This document provides guidance on training student assistants to provide technical support. It outlines identifying the needs and skills required, managing the hiring process, and steps for training students on providing support and using Blackboard. The training involves lessons on listening, preparing work orders, shadowing experienced students, completing online tutorials and tasks in Blackboard, practicing phone calls, and monitoring students' effectiveness through records, meetings, observations, surveys and praise. The goal is to get students up to speed quickly to effectively provide technical support.

1. Getting Student
Assistants Up To
Speed in
Melane McCuller
Instructional Media
Specialist
Blackboard

2. Before you even begin to hire
students, be sure to IDENTIFY NEEDS
 Activities: Know what you want the student to
actually DO (just take phone calls, do office visits,
take over a remote desktop, alter items in a
course, facilitate workshops, etc.)
 Funding: Identify your funding level. Can you hire
overlapping positions so trained students can help
new ones or do they come and go one at a time?
 Skills: Do you need someone with language skills,
computer skills, telephone skills, interpersonal
communication skills—know what you actually
want the student’s skills and skill-level to be.

3. Managing the process of Hiring/
Repurposing/Firing
 Wording and posting job advertisements
 Review job applications
 Use an interview rubric to make sure all points are
covered fairly
 Identify a selection pool: where to draw
candidates from (computer science vs.
communications)
 Match personality with tasks
 Give a computer test
 Give a stress test
 Give a telephone test

4. Steps in training the students
to give support
 Give listening lessons
 Practice patience using case studies
 Emphasize your department standards (how to
answer phone, dress code, timeliness, etc.)
 Demonstrate how to prepare a work order
(telephone log, online or paper work orders, or any
kind of record your department uses.)
 Let student shadow you or an experienced student
for a preset time span

5. Steps in training the students
to use Blackboard
 Online tutorials
 Give them a course to design
 Give them real-world tasks to perform
 Give them e-mail queries (then compare your
answer with theirs)
 Practice phone calls (there really is a difference
between asking questions in person and on the
phone.)
 Have the student write a handout on a particular
tool for a training session
 Keep an “I didn’t know that” log

6. Monitoring students’
effectiveness
 Keep written record of all support calls
 Hold regular student staff meetings
 Let them sit at your desk for a while with you
present to just listen
 Random queries to faculty or students who
received support
 Random test calls as a “fake” person needing
support
 Self-evaluation: ask the student assistant for
feedback on his performance
 Give LOTS OF PRAISE!

7. THANK YOU!
 Contact mmcculler@sfasu.edu