The need:
Due to the COVID pandemic and the lockdowns that ensued, there grew an urgent need to provide distance learning solutions for continued education within lesser-represented districts of San Antonio. As a result, the Connected Beyond the Classroom coalition was formed to tackle the digital divide. Various representatives within this coalition performed unique and important duties. Teams from Motorola built network towers, those from Netcloud supplied connectivity hardware for homes, while USAA and Methodist Healthcare Ministries provided the funding for the project. As a representative from Texas A&M-San Antonio, it was my duty to devise instructional modules to train help desk technicians who would go on to provide customer assistance and troubleshooting for various infrastructures that support online learning.

The Solution:
I developed over 20 eLearning modules and additional resources for the Connected Beyond the Classroom initiative. As a member of the the Digital Inclusion team, I organized asynchronous training on our learning management system. The topics in our instructional systems ranged from customer service and soft skills to complicated troubleshooting with advanced network systems. Throughout the projects, I interviewed IT subject matter experts and shadowed help desk technicians to ascertain strategic and practical methods for improving job performance. I also designed storyboards and developed iterations of prototypes. The tools I used consisted of Articulate 360, Camatasia, Adobe CC, Canva, and Blackboard. My modules consisted of case studies and scenario-based learning to prepare help desk technicians to provide excellent customer service for a variety of districts throughout San Antonio. My users were able to shave off minutes in ticket resolution times due to the quick reference resources and authentic scenario practices that my training system was able to provide.