Personal Statement:
Were I to sum up my responsibilities as a digimentor in one sentence it would probably be to help bridge the gap between Conservatoire Students and The TEL department. This can be as simple as making sure people have up to date versions of the assignment guidelines and all the information it contains, as long as knowing that information myself so as to best help people if they do so struggle with an assignment. However at times it also requires assisting students with technical problems they face on the Conservatoires systems such as Space or Office 365, and teaching them about the systems they might have to use more during assignment season such as MyPortfolio (soon to be replaced with show), this is usually done via social media content produced and edited by the digimentors based on dispatched briefs from the TEL department. To put all this more succinctly I would say ultimately it’s a communicative job, that requires a communicative skillset, alongside the ability to ascertain technical knowledge and a small understanding of social media content creation.
Portfolio:
Social Media Content
The earliest content I made for the Conservatoire was a series of videos published during the assignment season of 2023. These were scripted, then filmed and then edited in collaboration with 2 other Digimentors and served to remind people: Where to find assignment support, to pick up copies of the assignment guidelines, the software they had access to as students, how to add videos to myportfolio pages, and how to submit assignments. The tone of these videos was consciously humorous and influenced by the editing style of short form content like Instagram reels and TikTok with use of jump-cuts, sped up footage and, ‘Goofy’ sound effects.
These videos were a huge success! They consistently used the conservatoire branding, were funny and readable and contained relevant information to the time of year they were produced in.
Attached here is a screenshot from our MyPortfolio video, more from this series can be found on the @lifeatleedsconservatoire instagram page.
I made further content for the instagram including a ‘systems week’ campaign where I made introductory guides to the conservatoires systems. Including information such as where to find Lectures on Panopto.
This video was recorded, edited and had graphic design done completely by me in my own time, an important part of this video to me was the accessibility of it, presenting the information in appealing way that fits the branding of our Instagram page while still ensuring that it was communicated in a way that everyone could understand and utilize. Ultimately I succeeded in this, but there have been times as a digimentor that I’ve failed.
Attached here is a screenshot from a video I made about the file formats that assignments uploaded on Space took (i.e. not apple pages), and also to tell people to properly read the assignment brief to be sure they were uploading what they were meant to upload. However, my attempts at visual comedy in this video (including a green screened explosion effect, scrolling latin text, and stock vine sfx) led to it being less accessible than past content I’ve made and this version of the video couldn’t be uploaded.
I later managed to balance this communicative, accessible but still attention grabbing and funny tone in my video about plagiarism and academic misconduct made over the Christmas period of 2023.
This format was where I hit my stride as a content creator, and I utilised this general aesthetic for the rest of my content on the Instagram.
Life Posts
I’ve made a total of three life posts as a digimentor, however I also utilize the system myself and I think this lends to my use of it in a professional context. I will attach my digimentor posts below and then expand on/evaluate them:
- https://life.leedsconservatoire.ac.uk/producers-and-punks-heed-free-magazines/
- https://life.leedsconservatoire.ac.uk/life-a-beginners-guide/
- https://life.leedsconservatoire.ac.uk/stuck-on-space-were-here-to-help/
Two of these posts are directly information based, providing guides on how to use Life itself, and where to find help on Space and the other is to bring attention to students access to magazines which reads more casually as a sort of blog post. After this I also used Space to foster musical collaborations personally, however in a sense I’d like to think of this as a continuation of my role as a digimentor as students might see my posts and be encouraged to make similar posts themselves, broadening their understanding of Life.
Support Interactions at drop ins:
The thing I do most for people is help them access the conservatoire wifi, or their student emails. This is the most common occurrence at my drop ins, however some more specific help I have given includes: Assisting someone struggling with formatting their myportfolio page (resizing images, moving headings and having text display next to embedded media), Helping someone set up their camera with panopto (quite tricky as they’d somehow managed to disable it in their laptops device manager), showing people how to compress their files for assignments that want them to do so, or so they can send them over WeTransfer, and showing someone how to post an ad for their band on Life.
Support outside of drop ins:
Because people recognize me as a digimentor (funnily sometimes more than they do as an actual student) I’m often asked to assist people with certain things when I have free time on site. People understand the role demands that I’m generally tech savvy so they might ask for assistance with graphic design software on their laptops, setting up daws, helping them prepare for video assignments, but also more general things like pointing them in the direction of the TEL office or helping them get on WIFI.
Attached here are some glowing testimonials from students:
Library counter shifts:
In addition, my role as a digimentor often opens up the opportunity more part-time work within the conservatoire; I am a regular member of casual staff at the library following my position as a digimentor, a job that requires me to administer id’s to external members, close and open the library, handle book reserves, reshelf and organise book returns, support students who are struggling with the libraries resource (a carry over skill from my digimentoring I’m sure), and handle the checking in and out of books. In addition to this, I’m also technically a member of the facilities desk’s casual staff, but I’m yet to do a shift.
Reflective thoughts on wordpress:
How did I find using wordpress?
The general process of making this portfolio was intuitive enough. Galleries automatically formatted themselves in a way that I wanted them too, it was far easier to decide and change block type than it was in myportfolio and the UX generally feels more snappy and modern however pressing enter to add a block, then having to change it manually to a heading or media block feels cumbersome, I wish there were a keyboard shortcut that could bring up the content block menu whenever adding a new block like shift+enter or alt+enter or something.
Are there any aspects I prefer in WordPress over MyPortfolio?
The ability to link boxes and adjust the layout/weighting is amazing and makes for cleaner looking subheadings.
Are there any features that you miss from myPortfolio?
Yes, to me the most obvious thing is the ability to scale videos and text boxes, It’s quite frustrating to have a heading to the side of a block of text and not be able to adjust the size of the actual blocks themselves, leading to quite difficult to read text.
What support do you think students will need when using WordPress?
I think at the least an aggregate of in depth video tutorials, this is only the open alpha and I allready feel pretty out of my depth. So just a place where they can see someone run through the basics, and maybe even some more interesting stuff like how to make their portfolios look prettier with some basic web design. I guess my only fear is that people might think this is an obligation, rather than just a feature of wordpresses tools.
What do you expect to see in the user-interface when complete?
A style tab most apparently, when in the blocks submenu of the left column it says, “Looking for other block settings? They’ve moved to the styles tab.” Which I can’t see yet. I also keep hitting the lcon logo in the top left thinking it’ll take me to the blocks menu. So maybe that could be on the right side of the screen instead, or have text as part of its design so it’s more clear what it does.
Which device(s) and browsers did you access the site on? How well did they work?
A windows laptop running Firefox, and an arch-linux desktop running Brave Browser. Both devices worked flawlessly for viewing and editing my portfolio. Even resizing the windows everything scales in a way that makes sense.
Which content blocks did you find useful?
Media galleries appear to make far more sense and look far better than they ever did in my portfolio so I’d have to say them I do, however, also like the heading blocks and how easy they are to change style of.
Do you like the name Show?
I don’t think it’s very indicative of what the software actually is, and I think it’s too abstract a word for people to immediately associate it with the website more than any other context they might read ‘show’ in, unlike Space or Life.
What would you call it?
Tell or Tell-it, just because show made me think of show and tell and I think the idea of it being a platform for oration fits Tell better. Show would be better suited for panopto.
