I began a formal training procedure for new hires this year, which I refer to as "Boot Camp". The idea was to make sure everyone had some baseline skills. I trained them in a 90 minute session. It took three months to find the time to meet with the new hires. There are still a couple out there that said they could make it but didn't make it to the training. The fact that it was so difficult to schedule a time to meet with the new hires is a sort of "case in point" for the asynchronous training model.

Here's the list of what I covered:

General

-introducing yourself

-looking up

-headphones dissuaded

-role of the lanyard

-triage

-what do do when you miss a shift

-bringing classes to the Cloisters

- CIS / ACS / Media Cloisters Venn diagrams

- ACS role, people and technology spaces - Steve, Matthew, Meg, Cristian, Ginny and myself

-mediacloisters.vassar.edu web resources

-account creation

-TV/Smartboard turning on, turning off

-MCstudent

- Teams/Training Groups

- one hour a week of workshop expectations

 - workshops for classes

- upcoming cross training

 - saving files

- vspace

Less Exciting Responsibilities:

-Cleaning Up

-Chairs

-the desktop

-Acceptable Use Policy

Misc:

-Copyright laws/ AUP

-Workshop list

-Goals for the year

Video:

-triage

-Final Cut Pro Stream

-setting the scratch disk

 - hard drives

-iMovie Stream

- resources for both

- snapz

- quicktime pro

-handbrake

-mac the ripper

-Toast

-iDVD

-DVD pro

- VHS to DVD burning

Graphic Design

-Triage

- when to use Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign

- Campus Issues in scanning

- Bulk Scanning

- Flatbed scanning

- slide scanning

- collating .pdfs

- resizing images

Audio

-triage

-overview of the station

-Audacity

-Logic

-Reason

-Cassette to .mp3 conversion

Web

 - triage

 - Getweb

 - wikis

 - composer

 - Dreamweaver

 - HTML/CSS

Other Resources

 - headphones at circ desk

 - cameras and recording devices at Media Resources

 - laptops at circ

 - color printing at Media Resources

 - help desk downstairs and at CIS

 - Digital Media Lab in the basement of New England