Development & Implementation Meeting Update October 8, 2009
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms, D&I , 1 comment so farI thought it would be useful to give a quick overview of the “Development and Implementation” meetings just to keep you all up-to-date with the main discussions that are taking place and plans for activities. If you want more information have a look at the action points in the share wiki on the Actions Register Page.
Pilots:
- Trevor Pull Schools of Arts and Humanities provided an overview of the LOR to Jon Fletcher Academic Liaison Librarian
- Jon is putting information literacy content for the School of Science and Technology in the LOR and Trevor has put a health safety guide in the the Arts and Humanities School LOR
- It was mentioned that student support documentation would be useful in the LOR as well as staff development material
Copyright:
- We are going to review the Copyright Checklist that we put together for roll out of our VLE
Workshop
- We have a commitment to run a workshop before Christmas to provide an overview of the LOR and discuss sharing content we want do one at each University campus – which means 3. I will be setting up a meeting to discuss this.
- In preparation we are going to identify other repositories of learning content
Metadata
- University has an eLearning User Forum and somebody mentioned yesterday that it would be useful to browse on Programme/Module codes as this gives an indication of subject and level. We had a discussion on where it would best sit e.g. taxonomy field we thought it would be useful to look at the possibility of autopopulating from a data source. We will discuss this further with our colleagues at D2L, Yvonne and Ian.
Making content publicly available
- We discussed options for making content available outside of LOR e.g. IRep and JORUM and this will be investigated more fully as part of the implementation as it is an identified requirement.
Development and Implementation Wider Group
- The next D & I meeting will include academic and service reps from across NTU. We want to make the formats of these meeting thematic with an update at the beginning. The first one will provide an overview the LORs and roles and permissions.
I would be more than happy to receive any comments on the above and as I said at the beginning more details can be found in the WIKI.
Development & Implementation Awayday July 31, 2009
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms, D&I , 1 comment so far
L-R: Vicki McGarvey, Trevor Pull, Anna Armstrong, Marek Oledzki, Sue McKnight, Barry Gregory, Lisa Warburton, Angela Trikic, Helen Adey, Sharon Potter
In the first part of the day, Marek provided an overview of our Communications strategy, Trevor, gave an overview of trusts within the LOR, Lisa demonstrated our institutional repository, iREP http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/R?RN=472560279 and I gave a brief overview of JORUM.
After Coffee we broke out into groups, each group was named after a famous potter/pottery, Wedgwood (Josiah) Cliff (Clarice) Moorcroft (William) , an attempt to bring to the event something relating to my Stoke-on-Trent roots. The first activity required groups to come up with 5 issues that we will need to address with our project pilots. We used an approach that Sue McKnight has regularly used at our Library awaydays, brainstorming with Post-its. It goes something like this, each individual within the group writes his or her issues/ideas/thoughts on a Post-it, one Post-it for each. Then the group together consolidates all the issues that individuals have noted into themes, this has been described as the enzyme approach, the rationale being that eventually this will facilitate the identification of issues for the whole group…I think a demonstration of this technique would make a nice learning object, but that’s for another day.
After lunch, remaining in our groups we identified 5 activities that we would need to undertake when rolling out training and support, group were asked to put their activities in order of priority – again using the approach above. This was followed by a brainstorm on how to develop and enhance our relationships with projects within the inf11 programme and with D2L. Then a brief demo of the LOR. Then the intensive day was concluded with an overview of the LOR roadmap by Yvonne.
I would like to thank everybody for their enthusiastic contributions during the day, we successfully collated some useful observations and creative ideas that will inform the work of the Development and Implementation workpackage. These will be typed up and will be made pubicly available via our WIKI and our Blog. Despite the miserable weather we are experiencing at the moment I finished yesterday with quite a sunny disposition.
Projects start-up meeting Information Environment 2009-11 & Virtual Research Environment July 22, 2009
Posted by sarahhorrigan in : D&I , add a commentAttended this event at Leicester University, with Angela Trikic (acting project lead) and Jon Tepper (Requirements Gathering wp lead). This get together was kick-started by a ginormous electrical storm, with the largest crack of thunder I have heard for a long time. JISC could not have planned it better. There were lots of useful presentations crammed into the day and a half. Excellent advice on project management and how to stay in touch with your progamme manager, from phone to tweets, including reporting on the good, the bad and the ugly. Some compelling if mind boggling stuff from the VRE (Virtual Research Environment) Programme http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/vre2.aspx JISC had also pulled out the stops in relation to getting us all talking and sharing. Including on the first night a dance card with a list of related projects that you should hook up with. This was followed by each project providing a 30 second pitch the next day, a pack of plain cards was used to determine the order – very clever, we were 2 of diamonds, I think we did it in 26 seconds – no prize but all 3 of us were involved, we got a positive comment on our collaborative approach. With respect to our project it was reassuring to know that we are heading in the right direction. The particular things that I came away with were:
- think of your audience when describing your project
- try connect with other projects that are undertaking similar activities
- think about using critical friends or get an outsider to review some of your outputs
- think about how to make your reports interesting – use a narrative
- consider how you can change your users from being passive to creative.
Overall a very useful if intensive event. I always like the novelty factor of staying in student accommodation. I also managed to do some post conference tweets. I feel all enthused now to start working. It’s amazing what the impact of an electrical storm can have.
Development & Implementation Workpackage Group Away Day July 21, 2009
Posted by moledzki in : D&I , add a commentThe Development & Implementation (D & I) Workpackage Group have announced an away day which all D & I workpackage members and all work package leads are encouraged to attend.
Details as follows:
- Date: 30th July 2009
- Time: 9:30 – 16:00
- Location: Park Row 515
- Aim: to formalise and plan for the milestones on the WorkPackage plan
- Agenda: TBA
For further details, please contact vicki.mcgarvey@ntu.ac.uk
