Institutional Innovation

What is going on in BRII

March 3, 2010 – 11:38 am

Since September we have been carrying out user tests of the Oxford Blue pages. These tests have been very useful to improve the Blue Pages usability and to get the perspectives of potential users. These perspectives were not limited to the Blue Pages but to the BRII registry. After seeing the Blue Pages testers asked about the sources of data and the processes of updating these in the registry.

By Cecilia | Posted in event, user tests | Tagged BRII | Comments (0)

The BRII Project Use Cases Report is ready

March 3, 2010 – 11:37 am

The BRII Project Use Cases report is ready and available in PDF format from here. The Use Cases report contains four short, business-style use cases illustrating the uses and benefits of the BRII project outputs.Any comments about the report are welcome. (Click on comments below or email me.)

By Cecilia | Posted in report, use cases | Tagged BRII | Comments (0)

Project Evaluation

March 3, 2010 – 11:35 am

We just finished our Project Evaluation report. The project’s summative evaluation took place on the 19th of February and was directed by Neil Beagrie from Charles Beagrie Ltd. As part of this evaluation Neil ran an online survey with a sample of our interviewees and testers. The results were very positive. We chose people who knew about BRII and who had at least seen a demo or tested the Blue

By Cecilia | Posted in Evaluation, blue pages | Tagged BRII | Comments (0)

Update

March 1, 2010 – 5:27 pm

With the end of the JISC-funded phase of the project approaching at the end of March, I’m involved in making sure things (e.g. project documentation) are ready for this milestone. The following is a small selection of other things I’ve been involved in: helping put together the draft final report; arranging our latest (senior management) advisory board meeting last week; giving a presentation on EASIHE at the University of Warwick; and helping Bournemouth and Poole college use our software.

By db1f08 | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged EASiHE | Comments (0)

December 09 Projects

February 26, 2010 – 10:30 am

We are pleased to have final agreement to fund five projects submitted in December before the funding freeze.

BR1c-01 The ASSET Project, University of Reading, will be working with several institutions and existing networks around using technology to provide better feedback to learners. They aim to engage senior learning and teaching staff within several institutions through a series of workshops and seminars to share the benefits of the ASSET project and the experience of several other institutions, leading to further take-up. The project will produce web based resources which will be made available to other institutions.

BR1c-02 The iBorrow Project, Canterbury Christ Church University, will consult with several institutions and agencies such as UCISA to develop a business-case evaluation on the value-for-money of the use of netbook computer loans against competing technologies. The project will work with Directors of Information Services to review the approach and produce resources to support other institutions.

BR1c-03/04 The EREWHON project, University of Oxford, will support take-up of the mobile portal as developed in the EREWHON project and implement it to the same service level at Oxford Brookes University. The project will also refine and package the code base for the mobile portal framework so that it can be used freely by other institutions.

BR1c-05 The TAG Project, University of Central Lancashire, will work with several institutions to explore how social networking, the internet, mobile technology, etc. (i.e. TAG) can support international students and students from diverse ethnic backgrounds and to develop and improve content and resources to be used on sites such as TAG to support these groups of students.

Further details will be able on the Phase1c Projects in the projects database or from the individual projects. Please contact me (paul@jisc-ssbr.net) if you want any further information.

By paul | Posted in Funded Projects | Tagged Benefits Realisation | Comments (0)

Institutional Repositories: acceptance and adoption

February 25, 2010 – 1:09 pm

I have been reading some literature about institutional (digital) repositories. I am interested in the human and social issues surrounding their development and implementation as well as their embedding. I think this literature is very relevant to BRII as it reports experiences in similar implementations (not necessarily technically but conceptually) in similar kinds of institutions.Technically

By Cecilia | Posted in advocacy, heterogeneity, research activity data, stakeholder analysis | Tagged BRII | Comments (0)

BETA System Development – February 2010

February 25, 2010 – 12:05 pm

Development has been continuing this month. Still focusing on the administrative side of it. I’m basically designing the system to be able to design a branched step processes in order to accomodate the APEL process we have designed but also to allow modification and support for multiple processes.

The way it works is each step has a title, content and a number of links or options. In addition to this tasks can be added.

Within a task people can be set roles, e.g. Tutor interviews student. Student completes form, etc. In addition to this resources can be added to the step such as a document, web link, etc. I’m hoping this will cover everything we need for PINEAPPLE whilst allowing additional flexibility if others want to use the system.

I aim to start focusing on the front end of the system once I am able to fully input and manage a process. I estimate this will be around the end of March but possibly sooner.

Completed Developments this month

Admin – Add, Delete, make admin (Users)
Process Manager – Create, edit processes
Process Designer – early development started. Interface and basic functionality
Improved CSS menu system
General Database design improvements

By Rob Stillwell | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged PineAPPLe | Comments (0)

Uncovering User Perceptions of Research Activity Data

February 22, 2010 – 2:38 pm

I recently wrote a paper about the user testing of the Oxford Blue Pages. It has been published in Ariadne in their January 2010 issue. Here you have a link to the article in Ariadne www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue62/loureiroKoechlin The title is Uncovering User Perceptions of Research Activity Data. I chose that title to emphasise the aspect of the user testing which we think helped us the most to

By Cecilia | Posted in blue pages, dissemination, user tests | Tagged BRII | Comments (0)

iBorrow wins Award for Excellence

February 22, 2010 – 11:20 am

Press release – Canterbury Christ Church University wins Award for Excellence

The annual UCISA Higher Education Award for Excellence, sponsored by Eduserv, has been won this year by Canterbury Christ Church University. The Award seeks to recognise and highlight levels of excellence and best practice that currently exist and are demonstrated by UCISA members within the UK higher and further education sectors.

Canterbury Christ Church’s submission focused on the development of the iBorrow scheme. The aim of the project was to introduce a self service laptop loan scheme to a new £35M library and student services centre. Once the loan service had been introduced, the project looked to collect a range of empirical data using wireless technology to determine how students were engaging with different learning spaces and technology. The data will then be used to inform future learning space design and developments.

On hearing of the University’s success, Dr Keith Gwilym, Pro-Vice Chancellor (Learning & Quality) commented:

“Canterbury Christ Church University is delighted to have won this year’s UCISA Award for Excellence. The iBorrow project has been a great success for the University and winning this award is a reflection of the innovation and hard work put in by the project team.“

Christine Sexton, Chair of UCISA, who also chaired the judging panel, added:

“the project clearly meets a business need by providing access to laptop technology to a university population where laptop ownership is not common.”

Stephen Butcher, Chief Executive of sponsors Eduserv, commented:

“the consideration of staff time as an important cost to be addressed helped make the case for a project that is already realising benefits.”

The entry from Queen Margaret University, which focused on the implementation of a fully integrated student, visitor and staff smartcard for use across the institution, was highly commended.

Christine Sexton concluded:

“The Award once again attracted high quality submissions in a variety of areas which highlights the top quality innovative work that our members undertake in their institutions”.

Notes

UCISA, the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association, is the key membership organisation representing those responsible for delivering information systems and technology services in universities, colleges and related institutions. One of UCISA’s fundamental aims is to identify and disseminate best practice in the promotion and use of information systems, services and technologies in UK Higher and Further Education. The awards given by UCISA represent one strand of this activity.

Visit www.ucisa.ac.uk or contact Anna Mathews, Assistant Executive Secretary, UCISA, University of Oxford, 13 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6NN, tel. 01865 283425, email execsec@ucisa.ac.uk

Eduserv is dedicated to developing and delivering technology services for education and the public sector. As a not-for-profit organisation and registered charity, we fulfil our mission by providing services for the public benefit.

Visit www.eduserv.org.uk or contact Andrew Tavener at Eduserv, Royal Mead, Railway Place, Bath, BA1 1SR, tel: 01225 474300, email: andrew.tavener@eduserv.org.uk

For information about Canterbury Christ Church University, see http://www.canterbury.ac.uk or contact Lucy Marsden, Corporate Communications Assistant, Department of Marketing, Canterbury Christ Church University, Rochester House, St. Georges Place, Canterbury, CT1 1UT, tel: 01227 782826, email: lucy.marsden@canterbury.ac.uk

By Wayne Barry | Posted in award, canterbury christ church university, eduserv, iborrow, project, team, ucisa | Tagged iBorrow | Comments (0)

Scoring and Criteria

February 16, 2010 – 3:15 pm

Marking within e-Assignment takes the form of a series of criteria, each of which has a weighting. Scores awarded to criteria are combined with the weighting to create an overall percentage (where necessary this percentage can subsequently be converted to a letter grade). If more ‘old fashioned’ marking is needed, this can of course be achieved by having only one criteria (scores A,B,C,D,E,F corresponding to appropriate percentages of course).

In our previous work on e-Assignment handling and marking we initially only had support for one kind of scoring. This was via radio buttons. Each criteria for an assignment had the same number of descriptors (and therefore buttons). This was usually deployed with 6 values, thus the radio buttons would be 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20% and 0% of the weighting for that criteria.

This is of course very limiting, particularly if you are marking on few criteria. The range of marks being so few it is difficult to distinguish between students – particularly if you have a small cohort.

So an extension was developed to allow markers to enter their own value rather than use the radio buttons. This brought its own issues where markers were unclear as to whether this value (that they could enter) was out of 100% (which it was) or was out of the total weighting for that specific criteria (e.g. 30% weighting meant numbers 0-30 could be entered).

To maintain flexibility and reduce confusion this project is deploying radio buttons (much as before) and (instead of a textbox) a slider normalised to the weighting of the criteria – the currently selected value being displayed. In addition to this each criteria for an assignment may have differing numbers of descriptors (obviously where the slider is used descriptors will have less use). We believe this gives the most flexibility so that where descriptors/few possible ’scores’ for a criteria exist radio buttons can be used, but where more granularity is needed a slider can be used instead.

We’d be interested to hear about any other scoring mechanisms used in the past (not just online of course). Also as far as I’m aware we’ve never used non-linear marking (although scoring doesn’t always start at 0% and finish at 100%) so it would be interesting if anyone has done something like that before.

By peterg | Posted in marking | Tagged eAssignment | Comments (0)