Supervising During a Pandemic

Given a week turnaround during the COVID-19 Spring 2020 term, the DREAM Lab operations and management leaders, Kate Thornhill, Digital Scholarship Librarian, Anna Lepska, Digital Scholarship Specialist GE 2019-2020, and with administrative support from Franny Gaede, Head of Digital Scholarship Services, needed to pivot DREAM Lab student employment from DREAM Lab space management services.

Supervision and management of student employees took shape in a remote work environment. They supported the students in several ways while designing a term-based program focused on enhancing student employment experiences by working on digital scholarship projects. Projects that would be used to support digital librarian research and consultations with faculty and graduate students who keep digital scholarship support. The DREAM Lab supervision and management team outlined goals they had for the COVID-19 remote term with emphasis on emotional support and learning. The team chose an approach focused on compassion and whole-self care.

Since this experience was the first time students were working remotely, the librarian responsible for operations coordinated and implemented the following managerial support structures:

• Weekly one on one 30 minute check ins with students on MS Teams
• Remote DREAM Lab Students Worker FAQ
• COVID-19 Spring Term 2020-specific remote student employee on-boarding
• High recommendations to build in a 10-15 minute mindfulness meditation using UCLA’s Mindfulness Research Center’s publicly available audio recordings
• Daily shift checklists
• Daily reflection shift journals
• High level roadmap to identify deadlines throughout the term
• Explanations for using Google Drive to share documents and digital media

Throughout the term, DREAM Lab students worked on individual projects acquiring hands-on experience building digital projects with tools commonly applied to digital research within the humanities; gained practical data management skills for organizing, storing, and reusing digital information, including images, video, and audio; applying content developed for an original digital project that supports humanistic inquiry at the University of Oregon within a different technical platform; described how an original digital project is transformed through translation to a different digital platform; apply basic foundations for designing web wireframes; and communicate with DSS librarians and staff to reproduce specific digital projects designed to contribute to open education and research and the public good.

Shared Supervision Resources

DREAM Lab Official On-Boarding Checklist for Supervisors – Checklist for supervisors to use when getting students situated for working remotely

DREAM Lab Remote Work COVID-19 On-Boarding FAQ – This document is an FAQ for student workers working remotely.

DREAM Lab Remote Team Meeting Week 2 – 2 hour beginning of term schedule and activities team meeting

DREAM Lab Remote Work Shift Checklist – Shift checklist for all DREAM Lab student workers

Shift Journal Template – Journal template for students to use during each of their shifts. 

End of Term Reflections and Peer Review Assignment – Reflection questions and peer review assignment instructions for the end of term

End of Term Wrap Up Session – 2 hour end of term wrap up schedule and activities

UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Research Center – Recommended resource for students to use during every shift.

If you have any questions about these resources then reach out to Kate Thornhill, Digital Scholarship Librarian.

All documents are licensed with a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC licsense.