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Brightspace Innovation Grant powers cross-campus service desk onboarding and collaboration

A new Brightspace onboarding course developed through a Brightspace Innovation Grant is strengthening how Purdue prepares student workers for success in IT Service Desk roles—while showcasing the impact of thoughtful, cross-campus collaboration.  
 
Led by Purdue IT’s Digital Learning Solutions Director Katie Brown, the project brings together faculty, staff, student workers and education majors from across three campuses to develop a Brightspace course for onboarding the student employees who support campus technology services.  

  • Faculty: Matthew Perkins Coppola, Purdue Fort Wayne; Suzanne Pfeiffer, Purdue Northwest 
  • Purdue IT Staff: Jill Lynn, Chris Hallenbeck and Dylan Stroder 
  • Student Worker: Alex Sharpe, Purdue Northwest 
  • Education Majors: Addison Black, Purdue Northwest; Jubee Lipa, Purdue Fort Wayne 

The course establishes a consistent foundation of knowledge, expectations, and confidence for new hires, while still honoring the distinct operational needs of each campus. 

Development work began following grant approval, with planning and proposal efforts in fall 2024 and course building ramping up in summer 2025. The education majors worked directly with the service desk employees through the fall to design practical, relevant, and learner-centered course content, contributing their expertise in online pedagogical design under the supervision of their faculty mentors. Weekly project meetings served to inform each iteration and keep the project on pace.  
 
The resulting course was used this spring to onboard six new hires on the PFW and PNW campuses. Addison and Jubee conducted focus groups with the hires on their respective campuses, providing valuable insights into how to further improve the course as well as how courses for additional IT units might be added. With the first phase completed ahead of schedule, the team plans to extend onboarding content into IT Networking—demonstrating how this collaborative model can scale to support broader training and workforce development across the university.