GoogleCon 2021
Competencies: Professional development, Instructional design
Background
Throughout the pandemic, our institution made concerted efforts to implement and promote workflows and collaboration tools that allowed staff and faculty to work remotely. In February 2021 as the institution was in the late stages of reintroducing complete in-person instruction, the HR department wanted to reinforce the collaboration tools utilized during the pandemic to our staff. After careful consideration, we decided to facilitate an all day conference, highlighting different tools in the Google suite.
Objectives
We identified the Google suite as the core topic of our conference because it was heavily utilized by leadership during the pandemic for collaboration. We made an assumption that staff were familiar with parts of the suite, depending on their role and responsibilities. We sent out a survey to staff gauging their comfort and daily use with these tools and the results matched our assumptions. We wanted to engage staff at all levels to ensure they were able to:
- Familiarize themselves with existing tools used in the past as a means of reinforcing skills.
- Engage or discover tools within our ecosystem that could lead to efficiencies in day to day activities.
We acknowledged that staff had varying degrees of expertise, and could disengage if the sessions did not meet their needs. We decided to:
- Scaffold sessions on topics with varying degrees of pre-requisite knowledge throughout the day.
- Hold these sessions over Zoom to encourage individual participants to join or leave a session depending on their comfort level with the material presented.
- Record and promote sessions as on-demand resources to encourage staff to revisit or explore other offerings at a later date.
Outcomes
The Instructional Technology team planned a seven session conference with (generally) three options per session. In total there were 19 offerings for the day of varying topics and expertise. Giving each participant choice provided them more autonomy over their day, and we felt that would make each session more valuable. Each session was made available via Zoom, recorded, and then made available via a Google Site so that each participant could “attend” sessions they missed at a later date.
As one of the lead presenters, I ran four sessions, two on Google Sheets, one on general Google tips and tricks, and finally a Q&A session before lunch. In our “After GoogleCon” follow up email, we provided a link to a feedback survey and received many positive reviews. My “Advanced Google Sheets” session was so well received, I was asked to offer it again during our institute day later in the year for admin and faculty. I was able to connect with several participants of both sessions afterwards. These conversations led to projects using Google Forms to collect and ingest data and building dashboards in Google Sheets for our Social Work, Post High School Counseling and Health Services departments.