Audience consultation

I've been thinking... I know, dangerous, but someone has to do it!

Rather than stick out a very linear survey trying to guage audience perceptions about a web site that some may know well, and others not at all, I thought we might try and get some more qualitative data by conducting short (3 minute) interviews or gathering data via discussion boards.

The two target student groups I was thinking of was Fastrack (new to EHU, possibly new to study, mature and enthusiastic, Undergraduate) and distance learning students at all levels, Undergraduate and Postgraduate. With Fastrack, we could follow their study in that they start next week and will be introduced to the LS pages as part of induction, and then interview the same students again at the end of the course, asking what it was that was missing from the pages (when they've got more of an idea of what they need).

In addition we could post to the GO discussion board.

Does anyone have any questions that we could use to start a conversation with our audiences?

Do some of you have an hour or two spare next week to hold a clipboard and ask?

Are You There?

Poor 'Walter' has been a bit neglected so attention all!

I thought that once you dipped your 'toe' into the 'blog water', you might perhaps consider posting a thought or two on the subject of the LS website. So by way of an 'ice breaker', all you have to do is reply to this thread...

What type of 'blogger' are you?

Do you read any? Do you write your own? Do you comment on other people's? Or, is this your first interaction with a blog?

You don't need to write much. It's a register really to make sure you can all find 'Walter' before we really get going!

PS. If you need any help email me.

Meg.
:-)

Project Rationale

One of my action points following the last meeting was to 'Champion the Blog'. So, faced with trying to encourage you all to use it, I guess I'd better set an example and get started!

I thought I'd start with a quick recap.

What are the current problems with the LS website?

The LS site is:

· Inaccurate

· Incomplete (information gaps)

· Difficult to navigate

· Outdated (appearance)

What do we want to achieve with the LS website?

The LS site needs to:

· Inform

· Direct

· Promote

and needs to be:

· User Focussed – Appropriate presentation & style

· Solution Centred - Appropriate information structure

· Current & Dynamic - Regularly updated

· Accurate & Accessible - Regularly reviewed & user friendly

What we know (or think we know!):

· The site will be public facing

· The audience are:

• Staff
• Academic
• Support
• Prospective Students
• Current Students
• Access/ Foundation
• Undergraduate
• Postgraduate
• Professional Development
• Alumni

What are the confines or pre-requisites of the re-modelling?

The LS site should:

· Utilize the corporate website template

Great meeting

Thanks everyone for your involvement this morning. I'm really excited about this project and moving it forward, and feel that Mike's involvement will be crucial to the long term success of the project.

It's great to have a team that are so vocal and come up with ideas without being prodded too hard!

I can't wait to see the finished product.

M

LTD Presence on the LS Web Pages

I have annotated the 4 Learning Services web pages which contain information about my team's area of responsibility as follows:

• Learning Services - Home > For Edge Hill Staff > Key Learning Services Contact [See the annotated Support for E-Learning page for info]

• Learning Services - Home > For Edge Hill Staff > Support for E-Learning [See the annotated Key Learning Services Contact page for info]
  

• Learning Services - Home > Help and Support > WebCT / Blackboard Support [See the annotated WebCT / Blackboard Support page for info]
  

The following page contains information (Guides: Online Learning - WebCT & Online Learning - Blackboard) created and maintained by LTD:

• Learning Services - Home > Help and Support > Guides and Documentation [See the annotated Guides and Documentation page for info]

NB. The annotated pages have been created with Fleck.com
When viewing the annotated pages, do not use the anchors to move around the page as this will take you away from the annotated version... just scroll!

Highlight The Web

I posted this on our LTD Blog Cakes but as it could be useful for Project Walter I thought I'd post it here too!


I just came across a great web app called Awesome Highlighter and my first impression was “wow, how useful!”

The Awesome Highlighter allows you to highlight web pages and provides you with a custom link to your annotated page, which you can then share.

And it’s easy… you simply enter the url of the web page you want to share, highlight the relevant text and click done.

I think this app has the potential to be used both personally and collaboratively. I’m certainly going to use it…

Personally - I bookmark with http://del.icio.us and use the notes feature to remind me why I originally bookmarked the page. Now I can highlight relevant text on a page and bookmark this.

Collaboratively - I’m involved in a Learning Services website re-modelling strategy group and I can see this app being really useful (when analysing the current website and conducting benchmarking) for sharing my findings with the project team.

Welcome..

Welcome to the first post in the newly formed Walter blog!

First task before our meeting is to spend some time (an hour or so) benchmarking other University libary services web sites - look particulary at your area of expertise and prepare a brief summary to feed back to the team including:

1. Particular features you liked (from where?)
2. Particular features you didn't like (from where?)
3. Any outstanding sites that we all could look at..

Also form a short report including this information (no more than a page of A4) to email to all team members before the meeting, so that we can prepare questions.

If you have any questions about this, please speak to Martin or myself - or post a comment on here and we'll get back to you..

Mand.