How Did I Get to be the Tech Person? A Pandemic Role Reversal

Deryn P. Verity

The Pennsylvania State University

During "remote times" we all found ourselves doing things that were new to us. This includes of course leading classes on Zoom or other video platforms, but it also--at least in my case and I believe in many other people's lives--meant interacting with people who were relatively (or completely) new to us in our professional contexts. For me this meant attending several seminars and workshops led by our Digital Pedagogy office; the people who ran the workshops were excellent in their presentation and I know they were suddenly and immeasurably over-worked as demand for remote instruction training jumped from 'occasional' to 'I need it now! And a lot of it!' Although I had a casual connection on a personal level with some of the trainers, I'd never really felt much of a need to use their professional services. Suddenly I was, like so many other people at my large public university, very much in need of those services.So: the role reversal. Through no intention and certainly no efforts of my own, I found that in the course of a few pandemic weeks I had become the "tech go-to person" in my department. There are a few obvious reasons for this and a few that are perhaps less obvious. In this presentation I will undertake to explore the role reversal from "reluctant tech user" to "department tech trainer" and how that journey has changed not only my teaching but also my sense of self and, to a small extent, my status in the department where I work.

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