Modern technological applications of colloidal suspensions for inkjet printing, photonic crystals, and micro/nano-scaled devices entail applications of surface confinement and significantly modify the packing structure of colloidal particles. However, the packing configuration and dynamics of colloidal suspensions under confinement is poorly understood. We have custom-built a colloidal force apparatus integrated with confocal laser scanning microscopy. Thus, we can simultaneously visualize the 3-D microstructure and motion of colloidal particles at a single-particle resolution and at real time, at rest and under shear excitation, while varying the gap spacing of two surfaces that confine a colloidal suspension in between two flat substrates. Studying the slow dynamics of confined suspensions allows us to probe the exact nature of packing configuration near the jamming transition. Recent experimental results have shown that impeded dynamics of rearrangement of clusters is strongly dependent on the compression load. Additionally, we employ a novel, home-designed micro-rheometer to shear confined suspensions out of equilibrium and measure their mechanical responses in conjunction with in situ observation of structural reorganization via confocal microscopy. We probe the linear and non-linear rheological behavior of confined colloidal suspensions when we vary shear frequency and amplitude independently. The rheology of colloidal suspensions confined at varied particle-layer thickness gives us insight into the mechanism of the jamming transition under confinement and upon shear, and the mechanical properties of jammed suspensions.