc.)

When it comes to technology tools, while DesignLab may provide recommendations, the consultants typically do NOT provide tutoring or training on any of the specific tools they may recommend. That’s where STS comes in!

STS is there to help provide the hands-on help and technology expertise that DesignLab consultants may or may not be able to provide.

So for example, one of the DesignLab consultants may recommend a student use InDesign to lay out the newsletter for their student org or campus job, and then point the student to one of the STS trainers who knows InDesign to help the student learn the basics and figure out how to proceed with the tool itself.

What if the trainers don’t know the software the DesignLab consultants recommend?

There may be times when a consultant points a student to the STS trainers for help but the trainers who are working during that particular shift don’t happen to know the software being recommended.

Trainers are not expected to know all of the possible technology tools that students may need help with, but they ARE expected to make their best effort to help the student find a path forward.

In these situations, the trainer can do a few different things:

• Help the student find a time when a trainer who knows that software is working via the Office Hours schedule
• Help the student book a 1-on-1 appointment with a trainer who  knows that particular tool or software
• Point the student to the material that STS provides on Canvas
• Try to look up the software and do some real time learning alongside the student using resources like YouTube or LinkedIn Learning
• Point the student to one of the other services on campus (listed on the laminated resources and in the STS Google Drive folder)

The most important thing is that the trainer has made the effort to try to help the student’s situation. The student may not have gotten the exact answer they were looking for, but seeing that the trainer is at least TRYING to help goes a long way towards them feeling good about their STS encounter.

Things the trainers should NOT be telling students coming to Office Hours for help:

• “Sorry, I don’t know anything about that” and not providing any guidance how to proceed
• “I dunno”
• “You should probably go somewhere else” and not providing any alternatives
• “Sorry, I’m too busy” if the trainer isn’t currently supporting another student

Trainer Attendance

• At the start of each semester, trainers get to select what shifts work best with their weekly schedule (2-6 hours per week). STS Managers will then schedule trainers’ selected shifts on the Outlook Calendar. Once scheduled, trainers are expected to attend their requested shift hours every week.
• Trainers’ Office Hours are displayed publicly on the STS website, meaning we are setting expectations for when students should expect to be able to get help from STS trainers throughout the week. This schedule gets updated according to what trainers communicate to Pete, Naty, and Mandy.
• Enforcement of office hours shifts attendance has largely operated as an honor system based on an assumption that Pete and Naty can trust trainers to take responsibility for their shifts – which includes communicating if they will not be able to attend or will be late. For the most part, this system has worked out well!
• What we want to avoid: a student comes to meet with a trainer during their posted STS Office Hours shift, only to find the trainer not present at the STS desk. This is a bad situation for everyone involved: the student may be understandably disappointed and/or frustrated, and it makes STS look bad. Plus it puts the DesignLab staff in a position of having to deal with the consequences of STS staff’s behavior, which is not fair to them.

Expectations

• Trainers are only required to sign-up for 2 hours per week per semester. Exceptions can be made for trainers needing accommodations due to heavy course loads or other obligations, but these are evaluated on a case-by-case basis each semester.
• Trainers can sign up more than 2 hours each week, but trainers are responsible for attending all of the shifts they sign up for, in-person every week. Meaning, if you don’t think you will be able to consistently attend more than 2 hours of shifts each week, only sign up for the 2 required hours.
• Trainers must be physically present at one of the STS tables in the DesignLab area during their shifts. Outside of Office Hours shifts, Trainers are welcome – and encouraged! – to work remotely at the location of their choice, but Office Hours shifts need to be in person.
• If trainers aren’t able to attend a shift (due to illness, exams, personal emergencies, etc.) they are expected to communicate to the appropriate Teams Channel (linked at the bottomof your calendar invite) at least 24 hours before their scheduled shift. This helps Naty and Pete update the public schedule, lets our partners know how to respond to students who come to the desk looking for help, and keeps the rest of the STS team updated on who will be at their shift.

Missing a shift for Office Hours is slightly less severe than missing a workshop, but it is still important that trainers make every effort to be available for all of their scheduled shifts and communicate to the managers and fellow trainers if they will not able to attend them.

When it comes to missing office hours shifts, there is a 4 strike policy:

• Strike 1: Mistakes happen, but please don’t let them happen more than once. The trainer should identify what caused them not to let the team know they were missing the shift and take steps to prevent it from happening again.
• Strike 2: Managers will discuss with trainer whether the trainer’s current shift workload need to be reduced for the semester. Manager will begin spot-checking with Mandy and DesignLab consultants during trainer’s shifts.
• Strike 3: Trainer is no longer eligible for pay increases for the duration of the  current semester, and trainer needs to directly message the STS managers when they arrive at each shift for the remainder of the semester.
• Strike 4: Unless there are extreme extenuating circumstances, missing 4 office hours shifts with no communication to the managers or other trainers may result in the trainer’s employment being terminated at the managers’ discretion.

Exceptions

Again, there may be situations where a trainer ends up missing a shift due to circumstances beyond their control.

These can include things like:

• A personal, family, or medical emergency
• Car, bike, or scooter accident
• A break-in at a trainer’s apartment
• Trainer’s laptop and/or phone get stolen
• Unexpected travel issues

The managers will consider situations on a case-by-case basis.