VGS Pilot Case Study (History Department)
(Case study created by James Pearson)
Describe the purpose of your pilot:
The purpose of our pilot was to facilitate better ways of delivering material to PG students using web 2.0 methods (originally the concept behind the now defunct Virtual Graduate School Project). We created three distinct projects for out pilot: a sub-space to manage a student project on Bolsover Castle, a group to offer students assistance with EndNote and another group for an MA taught module (HST676).
How did you go about setting it up:
Initially all three were set up as groups, but it became apparent that the student project would be better set up as a Project to offer additional features such as the Task list and timeline. This was created in the main History Space at first, but realising that we only wanted a certain group of students to view this we moved it to a sub-space instead. Once the areas were created we sent out invitations to all relevant staff and students involved.
Did you get others involved and how long did it take?
For the EndNote group in particular we tried to involve as those PG students and staff who we knew used EndNote is some capacity. This was done through invitation. Take was not great and only have 10 members to date, but when uSpace goes live in June it is hoped that this group will be of use to many different departments. For that reason, the content of the group will be useful for everyone. Found that sending invites by targeting specific individuals was a time consuming process.
Extremely grateful to Lyn Parker in creating materials for the History Space to give advice to students and staff. Lyn also offered important advice on copyright, particularly with the Bolsover Project where there were documents referenced and used that were not created by staff in Sheffield. The appropriate alternatives were used (links and not embedded content).
Did you think it appropriate to acquire "buy in" from your community or management to set it up?
In most cases we think it would be better for the individual responsible for their community to set it up as they will need to engage with their users from the start. This will also help the community leader to familiarise themselves with what is possible in uSpace. For those who find this difficult, there may be Departmental IT officers on hand to help as there is in History.
Did you use a space or a group? If you choose a group why?
For the Bolsover Castle Project we used a Project set within a sub-space as it offered more features. Also as this was an assessed piece of work it seemed better to use a more formal set up. A group was created for EndNote as we wanted it to be easily accessible to the whole University community. The tools that you can use within a group were adequate for this as it will be predominantly used for exchanging documents and ideas through the discussion facility.
Did your community engage with the space/group - did they get it?
The students and staff engaging with the Bolsover Project to use the space because they had to in order to access the seminar material and documents needed for their seminars. There was feedback from these students that it can be quite hard when lots of documents are uploaded to find them. The search feature was useful, but I hope to utilise tag groups to improve on this. Students also felt that they weren't allowed to upload their own content as the majority of the content had been uploaded by staff. Realised that we needed to better inform the students that we actively encourage them to upload their own documents and to engage in discussion / collaborate.
Finally did your community achieve what you wanted?
The Bolsover Project group did achieve its aim of disseminating course materials through uSpace, but it did not achieve much interaction, collaboration or online discussion. This was a small group of 10 students, so perhaps a bigger group may have made a difference here.
Top tips from your pilot
- Be pro-active - for the EndNote group I created a regular Tip of the Week so that every week there was new content in the group. Also I began to copy up questions people had with EndNote into the group and when the question cropped up a second time I could direct students to the answer on uSpace to try and encourage them to use it more.
- Copyright - make sure that material going onto uSpace adheres to copyright (when appropriate), particularly important to get this message across before uSpace grows and it becomes harder to monitor.