Work term reports

Introduction

This is going to be a blog post regarding my first co-op placement at the Computing and Communication Services(CCS) at the University of Guelph. It has been a wonderful 8 months working at CCS and I hope this short blog will provide a vivid picture of what I learnt during these months.

What is CCS?

The University of Guelph’s Computing and Communication Services is also referred to as “CCS”. They provides core IT services to the greater campus community. CCS undertook many projects that are intended to improve life on campus, aid the launch of new and innovative collaboration tools, and continuously monitors the cyber-security.

Their services include not only network connectivity, information security, software distribution but they also help to fulfill the additional technical needs for various departments across campus. One of the purposes of CCS that really got my attention is to improve the quality of lives by enabling our community with technology. This got me really excited as giving back to the community is something that I always look forward to.

My work at CCS

I was more on the front-line support group for the CCS, where everyday we would have to help clients with their daily IT troubles. I was appointed as a Student IT Consultant at CCS. Being on the front-line taught me a lot of things on the job but most of all, it provided me with the insight to solve real-life problems efficiently and make others life easier by educating them about the right way to use a certain tech. But amidst

COVID-19

, the situation was a little different.

For my work term, we were approved to start working from home. Working from home meant to be consciously responsible for the work that was being handed out to us and timely submitting them back, but then again being able to work in the comfort of your porch was a completely different experience. We were a team of four coop students working remotely during Summer 2020. As the summer semester kicked off, we were helping both students and faculty with the transition to online learning.

As part of the job description, I was expected to work with different operating systems, and I am glad to have worked with a couple of them beforehand. During my 2 years at the University, I learnt to work with Linux, Windows and MAC operating systems. Working with the Microsoft Office suite was a very common thing at the IT help centre and so having experience with was proved beneficial. We were also required to do some network troubleshooting especially Wi-Fi, this was something that I later on picked up while being in the job. Most importantly the job expected us co-ops to keep an open mind and use every opportunity to learn and grow with the values of CCS.

Work Term S20

Since this was going to be my first co-op semester, I went into the job being pretty excited. Summer was going by pretty fast, but with every passing week I knew I was gaining more experience than ever. It was finally time for me to apply the knowledge I got from the University and use them to solve real life problems.

Goals and learnings

Master multi-tasking to maintain productivity

Going into my first Co-op term, I wanted to be able to provide the best service I could to my employer. Working full-time provided me with lots of responsibilities and eventually I realised that it would best if I be able to multi-task. There would be times when I would have to search up multiple places to figure out the solution to a client’s issue. Moreover, if I feel resorting to multi-tasking was helped to maintain my productivity when working with clients, redesigning websites and making documentation to help others in the team.

Gain expertise over HTML, CSS and JavaScript

Since summer was fairly quiet at the University, our department decided to update some of the webpages. I already had a fair bit of interest in this project and so I got pretty excited on it. Going into the project I had minimum knowledge about HTML and hence I decided to dive more into this. I decided to research into HTML and CSS and used that knowledge to build my website. At the same time, I progressed a lot into redesigning some pages for the CCS. Refactoring HTML code, updating screenshots at certain pages and even updating information on some pages were some core responsibilities me and my team were assigned to complete. For my personal website, I was working with a friend as he was redesigning his website. Both of us collaborated to learn SASS and Bootstrap, which we later implemented in our websites.

Working towards achieving good communication skills

Communication is a key skill in our day-to-day life. Being able to convey our thoughts to others makes our life quite easier. In my line of work, when clients used to be on a call and ask for help, it would be upon us to use the best possible methods to make them understand how to troubleshoot their issue. I volunteered to go more on calls with clients which helped me polish my communication skills. I also actively participated in meetings with the team and that helped me to be able to openly communicate with each other. Building healthy relationships with your coworkers is a blessing and having good communication skills definitely helps the process.

Work Term F20

As the summer sun began to fade away, I quickly found myself working at the IT help centre for the Fall semester of 2020. It had been 4 months since I started working there and honestly I could confidently say that I was able to perform all my duities well. Since Fall 2020 was the first actual online semester, I was looking forward to see how things would turn out.

Goals and learnings

Learning to use various web conferencing tools

For both students and staff collaboration and continuous communication was key to get through the “online” semester. Hence web-conferencing tools proved to be the right tools to make communication easier and enhance teamwork. Meetings were being held via teams, online pols used to get staffs’ opinion on certain matter and a public group chat to make sure everyone in a team was on the same page.

While trying to troubleshoot through issues on these tools, I have come to realise that I have become quite comfortable using them. I feel like this would be an asset down the line as we move further towards 2021. I kept learning further by attempting to resolve more tickets regarding web-conferencing tools.

Usability testing new websites and software

A website when in its initial state can have a lot of issues to be honest and when a website is being used by a big organization, it is ideal to have almost everything on the website to be working as it should. Since most of our team members were Co-op students, we were able to provide our own, different views about the websites. When looking at websites, we focussed mostly on how the information should be put to catch the viewer’s attention and how to make it more the site more intuitive.

We have had little software testing done during my Fall Co-op term. This included running certain software on my machine and documenting the different behaviours I was exposed to when using the software. Documentation was pretty brief with steps I had taken leading to a certain behaviour and later a summary of how it affected the usability of the software. Usability testing is pretty important as they help to further enhance the user’s experience.

Adapting to corporate workplace culture

Being part of CCS has got me a lot closer to the corporate workplace culture during my stay in Canada. To me every workplace has a different culture it adheres to and it is always expected by employers that we maintain these cultures. In my time within CCS, I have experienced the ways our teams coordinate to do certain tasks and how learning these was crucial.

Learning to adapt a workplace’s culture not only benefits us during our tenure at the workplace, but it keeps a long-lasting effect on us. These values help to improve oneself professionally and later these may help me get comfortable with various workplaces and be able to maintain good comradery among all the places I become a part of.

Takeaways

Looking back at the past 8 months, it had been a wonderful expereience for me. One of the best experiences I have had was to be able to work in a team and collaborate to solve issues for clients. Learning to use html, css and drupal was another thrilling experience. Maybe I shall try to explore front-end technologies more in-depth and use it to create a side project.

It has also beeen bought to my attention that testing is a key part of a software product's lifecycle, both before and after it. Getting feedback from users could cause the software creator's to change their product to better accomodate the needs of the users. I have also found that working in a large department, there are certain values that stick on to you and these definitely helped me grow as a person.

Acknowledgements

I am very delighted to say that over the last couple of months I have been in “presence” of a lot of amazing people.

Firstly, I would like to extend my thanks to my Supervisor Jill Hogg for her continuous support and guidance throughout my work-terms. The folks at the help centre namely, Aleshia, Etta and Haniya also deserve my deepest gratitude as they helped make my transition to the work life a lot easier. Lastly, I wish to thank my fellow team members: Will Hawkins, Jaspreet Lall and Adam Sheere-Paulicipulle. Each of them supported me throughout the last few months and I wish them all best in their future endeavours.

To my Manager Brian Thomson, it was an amazing experience to learn about the core values of CCS from you and I wish to keep them in my heart always.

To Laura Gatto and Kate McRoberts, I am thankful to have been under your supervision while securing my co-op.

Lastly, I would like to thank my parents, siblings and friends for their continuous support throughout my journey and I shall continue to work hard and make them proud of me.