a) Working with others

Communication is crucial in my role and I would consider my communication skills one of my strengths. I like people and enjoy conversations, meetings and training sessions. I believe that the whole is generally far greater than the sum of its parts and that in large institutions collaborative working and sharing of skills and knowledge is vital. I also enjoy helping people and find it rewarding to see projects develop and to see people I work with gain skills and confidence.

I work in the Information Services (IS) division of the U of E. I work with people in IS who have very deep technical knowledge. I consider my role to provide a bridge between this knowledge and the end users who are in administrative or academic roles. Often the end users (academics and support staff) do not have strong technical skills and can be wary of Information technology. Having come to an IT career slightly later in life, I remember vividly the learning curve I went through during my Masters. I try to keep this in mind in my interactions with staff so that I don't slip into an expert mindset and can still relate to the experiences of novice users. I think it is important to respect the people you work with, to acknowledge their prior knowledge and experiences and to build a trusting relationship that allows people to develop. In a prestigious institution like the University of Edinburgh it can be challenging to get academic staff to admit that they don't know something. I try to avoid this when I work with new people by starting with very basic information until I can gauge the persons level of skills and knowledge. I would rather appear 'stupid' that jeopardise the relationship by making an academic feel uncomfortable in this way.

For example, I have recently been working on a project with another support department in the University who are starting to use WebCT to deliver training materials. The staff I have been working with did not have a great deal of technical skills and where initially not forthcoming in asking for support, it took a while for me to gain their trust. It was only as we approached a deadline and had to present an output that so questions surfaced. For example there was confusion between file names and titles of documents. There was some confusion about the use of HTML to create pages of content and the way a VLE functions in comparison with a website. It became apparent that we were not talking a commen language, this lead to some very confusing conversations until eventually we were able to acknowledge and address these misunderstandings. My manager, Nora Mogey, the leader of Elearning and IS skills development team (Information Services) has written the attached statement as evidence of my communication skills and participation in the team.

In my current role I work as part of a team of 10 people, but work in smaller teams to support different systems.

• WebCT (6 members)
• QuestionMark Perception (5 members)
• Electronic Voting Systems (4 members - I am deputy lead for this service)
• ePortfolio (5 members - I am deputy lead for this service)
• TurnitinUK (4 member - I am the lead for this service)

We have different levels of skill in supporting each of these systems so we need to communicate frequently to clarify our shared understandings. This ranges in formailty from chatting, email, use of shared electronic diaries, contributions to a team wiki and formal meetings.

I was recently part of a procurement team (discussed in some detail in Section 1. Operational issues) and worked in a cross institutional team. Working in this team required me to communicate with representatives from across the University, listening to them and discussing requirements, while accurately represent my own department. Many of the people on the team were more senior than me and had been at the institution for longer so had a greater understanding of the context. The group was open and cooperative and I learned a lot from this experience. This statement from Jim Sheach describes my role in this team.

I also work regularly with staff in different departments, for example the Applications division provide the technical support for our WebCT service and so we also have regular meetings and conversations with a colleague from this department.

Communication with system users is via Call Management System, any messages sent to our team via a generic email address elearnhelp@ed.ac.uk are manged using this system. We also put alot of information on our Website, for example maintaining a list of FAQ's and known issues for the WebCT system.

I have also written short articles for Bulletin of Information Tech (BITs) a monthly newsletter, to let people know about events and activities I have been involved in. For example on page 6 of the June edition there is an article on TurnitinUK and student submissions.

I am also members of external groups such as the Scot-Bug (formerly the Celtic WebCT User Group) and the TurnitinUK User group.