Days One Through Thirty

Week one is entirely about structure. Before any student opens a ticket or configures a system, every student must know their role, understand their reporting relationship, have access to the ticketing system, and have read their role definition. The instructor should spend the first week establishing the language of the workplace, the organizational hierarchy, and the professional expectations that will govern the rest of the semester. Do not rush into technical work. The structure is the foundation, and a weak foundation produces a fragile model.

Week two introduces the first tickets. These initial tickets should be simple, well-defined, and achievable. The goal is not technical complexity — the goal is establishing the workflow. Students need to experience the full cycle of receiving a ticket, interpreting it, executing the work, documenting the resolution, and closing the ticket. That cycle should feel unfamiliar and slightly uncomfortable. That discomfort is the model beginning to work.

Week three focuses on accountability and role reinforcement. By week three, some students will be performing well in their roles and some will be struggling. This is the week to make role performance visible and to begin holding students accountable to their reporting relationships. Senior students should be addressing the performance of junior students. The instructor should be addressing performance at the role level, not the task level. The accountability structure should be doing real work by the end of week three.

Week four introduces the first rotation and reflection cycle. Students rotate to new roles, reflect on what they learned in their first role, and begin the process of building a second layer of experience. The reflection activity is important — it helps students develop the metacognitive awareness of their own development that professional growth requires. By the end of day thirty, the goal is a functioning structure, not a perfect one. If the roles exist, the tickets are flowing, and the students are beginning to hold each other accountable, the launch has succeeded.