I have a large admission to make, which is probably not news to many people that know me well. I generally do not work well in groups. I get over committed or feel like someone is not pulling their weight or something else inevitably comes up.
Working with my team on this New Faculty Orientation Moodle Course project has been great. It has been a lesson in keeping to my role of project manager and not un-delegating tasks. I've tried to keep my input to feedback without it being prescriptive. I'm not quite sure how well I've accomplished this in anyone else's eyes, but I know comparitive to my previous patterns, it's gone pretty well.
Each of my team members have taken their piece and blown my expectations out of the water. The course module (thanks Deb) is spectular. It includes not only the necessary content but online "quizzes" and checklists/treasure hunts to engage the faculty in active learning. The original hope was that our final product would give a faculty memeber an opportunity to experience an online course as a STUDENT. This layout certainly fits the bill.
The Moodle Orientation guide and the Course Guide have allowed our "documentation specialist", Kirsten, to really shine. Even in the midst of health issues, she has pulled through and created some guides that will make the life of a new faculty member easier that first week here.
Our team of video producers, Danny and William, have pulled together a polished welcome video from the dean of the new college. I saw the YouTube version this weekend and was excited that it could soon replace an old video that was a little embarassing to have on the web. They have also been responsible for pulling together our links repository and our new organizational chart.
I still have the final report to submit once we've had some evaluation and user testing this and next week. We're almost done and it's been the best team experience I've ever participated in. Thanks team!!
Showing posts with label team member. Show all posts
Showing posts with label team member. Show all posts
November 25, 2008
February 19, 2007
Being a team member....
Two positions have recently been posted at my former place of employment, including the one I vacated.
First, I'd like to say that I truly enjoyed working there. I liked the job and the people. I moved for a promotion and to return "home."
Having said that, the job description includes the following statement:
The successful candidate will be someone who is open minded, has a flexible personality, strong social skills, the ability to function as a team member, and a dedication to the profession of academic librarianship.
I dare you to address that in your cover letter and/or resume. I've seen some vague statements on job ads, but this really jumped out at me. I'm not going to talk about open minded, flexible personality, or social skills, as everyone's definition of that will vary. I am going to talk about the ability to function as a team member, i.e. being a team player. The reason - I'm not to sure my definition matches theirs.
It is an awesome place to work, but as with any organization, it does have it's short comings. I've always believed in pitching in and helping, especially after working in a brand new library in a recently opened career college - I did more than my share of non-librarian duties. However, at former workplace, this isn't necessarily the case. As an example, reference librarians release print jobs among other things. "Where's the bathroom" may be the bane of a public library reference librarian, but at former workplace it was "I don't have my id and I need to print." So, if the students didn't have their id, we had to release the prints for them. This required walking to the printer and swiping a card. No kidding. Well, there is only one reference librarian on at a time and some students do actually have real reference questions. During peak times, the line could get long, with a good number of those waiting simply wanting their print jobs released. Circulation and reference face each other. Hard not to know when the reference librarian is handling a boatload of students. However, should a student ask at the circ desk for a print job to be released, they would send them to the reference desk, regardless of the length of the line (not a problem if I'm not helping others or it's a slow day). I personally helped each person in order of appearance at the desk, so if you had to wait for a print job while I helped a student locate a resource, so be it. The circ personnel had a print card, but they rarely popped over to help us out. You see, it wasn't their job. On average, there are three people at the circulation desk to one reference librarian, but it wasn't their job, so they sat there and continued to send people over to the reference desk. If you absolutely were drowning, you called another reference librarian. The librarian over that department once said it wasn't beneath her to release print jobs. I'd have to agree; it isn't beneath me either. However, apparently it was beneath the circulation personnel. I could go on, but hopefully you get the point.
A couple of other things: it's a small library. And, I am defining team in this case as the whole library. In larger libraries, it may not be feasible, but this library only has about 14 librarians, including the director and two coordinators. And, obviously two of those positions are vacant.
Being a team player is pitching in and helping out when it isn't your job. Going in and just doing your job doesn't make you a team player. Or at least not a top notch team player.
First, I'd like to say that I truly enjoyed working there. I liked the job and the people. I moved for a promotion and to return "home."
Having said that, the job description includes the following statement:
The successful candidate will be someone who is open minded, has a flexible personality, strong social skills, the ability to function as a team member, and a dedication to the profession of academic librarianship.
I dare you to address that in your cover letter and/or resume. I've seen some vague statements on job ads, but this really jumped out at me. I'm not going to talk about open minded, flexible personality, or social skills, as everyone's definition of that will vary. I am going to talk about the ability to function as a team member, i.e. being a team player. The reason - I'm not to sure my definition matches theirs.
It is an awesome place to work, but as with any organization, it does have it's short comings. I've always believed in pitching in and helping, especially after working in a brand new library in a recently opened career college - I did more than my share of non-librarian duties. However, at former workplace, this isn't necessarily the case. As an example, reference librarians release print jobs among other things. "Where's the bathroom" may be the bane of a public library reference librarian, but at former workplace it was "I don't have my id and I need to print." So, if the students didn't have their id, we had to release the prints for them. This required walking to the printer and swiping a card. No kidding. Well, there is only one reference librarian on at a time and some students do actually have real reference questions. During peak times, the line could get long, with a good number of those waiting simply wanting their print jobs released. Circulation and reference face each other. Hard not to know when the reference librarian is handling a boatload of students. However, should a student ask at the circ desk for a print job to be released, they would send them to the reference desk, regardless of the length of the line (not a problem if I'm not helping others or it's a slow day). I personally helped each person in order of appearance at the desk, so if you had to wait for a print job while I helped a student locate a resource, so be it. The circ personnel had a print card, but they rarely popped over to help us out. You see, it wasn't their job. On average, there are three people at the circulation desk to one reference librarian, but it wasn't their job, so they sat there and continued to send people over to the reference desk. If you absolutely were drowning, you called another reference librarian. The librarian over that department once said it wasn't beneath her to release print jobs. I'd have to agree; it isn't beneath me either. However, apparently it was beneath the circulation personnel. I could go on, but hopefully you get the point.
A couple of other things: it's a small library. And, I am defining team in this case as the whole library. In larger libraries, it may not be feasible, but this library only has about 14 librarians, including the director and two coordinators. And, obviously two of those positions are vacant.
Being a team player is pitching in and helping out when it isn't your job. Going in and just doing your job doesn't make you a team player. Or at least not a top notch team player.
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