All in a day's work

---

Roger Discombe has worked in the Computing Service since 1974. He leads the Information and Training team, whose job is to make students and staff aware of computing facilities on campus and ensure that users are able to exploit them fully.

The job's enjoyable because it's changed so dramatically. Twenty-five years ago there was a very small number of users (primarily science researchers). The big change was when PCs came in, during the 1980s: the undergraduates and staff in the arts area started using computers. We've had to cope with increased numbers of people without an increase in staff.

There are four of us in the Information and Training Team, which is part of the User Services Group.

Sandy Radford runs the basic IT training, covering things like word processing, spreadsheets, email, the World Wide Web and bibliographic databases. In conjunction with the Library, we run a great deal of courses at the beginning of the academic year and then continue through the year. They're mostly held in the evenings and at weekends, so they don't interfere with the students' normal term-time schedule.

Jason Bailey provides more advanced training, primarily for postgraduates and staff. For example, research students need to know how to manage long documents in Word, so that they can write their dissertations. He also trains staff to use the Access database and things like PowerPoint, or more advanced use of Excel.

Chris Limb makes sure all the online information is kept up to date, both on the Web pages and on the Message of the Day. If anything important happens, we send a message out, and it's flashed to all the students using our PCs. He also produces leaflets and publicity for the training we provide.

Among many other things, I update the self-help information sheets, which are available in print and on the Web. Most are done by the expert in their field in the Computing Service, and then what I do is try and look at it from a user's point of view and remove the jargon.

I also produce the monthly Computing Service newsletter, which is available in print but is primarily an online document now. The A4 sheet gives brief information, and people can look at the online version for details.

One thing Chris and I did last summer was to make our Web pages - www.sussex.ac.uk/USCS/ - more accessible. They were originally an online version of our annual printed guide and they carried that structure with them. Now there's a lot more user information, as well as downloadable software and search facilities.

We've all got our particular roles, but we do cover for each other. We're all involved with answering user queries either at the Help Desk or by email. Also we're involved in different projects. For example, Chris led the project to reorganise the ground floor of Chichester 1 last summer; Jason is involved in an internal inventory project; and I am chairing a project to introduce a new user registration scheme.

When I'm on the Help Desk and I advise students how to produce well-presented assignments and the importance of making back-up copies of their work, I am actually speaking with practical knowledge and feeling, because I am currently taking an MA in Information Management at the University of Brighton. I am about to start my dissertation, for which I will be researching whether better user services have resulted at universities that have merged their library and computing services. I am looking forward to reading my conclusions!

I also get away from the office every lunchtime, when I run three to four miles. There are four regular runners in the Computing Service. The others are somewhat younger and faster than me, so they only go with me when they want a good chat or an easy day.

Running's very useful because the problem with this job is that you just firefight. If you go for a run, you have space to think about the implications of the problem.

In the Computing Service we all try to provide to users the best service we can, with the equipment we've got. People want as good a service as they think they're entitled to, while we give as good as we are able to. They're not necessarily the same!

From left: Chris Limb, Jason Bailey, Sandy Radford and Roger Discombe.