CIT: Learning Technology Consultant
Mr. Locke's current job is at the Center for Instructional Technology as a learning technology consultant. The Center for Instructional Technology seeks to assist faculty and staff with technology issues related to instruction. Over winter break the CIT made some changes to their operations. One of the significant changes was to the role of the student workers at the CIT, who will begin to take a more active role in providing support. Student workers will begin providing tier one support and begin going on house calls to answer basic questions. The current students were able to help assist in the planning for what tier one support would entail. Each student was assigned a software supported by the CIT and asked to help make a plan. Mr. Locke was assigned Qualtrics, he suggested that for tier one support student workers should take the online software training so they could answer basic questions about how to design a survey and survey methodology. In addition, Mr. Locke suggested that students be granted access to register faculty and staff for the training as part of tier one support. As for house calls, Mr. Locke has two meetings scheduled to teach professors how to use various pieces of software. One meeting is to teach a professor how to use Prezi and the other meeting is to teach a professor how to use PowerPoint. The CIT encourages employees to continue to learn new thing and develop professionally. Mr. Locke took this as an opportunity to learn more about Photoshop. The attached pictures are images Mr. Locke edited in Photoshop. The landscape picture was taken by Mr. Locke the patriotic composition were images from the internet that were edited and compile in an artistic way. The job at the CIT has taught Mr. Locke a lot about how to support different software, and that there is more to support than just teaching someone how to do something.
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Training Pros Contractor: Assistant Training Manager
During the summer between Undergraduate and Graduate school Mr. Locke worked as a contractor for Training Pros. The Training Pros temporary contract position placed Mr. Locke at the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) Staunton District Office. The task was to work with the the District Training manager. The District Training manager was going out on maternity leave and Mr. Locke's task was to cover some of the essential district training responsibilities for the more than six hundred and thirty district staff members. Some of the job tasks Mr. Locke performed included: proctoring materials certification exams; approving request for training funds; coordinate equipment training classes for forklift, arial lift, backhoe, portable message sign, motor grader, and basic equipment operations; pull reports to check compliance for CPR, First Aid, and Blood Born Pathogens and coordinate classes for areas that were not compliant; update slides for new employee orientation; co facilitated one new employee orientation class and facilitated two new employee orientation classes independently; assisted in some preparation for one week leadership conference; assisted in set up, during, and clean up for a three day engineering scholarship orientation program; assisted in the planning, set up, during, and cleanup of the one day supervisor workshop; participated in train-the-trainer, assessed in the set up, compiled a list of best practices during the training, and helped clean up from a three day superintendent workshop; attended district staff meetings provide attendees with a two min overview of what training has been conducted; assisted in the set up for the five day construction inspector training program; attended various training classes to observe trainers, offer assistance, and to meet more of the district employees; and assisted in developing a manual for staff attending a career fair. This job taught Mr. Locke the importance of finding people and knowing their areas of expertise to establish a network, because no one knows the answer to all questions. No samples are provided for this job because non disclosure agreements were signed at the beginning of employment. This job also taught Mr. Locke about the behind the scenes work that goes into classroom training.
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CIT Intern
The Writing Rhetoric and Technical Communication major requires all students in the technical and scientific communication track to complete an internship as a required class as part of the programs graduation requirements. To fulfill the internship requirements Mr. Locke worked ten hours a week with the Center for Instructional Technology at JMU. While interning with the CIT Mr. Locke was tasked with creating tutorials for Blackboard using ScreenFlow. All of the tutorials were short (about 1-2 mins) and covered how to complete a specific task in Blackboard. At the time JMU was about to switch from Blackboard version 8 to Blackboard version 9. The tutorials were placed on the Blackboard support section of the JMU webpage so faculty could view the tutorials and learn how to use that specific feature of Blackboard. This internship taught Mr. Locke several things: the nuances of screen casting, when writing scripts people talk differently than they write, a lot of work goes into a one minute tutorial, and different microphones make a big impact on the sound of the narration.
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