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interview_part2.mp3 | |
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1. What tempted you to join Wright State University?
At the time, I was working at the local hospital and was doing technology work for
them. I was responsible for the coverage of the hospital. I was also
responsible for the other two campuses which were 15 minutes from the main
hospital. I was also responsible for elderly care facility. Actually I was one
person covering 3 different locations. I was getting burnt out. I then decided
to apply for Wright State position which was kind of worked out as this
position was available. Since I was looking for another position, this worked
out for me.
2. Did your parents contribute this job?
Directly no but they usually supported me in whatever decisions that I made but they
have no direct influence of me getting the job here at Wright
State.
3. What are your main duties and responsibilities in the School of Medicine?
My main duty is to make sure that students can access the online materials. We
record all our schedule lectures. We also do offline recordings for our faculty
members. I and the department are responsible to make sure that those articles
are available online. We also cover the high-tech testing. We have 53 exams in
our academic year. So my group is responsible for maintaining this database,
the security of the questions and also the deployment of the students. Those
will be my main responsibilities.
4. How long have you been working in the School of Medicine?
As of August this year, it will be 13 years. It has been a little while.
5. What other technical duties, if any do you do apart from your main
responsibility?
Just about anything dealing with technology. All the technology we use in our
lecture halls and in our labs. If any of those went down, myself and my team
are responsible to get that repaired or do troubleshooting.
6. From which schools have you graduated?
When I started in this path, I was interested in photography. I have an associate
degree in commercial photography and professional imaging. The professional
imaging side guided to desktop that is where I started my work on the Macintosh
platform and also video editing. When I started working at Wright State, I had
to go back for undergraduate degree that is why I went to the IT path from
School of Business at Wright State. I continued with my masters in information
systems here at Wright State.
7. Before joining Wright State, where have you worked?
When I graduated with my associate degree, I worked at the company called Huffy
Service. First they were owned by Huffy Cooperation and our company went into
retailer such as Wal-Mart and Target. Our technicians built bicycles, gas
grills, set up Christmas trees. I worked in the training department. I would
write training for our technicians. Any special skills they mighty need to do a
project. I was basically the videographer. I did that for 4 years. I worked
briefly for the communication company called KCOM. I did some video and audio
work but not much because they decided to close down. Then I started working
for the hospital for approximately 8 months before moving to Wright State.
8. Do you think your qualification matches the current position?
I think I have kind of worked myself into this position. Unfortunately, in today’s
world, it is hard to find someone that has all the skills you need. I know a
little bit about other things and I am not embarrassed to say that I am not an
expert in the field but I have the skills. I know what type of questions to ask
security concerns and viability of systems. You just learn how to ask questions
to vendors. What questions to ask your clients? You kind of build your
questioning skills. What is the end product? What does your client need? I
developed those skills over the year. I wouldn’t say that I worked into this
position with that knowledge.
9. Did any of your previous experience contributed to your success?
As far as my success here at Wright State, the knowledge I got of Macintosh
platform from Huffy at that time it was the only non-editing platform. This was
back in 1996-1997. Mac was really the only answer. I was the only person in the
entire company that had a Mac. I was my own support. I was forced to learn all
this so even the IT guy had no idea how to help me. Some days it was aggravating
because there was nobody to help me. Then again when I looked back, it really
helped me. I was forced to figure out this staff on my own. That experience
helped me to work into Wright State. At the time I was hired, we had Macintosh
computers. When I started, I was a manager in the computer labs.
10. How do you feel about your present position?
Right now it is challenging. Most days it is rewarding, like everyone else, you have
to balance priorities and budget and also you have to deal with a lot of
personalities. Most days I like it but there is a challenge every day. Right
now I am happy.
11. Do you face any obstacles in this position?
I see my biggest obstacle will be managing expectations that will be faculty
members or anybody else that works in the department. They had great ideas. I
may have the solution for them but the solution may not be viable or it may take
3 other employees or 12 months to get it done. I think the hardest challenge I
have is just managing those expectations. What can we do in-house right now and
if we go outside it is going to cost us money. It is disappointing sometimes but
I have a lot of hope.
12. How do you overcome these obstacles?
I have kind of learnt that I will have to disappoint a lot of people at the
meeting table. People have these great ideas but it is my job to figure out how
to implement them. If it turns out to be not financially viable, there is a 3rd
party solution out there. If that is too expensive, it what it is. It is part
of business. It is my job to make sure that we don’t spend money haphazardly.
We have to find a good balance. Luckily, I have a good boss who listens to me
and go to the table to express my point of view. It is always a challenge but
it comes with position management.
13. Is this position suits your needs or you have other dreams?
I have heard people asking me to be a consultant. I have somebody asked me to open
a cooperate shop in Dayton that services Macintosh at an enterprise level. But
the more I thought about it, it will be more work than I am doing now. I
couldn’t see myself taking more work. I find that I like the education
environment. Whenever I have a problem, I first give someone a call. It is just
a community of the technical people. They are always willing to help. It is the
education community that is holding me here. The thought is always there but
there hasn’t been a good offer to make me leave.
14. How do you value Wright State in terms of technology?
I wouldn’t say we are a cutting age or a bleeding edge but we do have talented
technology people on campus and they are dealing with the same challenges that
I am dealing with. We can do anything with enough money. I think we are doing
pretty well in terms of technology compared to other schools with this
size.
15. What advice would you give to young learners like me regarding Education
Technology?
Just get used to the fact that it changes all the time. As soon as you have a
processor now or anything that works, something bigger and better comes along
and then you have to change. That’s where you need to manage expectations.
Faculty members go to symposiums and workshops. When they come back, they will
tell me we need to have this. My question is always how is this going to change
your class? How is it going to revolutionize the way you teach? How do you want
to use this? Like the ipads. We only need the ipads. How are you going to use
it? I am not sure but I need an ipad. That goes back to managing
expectations.
16. What is your opinion in comparing between learners centered teaching with
traditional method of teaching?
Actually when my boss started for the past 10 years, he introduced Team Based Learning
to the school. Before we were in the lecture format. We were lecturing from
8.00 AM to 4.00 PM. My boss started using the learner centered teaching type of
approach with group work. The faculty members became more facilitators and I
think in over the time, in the medical field, students had to pass board exams.
They will have step 1 before going to the clinics. Step 2 before they graduate.
Then they can move to the ladder that way. After we started the learner
centered teaching approach, we saw the test scores go up and they continued to
go up as we continue with our team based lectures.
17. What are your predictions in 10 years’ time regarding the technology?
This is a tough question to answer. We don’t know what is going to happen in 2 years
from now. I think we are going to see a lot of cloud computing. We have seen
dedicated space for computer labs disappearing. I think we are going to use
that for study, testing and in class exercises. There are applications in web
based products that do that. I think that the trend is going to continue. Some
point, we will not have to be managing a lot of hardware. It won’t be that
bad.
18. How can you explain the success of technology in your department?
I think the use of technology allows our faculty members to focus on teaching the
material instead of worrying how we are going to deploy it. The technology
helps make the lives of the faculty members easier because it makes the
materials available online. If there are mistakes on the material, we pull it
down and replace it with the correct version. Going from a paper format to a
digital format makes better for the end user. Alternatively, it gives more time
to the faculty members to concentrate on the materials. Usually when you have
more time, you have more work to do. I think technology is a great tool.
19. As young learners, how can we cope in the speed to which technology is taking
us?
Another difficult question. Actually I noticed that the younger medical students coming
in have exposure to computers in middle school and high school. I look at my
own children 6 or 7 years old and they are already above my level when I was at
that age. I don’t think the younger learners will have an issue with the
technology changing. Most of the issues we see are for the older forks as we
were exposed in technology at the older age in life and we were not used to
these changes that happen so quickly. I don’t think the younger generation will
have an issue with the changing technology.
20. Is there any question I might have missed to ask you in this interview?
I don’t think so. That was pretty thorough. Some advice I can give to someone in
the technology field is to train yourself to be a learner. That is the key. One
way you are going to keep your job is to read all the blogs. See all the latest
things coming out especially if you are in education. See how other schools are
doing. Sign up to the technology people. Associate with higher education or
even K12. Some sort of a blog somewhere to keep yourself updated. Even if
something you don’t think you can implement now. That might be a solution to
other problems down the road. Also our technology on campus, if we see
something interesting, we share among ourselves. That is the cool thing about
the education environment. Unlike the corporate world where people play the
cards under their chest. That is different in education. That’s all I can think of.
Conclusion
The above interview was conducted in the School of Medicine at Wright State
University on Friday October 11th at 11.00 AM. The interviewee was very
cooperative and answered all my questions. From this interview I have learned
the following:
To relax while I am asking the questions.
Not to hurry when the interviewee is thinking about my question
I have noticed that once you interview a person, you get to have more knowledge
about their job and the challenges they face in their job. I have learnt that by
doing the interview, not only helped me in gaining the required information but
also improved my communications skills by asking the questions, recording the
answers and typing all the questions with the answers. I felt nervous when I
started asking about the first question. By the time I was in question 10, I
felt relaxed to the pattern and continued without any stress. I am sure if I do
another interview, I will perform better. John Needles was very cooperative and
provided clear answers to my questions. Whenever I had doubts, I would always
come back to him and get more explanation regarding this interview.