Category Archives: Lessons Learned

Project lessons learned or lessons learned from experiments

Health and Safety, Learning, Teaching & Research Support, Lessons Learned, Library Wide, Professional Reading, Staff Development

DPI tip for February 2022

Leave a comment

Kia ora koutou

Working from home is no longer new to us and most would have designated a spot as “the working space”.

Here is a brief checklist for your home workstation:

Your chair: ideally an office chair, if not be creative in adjusting the height, a cushion may be good to sit on or support your back.

Your feet: ensure your feet are flat on the floor, if not you may improvise something as your foot rest.

Your screen: either a laptop or desktop, position the top of your screen at about eye level and about an arm’s length away from you.

Your eyes: a break away from the screen is good. Eye yoga or the like is recommended. Or the 20/20/20 rule, after 20 minutes on screen, give your eyes a 20 second break by looking at something 20 feet away!

Your mouse & keyboard: it is recommended to have a separate mouse and keyboard if you use a laptop.

Your breaks: take regular breaks, keep up your hydration and physical movements.

Here is the video on how to set up your desk but you might have to change it to suit your home environment.

Do discuss with your manager if you need further support.

Ngā mihi

Swee Hoon

 

Lessons Learned, Staff Development

Business Continuity Plan

Leave a comment

I’m in the process of updating the Library’s Business Continuity Plan. This plan helps us prepare for and continue to operate after an incident or crisis.

In this latest update (the plan is updated every 6 months of so), we’ll be focusing on what is needed to help with pandemics. We will look at how we deal with changing Alert Levels and working from home.

If you’ve got suggestions about this. Or the idea of planning interests you and you’d like to be involved, please contact me.

Electronic Resources, Lessons Learned

E-book Error Message

Leave a comment

This week a number of distance students reported that every time they tried to access e-books from Taylor and Francis they received the following message:

After some trial and error, with  the distance students helping us out with testing, Romy figured out a solution – and access had likely been a problem since 4 August! So it’s likely a few students have been affected but they don’t always tell us when something isn’t working.

We’re adding a line to the error message reminding students to contact us if they should have access. As ever, if you get an students reporting problems with accessing e-books, please refer to E-Services.

Learning, Teaching & Research Support, Lessons Learned

UC websites – direct linking to an expanding box or to a tab

Leave a comment

The URL found in the heading of an expanding box (has a red + at the right) or of a tab can be used to link directly to that box or tab.

Box examples, http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/its/printing-and-copying/#collapse16282 and http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/its/computer-workrooms/#collapse22664

Tab example http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/its/accessing-your-email/#16349

Linking like this didn’t work when the new websites were first rolled out (back then such a link just sent you to the page as a whole), but now that it does it could come in handy when directing students to relevant information on AskLIVE or via email. I’ve tried it out successfully on Chrome, Firefox and IE.

Lessons Learned, Library Wide

FedEx Day experience

Leave a comment

The LR Goal Clarity and Empowerment teams recently did a combined FedEx Day.  So how did we find the experience of doing a FedEx day and what did we learn from it?  Comments from the group included:

Positives

  • Effective way to get a problem solved and outline solution scoped
  • Efficient use of participants time
  • A fast way to get a solution that is within our abilities
  • Self-managing team is empowering
  • Good to have a process to follow
  • Good to have someone guide the process
  • Good to have a clear outcome at the start
  • 2 x half days easier to manage in the diary, and gave reflection time
  • Setting aside normal work and concerns to focus on one thing was excellent. Doing this well away from my office made it more achievable
  • Having hours at a time, rather than the usual 1 hour meeting, was excellent
  • It was good to be focussed, topic-wise, because we could bring pre-packed knowledge and opinions. (However, I’m keen to try a FedEx Day where there is no topic at the start of the day)
  • Good to have two half-days dedicated to the task – one day would be a bit onerous in terms of energy levels, I suspect
  • Good to have time dedicated to the task it enabled us to come with ideas in a short time

Negatives

  • Being limited by time can be frustrating if you’ve come up with something you believe in but haven’t been able to develop to the point that you think is ready to pass on

We’d recommend thinking about …

  • Important for the group to agree on a leader to guide the session and keep us on track – best to agree on a leader at the start of the session
  • It would have been helpful to have had an icebreaker at the start of each session in order to focus and energise the group (Need to prepare this in advance, and call for volunteers)
  • Perhaps next time if holding the sessions over two days, we could schedule one session in a morning, and the other one in an afternoon – some people prefer one time over the other
  • Perhaps have some stress-balls, etc., for those who like to use them when thinking and coming up with ideas
  • Would have been great if we had some food and drink – a muffin and some teabags and coffee, hot water and milk would have sufficed and would have helped with energy levels
  • For some it may have been better to have had the FedEx Day in the afternoon instead of in the morning – some people have more energy then – perhaps something to consider when having FedEx half-days – find out what the majority prefer