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Efficiency is crucial when working in a small office. In order to save time and sanity there are technology tips and tricks that can be used. Loralyn Taylor (Paul Smith’s College), Liesl Fowler (Augustana College), and Michelle Kelley (Edgewood College), will be sharing various tips and tricks that can be utilized in your office.
AACRAO spoke with Liesl Fowler, Registrar & Asisstant Dean at Augustana College, and Michelle Kelley, Registrar at Edgewood College about their interactive session “Saving Your Sanity: Sometimes a Little Technology Can Save You Big Time and Effort”.
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Liesl Fowler
Registrar/Assistant Dean
Augustana College
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Michelle Kelley
Registrar
Edgewood College
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Wednesday, April 15, 2015 9:15 AM - 10:15 AM
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What inspired you to present at this year’s Annual Meeting?
Fowler: I’m on the small Colleges issues committee, and I presented the last several years. Part of the reason I think it’s important to present is that there are issues particular to small institutions that are not necessarily represented with the general sessions for larger institutions. A lot of that has to do with resources and wearing multiple hats. The idea for this session came from Loralyn Taylor who is at Paul Smith’s College and it grew from there.
What can attendees expect to get out of this session?
Kelley: The whole idea behind this session is that we need to be as efficient as possible in the work we do, and if there are free tools and other tips that can be shared and discussed with others, we should foster such a conversation. It’s the concept of “do more with less” and sharing ideas amongst a group of panelists and the audience as well. We are hoping for the session to be interactive and to get a good dialogue going with the audience. As a panel, we want to introduce ideas and get the creative juices flowing, and are hoping that others are going to step up and talk about what they do as well.
When implementing tools, how do practitioners make sure they aren’t spending too much time learning and implementing them in addition to their typical duties?
Fowler: I think the idea is that we’re going to recommend things that are intuitive in nature or would take very little time to learn. It’s actually going to save them time in the end or save them from having to go find another colleague on campus. This will allow attendees to handle information and data in house more quickly on their campus.
Kelley: The idea is that we’ll be covering different ideas, there is no one single ‘this’. One topic of discussion might help you with keeping track of how you keep notes from meetings, and another might help you with data management.
Can you give me an example a type of technology that you have used that you are going to share in the session?
Fowler: One that I use all the time is Doodle. Doodle is a free web based scheduling software and it’s particularly helpful when you’re trying to get folks who are off campus or maybe don’t use your campus calendar. When scheduling meetings with folks it’s easy to use; I’m surprised more people don’t know about it.
Kelley: One that I’m planning on talking about is the use of Evernote as an office. Each person in our office paid a nominal fee for the business version of Evernote because we find that one person goes to a meeting on a topic and then the next time the group meets the person isn’t there or available. So it’s hard to keep track of the discussions that are going on about different topics. With how we’re using Evernote, you can have categories for different topics and you can share those with each other so there is one place where the notes or information is kept. We have all of our procedures out there and we have a procedure in place to update the procedures. So Evernote has proven useful for us.
How has implementing these different technologies been received in your office? Has there been resistance?
Kelley: With Evernote there was and is coordination that’s needed to be sure that you’re sharing the things that need to be shared with the office. There hasn’t been any resistance because we all agree that it’s best to have as much information as possible available to everyone. So there is some coordination that’s involved, but it’s worth the effort.
Fowler: From our office’s perspective, one of the things our hourly staff struggled with was scheduling things with faculty for committees that I’m on or am organizing. Faculty are not required to use the campus scheduler, so having this option is useful. When we implemented Doodle, faculty were thrilled to have another tool to try and coordinate that.
Kelley: Our plans are to talk about more than just stand-alone tools; we will also discuss ‘tips and tricks’ and applications we all commonly use. For example, Loralyn Taylor is planning to talk about pivot tables in Excel, comparing lists of data with simple formulas, and other Excel functionality to save time.
What are you looking forward to at the Annual Meeting?
Fowler: I’m always glad to go to a FERPA session; I think we’re really lucky to have somebody like Leroy available to us to continue to present. You know I’ve been doing this job for some time now and I feel like I have a good handle on FERPA, but every time I go to one of his sessions I say ‘I need to think about how we’re handling that on my campus,’ something as little as that. So I always look forward to those.
Kelley: I would agree with that, and also add that just meeting colleagues and talking with them and hearing how things are at their institutions is valuable. I mean, we get so wrapped up into our own little offices and our own little unique institutional cultures that its really good to step back a little bit and see what others are going through and how they approach it. That’s always a learning experience to bring something back.
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