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As the university’s central service provider, the IT Center is responsible for information technology and university-wide IT supply at RWTH Aachen University. In between the digital management of studies, RWTH employees such as trainees also depend on the digital services provided by the IT Center. For work in the office and from home, prerequisites must be met to ensure trouble-free communication and work.
To meet these requirements and also to make it easier for new incomers to get started with the IT Center’s digital offerings, the “About IT Module” was launched in 2015 in cooperation with the Berufsausbildungszentrum (BAZ).
What is the About IT Modul?
To meet these requirements and also to make it easier for new incomers to get started with the IT Center’s digital offerings, the “About IT Modul” was launched in 2015 in cooperation with the Berufsausbildungszentrum (BAZ). This is aimed specifically at all RWTH trainees who started their office management training in one of the many institutes last year. Within the module, content is taught that enables the independent setup and management of services, such as programs for telephony and basic knowlegde in digital infrastructure.
The speakers of the module
A special feature of this module is that the lectures are not only held by an experienced employee of the IT Center, but also actively integrate the prospective business people in dialog marketing from the Service & Communication department as part of their training. In addition to the commercial knowledge, the trainees thus have the opportunity to improve their communicative strengths and gain valuable experience along the way.
Implementation during the Corona pandemic
In the new year 2022, the About IT Module had to be held digitally again due to the ongoing Corona pandemic – Microsoft Teams provided the digital connection between the 20 participants and the speakers.
After the welcome and the presentation of the essential information about the IT Center itself, the introduction of the services continued. Among other things, the self-administration of personal data in SelfService was demonstrated, it was explained how to search for specific information in IT Center Help, our public documentation platform, and a lot of information about cyber security was imparted. The participants were shown how to recognize typical SPAM and phishing emails and how to deal with them.
To make the module more exciting in digital form, the trainees were brought on board. Where otherwise the walk through the aixCAVE and the machine hall with our high-performance computer CLAIX-2018 provided variety, the speakers encouraged themselves and the participants to tell little anecdotes about their own experiences. To keep the attention, some questions about the content of the module were addressed to the participants and interactive exercises were built into RWTHmoodle, where the previously acquired knowledge could be directly put to the test.
At the end of the module, the permanent employee of the IT Center took over again. He illustrated the history of the computer and introduced basic concepts of network technology.
Résumé of the module
In the end, everything worked perfectly without any technical difficulties and there was a good flow of information based on a relaxed exchange at eye level between the participants and the speakers.
We very much hope that the office management trainees also enjoyed the module, took away a lot of new insights and information, and can now use the knowledge they have gained to help themselves.
Responsible for the content of this article are Madeline Lebrun and Martin Pieters.
