James+Manage+Change

The change – digitize the music library, and put all sheet music in a central database accessible to the faculty.


 * 1. Time Management** – student workers are sometimes viewed as immediate use resources for the faculty here, so it will be a challenge to allow them to manage their time effectively. I will have to act as a buffer between the workers and the faculty, and try to help them schedule times to get to the faculty requests in a timely fashion while not allowing those requests to distract from the project. Even if they are special assignment, paid out of a special budget just for this project, faculty will walk by and think of something they need done and use the worker as they want. Part of the key will be to give the student’s some models of responses to allow them to gently remind faculty that they are on a specific project and will note the faculty concern for the next open worker.
 * 2. Worker Engagement** – for effective use of the student worker’s time, the students need to be engaged in the project. No matter how you slice it, scanning documents and updating databases can be mind numbing and feel like “busywork” at times. The key challenge here is to get them involved in the whole process, let them see the purpose of the final product, and to see their usefulness in the process, and what they are contributing. At this point, I think its best to set the end goals as broad and flexible as possible, and let them determine the best course of action. I might have to provide an example of the way I would do the work, but give them freedom to experiment if they should think of a potentially better way.
 * 3. Faculty support** – Beyond getting the faculty to acknowledge the project, I will need them to respect the worker’s time and the effort needed to complete the process. This goes hand in hand with #1.
 * 4. Faculty Engagement** – a bit different than simple support for the project as it is ongoing – faculty engagement is needed after the project is done so that the project is not a waste of worker time and money. This might require a little bit of faculty input at the beginning of the project, and then publicizing the end result when they are done, and asking them how they might best use the new database.
 * 5. Administration Support** - in these tough economic times, the software to use might cost a bit of money. Certainly, the money for the extra student worker hours will have to come from administration, so this can be a big hurdle to clear before anything else happens.