Web tools

The department of Information Technology Services at Grinnell College employs approximately 60 students to assist with the support of faculty, staff and students. They are called User Consultants (UC). These students are responsible for staffing public labs and the campus help desk.It is a challenge to manage such a large group of students. They are from all over the world. They have varied work schedules and availability. They function independently across the campus. How does one communicate effectively to the entire group? How do they get the opportunity to interact with each other? What can be done to manage daily operations without hiring additional ITS staff?.Taking all of these challenges into consideration, the solution was to use the web. Using web-based tools allowed the student employees accessibility, enhanced communication, and gave them the resources that they needed to perform support almost anywhere on campus.Since the ITS staff did not have the time for development of such a system, a combination of third party tools, such as Blackboard and Clientele, together with some student computing projects created a web-based management system. This not only assists the ITS staff in managing the students, but it also provides the student staff a "connection" to the department.