Customer Spotlight: Jill Abney

College/Unit: Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching

Describe what you and/or your team does at UK.

My Presentation U team provides free peer tutoring for multimodal communications assignments (speeches, presentations, essays, infographics, etc.). As assistant director of Presentation U, I oversee the direction of the speaking center and the hiring and training of our undergraduate tutors. As an instructional consultant for the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT), I work directly and collaboratively with faculty to help create engaging, innovative, and inclusive learning environments. CELT seeks to support excellence in teaching and learning through consultations, special programming, and meaningful conversations.

Talk about the ways you’ve collaborated with ITS and how it impacted your work.

Two ways I’ve collaborated with ITS recently include planning and leading the Microsoft Teams Open Lab on “Teaching with Teams and OneNote” and partnering with the Student Media Depot @ The Hub to make our services more available and apparent to students. 

As faculty and instructor interest in using Microsoft 365 for teaching increases, I wanted to offer a session that allowed faculty who had been using Teams and OneNote to share their examples and experiences with their colleagues. So many of our faculty are doing innovative things and by establishing a platform for sharing those experiences, we empower others to use those tools in unique ways. The ITS folks hosted our CELT session on their established Open Labs platform. As a result, instructors from across the disciplines were able to share their current uses of Teams and OneNote with each other and answer questions from colleagues across campus. Nicolas and Marci with ITS helped with production and promotion of the event. 

At Presentation U, UK’s speaking center, we share many of the same goals as the student Media Depot. We both rely on undergraduate tutors and consultants to support students with their assignments. So we often work together to help students learn about our services. In August of 2019, our Presentation U/Media Depot K Week Hub event drew over 200 students. Partnerships with ITS and the Media Depot help us as we strive to support both students and instructors.