Welcome to our NEW iSchool Help Desk monthly newsletter!! We will be using this to share updates about what we’ve been up to. Whether you’re a current student, faculty, or staff; or an alumni or friend of the iSchool Help Desk and want to keep in-the-know about us, we’re glad to have you! You can expect updates about the major initiatives and projects we are working on, pictures and updates from our fun social events, and anything else up and coming at the iSchool Help Desk!

Digital Accessibility

One of our biggest undertakings this semester has been to provide resources and support for the iSchool as it begins working to meet upcoming new federal accessibility standards. You can learn more about how the U of I is preparing for digital accessibility compliance here. Updating all course materials to meet these standards by April of next year is a big task, and we’re working in many different ways to provide support.

Our GAs have created workshops for faculty and Teaching Assistants about topics such as PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, and Canvas accessibility practices and tools. We are currently working on adapting these and recording them as videos so that these trainings can be taken on instructors own schedules. We are also working to create short videos about specific common accessibility issues and how to remedy them, as well as important tools that can be used while updating materials to be more accessible!

Keep an eye out for these materials, and feel free to reach out to us with any questions. We’re always happy to help!

March Madness- Battle of the Books!

For our own version of March Madness, we had a bracket-style battle of the book genres! Starting with 16 genres (fiction and non-fiction), we had the iSchool vote for their favorite literary genres at the Help Desk each week to narrow them down.

Book Genre Bracket at the Help Desk. There is a container with drawers that are labelled with different genres to place votes in, and a paper underneath showing the different genres that are facing off with each other.

And we finally have a winner! Drumroll……

Comics!!! Enjoy a picture of our display celebrating the iSchool’s chosen favorite genre! Thank you so much to everyone who passionately participated every week, had good-natured debates, and shared your voices with us!

Collage of comic-style illustrations. In a speech bubble it reads “Winner of the March Madness book genre bracket: comics! I came down to between history and comics, with one vote determining comics as the winner. Your vote matters! Thank you for playing!”. In another text bubble beneath, it reads “What are your favorite comics?”.

Accessibility Advocate Shoutouts

As mentioned above, we have been helping support the iSchool as they work towards more accessible class materials. We would like to celebrate those who have been stepping up to become Accessibility Advocates at the iSchool – whether they have been educating others about accessibility for years, or they’ve recently made the commitment to jump in and try their best, we think it’s important to recognize the effort and amazing impact that we can make as an iSchool community if we all do our part!

In March, we began spotlighting some of these advocates on a monthly basis. This is a great chance to recognize and uplift these efforts, to encourage one another as a community to keep striving, and to help students get to know our instructors a little better! Please check out our first shoutout from March, professor Steve Oberg, and keep an eye out for our next Advocate to be shared later in the week! Feel free to email us at ischool-support@illinois.edu to nominate any instructors and let us know their impact!

Check out the blog post here!

Black background with a spotlight, and a headshot of Steve Oberg in the center. It says “Steve Oberg” at the top and “March ’25” at the bottom.

Community Shelf Updates

As we shared last month, our GA Delia has created a wonderful community shelf with free items to share. It now has a lovely new Grateful Space shelf, where anyone can come and share something they are grateful for, a cute drawing, or anything else uplifting! Please feel free to come add to this positive community creation.

A shelf with a sign that reads “Grateful Space. This is a space to share things that make you happy on sticky notes, leave a doodle, and express your joy.” There are coloring pages, sticky note pads, and crayons on the shelf. Surrounding the sign are various sticky notes reading things like “I am grateful for movies”, “I am grateful for pasta”, “I’m grateful for my friends”, etc.

Help Desk Social Events

For this month’s social events for the Help Desk GAs, we went to two wonderful escape rooms at Champaign Urbana Adventures in Time and Space! In two teams we tackled the Forest of Fables and Rise of the Icarus escape rooms. Both teams made it out successfully (one team with only 30 seconds to spare!) and had a wonderful time!

Several Help Desk GAs & friends posing in front of a large storybook with various props from the escape room.

Several Help Desk GAs and friends posing with the spaceship set of their escape room (one of them is holding a rocket).

Ramadan Fast-Breaking

Here at the Help Desk, we are well-known for our free candy. At the suggestion of one of our GAs, the Help Desk has also decided to provide dates and water bottles in the evenings during the holy month of Ramadan for any iSchool friends who happened to be fasting. This is a traditional way of breaking one’s fast after the sun goes down during Ramadan. We always strive to be a welcoming space for all of our iSchool family, and we hope this was just one of many ways we are able to show that!

A water bottle, a bag of dates, and a sign that reads “Observing Ramadan? Please help yourself to complementary dates and water!” on the front of the Help Desk.

Job Search Updates

As they prepare to graduate very soon, our second-year GAs are all searching for jobs and trying to find out where they’ll end up next.

Audrey has had a couple of interviews and had another big interview this week. Wanheng has an all-day interview on May 2nd. Another GA has several interviews coming up, and shared this:

“The search process really takes long and the feeling of not being selected makes it longer and stressful. But I think the experience makes it worth it. I just will keep trying and trust God!”

We know they’ll all do an amazing job! Please join me in wishing them the best of luck! ❤️

New Graduate Assistants

Our Help Desk managers have interviewed and found 5 amazing new incoming students to hire as Graduate Assistants starting this Fall, to replace the fantastic GAs that we will be losing after graduation. We are so excited to welcome some new faces – stay tuned to find out more about them later and welcome them to the team.

Stormy Weather

So far, all of us at the Help Desk have been staying safe from the bad weather. We hope you are all staying safe and sound as well!

Welcome back, Ky!

Our beloved newest manager (Senior IT Specialist), Ky, has returned from parental leave and we are all so excited to have them back! They are glad to be back, and the new baby is doing well. Please enjoy a recent picture of their absolutely precious little ones.

Ky’s two-year-old child and 3-month old baby sitting on a couch together, looking precious.

Upcoming…

Thank you so much for reading our newsletter, and for all of your support! We are excited to be able to keep everyone updated on the fun things happening at the Help Desk and in our community. Keep an eye out for next month’s newsletter!