Using wikis for assessed group work in new history modules

By laurenmccann Comment Closed

Shirin Irvine – TEL Adviser, CQSD

Image of Shirin Irvine

Overview

For the academic year 2015/16, the Department of History offered a brand-new Part 1 programme as part of the History Project. This resulted in the development of three new core modules.

Dr Mara Oliva transformed common practice by using technology to carry out full electronic assessment for her module. This project included multiple aspects of digital pedagogy, using Blackboard to perform engaging assessment.  This was achieved through innovative and effective use of Blackboard Groups in combination with Blackboard Wikis and Turnitin Assignments, in addition to the Grade Centre for administering students’ marks.

What is a wiki?

A wiki is a collaborative tool that allows students to work as a group on one project and write shared content in the form of a website. They can create a series of web pages that can include images, web links and videos, collectively responding to a theme.

Dr Mara Oliva – Lecturer in Modern American History (20th century)

Image of Mara Olive

Mara explains how she used the wiki tool within Blackboard as a new tool for summative assessment.

The Culture Wiki

Journeys through History 2 aims to introduce students to major historical ideas, concepts, beliefs and knowledge systems, and to show how these are exemplified in material culture, with reference to artefacts, buildings, paintings and other works of art, literature and media.

We wanted the assessment tools we chose to reflect the cultural and visual elements of the module. Therefore we decided to use a group wiki of 2,000 words (50% of the module mark), which we called the Culture Wiki, and an individual 2,000-word essay on one of the historical concepts.

The Culture Wiki allowed students to create and contribute to several web pages of course-related material. They were expected to display their research, analytical and communication skills by building a website meant for public consumption. In small groups, students created their wikis based on a theme discussed during lectures. Lecturers provided themes in the module handbook and on Blackboard.

Our aims for using this form of assessment were to teach students the importance of teamwork and how to write in a concise and accessible way in order to develop an understanding of public history, which offers many employability opportunities to history graduates.

Impact – great results! 

Overall, the exercise was very successful! According to the feedback, both students and staff enjoyed working on the Culture Wiki. Students said it gave them a chance to look at history from a different angle and realise how many flexible and transferable skills they can gain through studying history.

We then decided to take this a step further and extend full electronic assessment to the individual assay, using Turnitin Assignments. This was received very enthusiastically by the students, who appreciated the immediacy and flexible, 24/7 access technology can offer.

The project, however, would have never taken off without the invaluable support of the TEL team, in particular Shirin Irvine, Lauren McCann and Maria Papaefthimiou. With their help we arranged training and guidance for the department staff on creating and assessing wikis, using Turnitin for e-assessment, and using the Grade Centre.

To support students, we provided a separate handbook with “how to build a wiki” guidelines, which was uploaded on Blackboard. I then dedicated part of the first lecture to introducing the exercise and answering the questions. Overall, students did not need much support and were very quick at learning – their questions were mainly content related.

We are very pleased with the outcome of the project, so we have decided to continue for the foreseeable future!

Blending face-to-face and online to deliver group seminars

By peteandrews Comment Closed

Jeremy Lelean, Staff Engagement                                                                                                                                                           j.lelean@reading.ac.uk

Context

Soil Security Programme (SSP), School of Agriculture, Planning and Development

PhD students, external institutions and organisations

Description

 The Soil Security Programme is a PhD Student research network that includes a number of
other institutions and external bodies. Students are dispersed around the country and
sometimes abroad.
 The ability for the dispersed members of the network to join seminars held at Reading by PhD
students would help facilitate increased communications and information sharing.
 Two face-to-face seminar events have been held at which members have been able to join
remotely via Collaborate.
 Members were sent a ‘guest link’ and joining instructions and were able to watch the
presentations given in the physical room.
 The initial seminar had 11 participants, 9 in the room and 3 joined remotely.
 A USB speakerphone was attached to the laptop in the room to provide the audio and a
webcam was used to show what was happening. Presentations were delivered using
‘Application Share’ in Collaborate.
 Jeremy facilitated the session to ensure the remote participants were kept informed of what
was happening in the physical space.

Impact

Using Collaborate was a success and participants found the experience was very good. There
were some minor points raised but this did not detract from usability.
 Remote participants could easily join in sessions that they wouldn’t otherwise have been able to
attend.
 Recordings of the seminars were made available to members of the network.
 SSP plan to deliver an online conference using Collaborate to help build a community of early
career researchers and PhD students in the field of soil science.

Thoughts and reflections

 Remote participants weren’t able to see where the speakers were pointing to on the slides. Ask
speakers to use the inbuilt Pen and Laser Pointer tools when PowerPoint is used in Presenter
View to highlight slides.
 It was necessary to restart application share when moving between different PowerPoint
presentations.
 Remind participants in the physical space to remember that there are remote participants.
 Participants in the physical space can’t see the chat taking place in Collaborate.
 Chat was particularly useful for communication between the facilitators and remote users
without disturbing the seminar speakers.
 Ensure that remote users can hear those speaking in the room clearly. It may be necessary for
the facilitators to repeat questions or ask people to speak more loudly.

 

Engaging students in online careers events using Blackboard Collaborate

By peteandrews Comment Closed

Daniel Kiernan & Graham Philpott, Henley Business School                                                                                              d.kiernan@henley.ac.uk   g.philpott@henley.ac.uk

Context

MBA students, Finance

Number of participants in sessions: 26

Session length: 20 minutes

Description

 Getting students to attend careers events during particular periods of term can be difficult. The
use of Collaborate was piloted to see if attendance could be increased by providing online
sessions when students typically don’t engage with face-to-face careers events.
 A short 20 minute presentation was given with PowerPoint slides and included separate online
poll questions.
 Students were encouraged to pose questions using the ‘Chat’ feature

Impact

 Student feedback was positive.
 The online event had higher attendance than would be expected for an equivalent face-to-face
session held in the same period. “We would typically really struggle to get 26 attendees to a
careers event during the summer term.”
 It was easy to organise and deliver the event.
 Not all of the students who pre-registered actually attended the webinar (15 attended, 17
didn’t). Most students stayed for the entire session.
 Dan was able to send those that weren’t able to attend a link to a recording after the session.

Thoughts and reflections

 Dan is keen to make future sessions more interactive, with more questions and responses. This
should help address attendance concerns. If you attend you get your question answered live!
 Possibly have an assistant to help moderate the chat and pose questions to the presenter.
 Think about the way in which you want to present your content and how this affects your ability
to manage and facilitate the session.
 The PowerPoint slides were displayed on Dan’s computer in Presenter View and delivered in
Collaborate using ‘Application Share’. PowerPoint presented in this way requires 2 screens and
also meant Dan wasn’t able to see the Chat while the slides were up.
 Check your camera angle and be mindful of it during the session.
 If you are recording the session, remember to exit the webinar properly, using the ‘Leave
Session’ button otherwise the recording continues.
 The recording captured the screen, audio/video and chat but didn’t capture the poll on screen
as this was viewed in a separate tool.

 Students attended the session using the ‘guest link’. This doesn’t record the email of the
students, so you’ll need to think about how students sign-up if you want to contact them (e.g.
via email) after the session.
 How should the recording of a session be made available after the session? Do you devalue the
benefit of attending the webinar if it’s made available to everyone? Should it only be sent to
attendees as an incentive to attend?
 Having a recording meant Dan was able to reflect on the content of presentation and consult
with his colleagues.

 

 

Closing the gap! Bringing together students studying at different campuses using Blackboard Collaborate

By peteandrews Comment Closed

Kate Fletcher, Sue Slade, Kevin Flint, Raj Vaiyapuri, Wee Kiat Ong, School of Chemistry, Food and Pharmacy; Pharmacy

Context

MPharm Programme: Introduction to Professionalism and Practice

Undergraduate (UG) students, Part 1

Number of participants in sessions: 20 (9 in the UK and 11 in Malaysia)
Session length: 60 minutes

Description

 Part 1 students studying the MPharm course at both the Reading and Malaysia campuses were
brought together using Blackboard Collaborate to compare Pharmacy Practice in each country.
 Kate wanted to encourage crossover between campuses and for students to get to know each
other before the Malaysian students came over to study in the UK for Part 3.
 Students based at each campus logged in to Collaborate on individual computers with a
headset.
 Both groups of students were in the Clinical Skills Suite on each campus with laptops and
headsets.
 Staff supported students in the physical rooms to get them settled and set-up.
 The session was designed around set discussion activities and students separated out into
groups that included students from both campuses, using the ‘Breakout room’ feature.

Impact

 Collaborate provided an effective way for students studying at different campuses to learn
together and begin to build relationships.
 Close cooperation was needed between the UK and Malaysian staff to set up the session.
 Students quickly picked-up how to use the tool, were using the Chat tool without prompting
and easily able to undertake the tasks in the breakout rooms.
 The session was activity based and students were discussing with each other. This made best
use of the technology to facilitate communication.
 There were good levels of interaction between students using the audio and video. However,
the first time people use the system interaction can initially be awkward.
 Some cultural differences were perceived. Malaysian students were quieter in the
conversations and UK-based students tended to lead.

Thoughts and reflections

 Kate and Sue were thoroughly prepared for the session and had rehearsed how to use the
‘breakout rooms’ and written a session plan with timings.
 Don’t expect to get as much done as you would in a face-to-face session or allow more time for
activities in this environment.
 As the students were located in the same room together they were spread out to minimise the
transfer of noise between them when talking. Pharmacy had a large enough room to allow this.
Feedback from students indicated they could easily take part from home.
 Pharmacy needed to purchase suitable headsets that could be re-used by different students.
Allow sufficient time to arrange ordering from IT.
 Make sure Chrome is installed on the University computers students are going to use.
 There was a significant investment of time and a learning curve to set up the session, as this
was the first time they had attempted this. Future sessions should be easier to facilitate.
 It’s not yet possible to save what has been written on the whiteboards in the breakout rooms.

(Use the PC – Microsoft Clipping tool https://support.microsoft.com/engb/help/13776/windows-use-snipping-tool-to-capture-screenshots
or MAC keyboard shortcut to take a screenshot of the whiteboard.)

 

Using Blackboard Collaborate for small group tutorials with distance learning students

By peteandrews Comment Closed

Adrian Aronsson-Storrier, School of Law                                                                                                                             a.m.storrier@reading.ac.uk

Context

LLM International Commercial Law (Distance)

Description

 Adrian held small group seminars with groups of around 5 students per online workshop.
Workshops were scheduled in all of the distance LLM modules, and ran weekly through the
Spring and Autumn terms. Collaborate was also used for individual dissertation supervision
sessions.
 These were Postgraduate Masters level distance learning students enrolled in a range of
optional LLM modules. Students attended from across the UK and the world.
 The Law School already offered online workshop sessions using a competing webinar product
(Adobe Connect). This software was complex for students to use, not supported centrally by
the University and was paid for from the School’s budget. We sought to investigate alternative
web conferencing solutions that would be simpler for our students whilst maintaining
equivalent functionality (slide sharing, chat, whiteboard etc).
 Blackboard Collaborate was chosen to replace Adobe Connect as it was simpler for students to
use (a more straightforward interface reduced initial student training time, the integration into
Blackboard made it simpler for students to log in and participate).
 Preparation was similar to distance workshops previously delivered with the earlier Adobe
Connect web conferencing tool. For some workshops slides were prepared, in others a series
of tutorial style questions were circulated to students in advance for discussion.
 After giving students an initial training session, delivering a class on Collaborate took no more
effort than delivering an equivalent session in an on campus module.

Impact

 Students quickly adapted to Collaborate. They made frequent use of the chat function and the
‘raise hand’ function, particularly in larger groups where many students wished to contribute to
a discussion.
 Student’s enrolling in the distance LLM are required to have access to their own computer,
headphones and internet connection.
 From a support perspective, the move to Collaborate required less ongoing staff and student
training than our previous web conferencing software – once set up on Blackboard it was simple
for students and staff to access Collaborate sessions for their weekly workshops.
 Blackboard Collaborate achieved everything we had previously delivered to students using
Adobe Connect. It had the advantage of being simpler for students to use, and the blackboard
integration made connecting to the sessions simpler.

Thoughts and Reflections

 Lecturers in the school of law tended to use Collaborate from their homes (distance workshops
are often scheduled outside core hours, to accommodate students in diverse time zones). This
required staff to have sufficient equipment (laptop, headphones or a headset).
 One challenge – which often impacts distance learning when working with students in less
economically developed nations – was issue of the student’s poor internet connection
impacting sessions. At times students (particularly in Africa and the Middle East) had poor
internet connections which prevented full video streaming. While the software does allow
students to participate by providing streaming audio only, this is less immersive for the student.
 Ensure that all participants are making use of headphones or a microphone headset. If students
rely on computer speakers there will often be some level of echo introduced into the web
conference, which can be distracting. Students without headphone should be encouraged to
mute their microphones when not speaking.
 Provide students with an introductory session on the software before beginning online
instruction. We used a general online induction day for students as a trial, allowing them to test
that the software worked and giving them time to learn the functionality before being required
to use it in class.

 

Update on making Word and PowerPoint accessible: By Professor Richard Mitchell

By edwardwhite Comment Closed

Preamble

Earlier in the year, Laura Bennett and I wrote a blog on making Word and PowerPoint accessible, which reflected our experience of implementing the University’s policy on Inclusive Practice in T&L, which is available here.

Since that blog was written, the University has included Ally into Blackboard, which provides academics with a view on how accessible our documents are and step-by-step guidance on how to make them accessible. In this blog I reflect on Ally and other developments, including the part of the recent Accessibility Audit Report from JISC which covered one of my courses.

Ally in Blackboard

As is explained on the TEL Support Site, Ally is an add on to Blackboard which allows students to download your teaching material in alternative formats (such as in HTML for view on mobile phone, electronic braille, etc) and it provides an accessibility score on your material  as well as feedback and guidance to enable you to make the material more accessible. Instructors can see a colour coded dial with a percentage

 

 

 

 

If low, the file is deemed not accessible and needs immediate attention; if medium it is somewhat accessible and could use improvement; if high it is accessible but could be improved; and occasionally the file is judged perfect.

If you click on the icon, you are presented with a screen with the score, and an option to see all the issues. You can then see what you need to do, and how the score can be increased – though so far there is guidance on only some of the issues.

I then go back to the original Word or PowerPoint file, make the appropriate changes, and re upload them to Blackboard. I can then get a new assessment by Ally, though I tend to have to wait for it.

The percentages given can seem harshly low – I had a document with two images which I had not added Alt Text to (one being the University crest), and the score was about 50%. The file became perfect when I added suitable text to those images. I gather that Ally considers the lack of Alt Text as a more pressing issue, which accounts for the scoring.

It should be noted that Word and PowerPoint’s built in checker is satisfied if you enter a Title or Description to any Alt Text, but Ally is happy only if there is a description – so is there any point in adding a title?

I am told that Alt-Text is read by screen readers, which explains why Ally considers it important – whereas a Title can be what is shown when a mouse hovers over the figure.

Ally can’t assess how useful your Alt Text is, just that it is there – so you should use your judgement.

As we noted in the original blog, you don’t have to be perfect – most of my PowerPoint documents are rated as High, with a score of 99% – the concern being about contrast issues, but as of writing there is no guidance on where the issue occurs. I am occasionally judged as Perfect which is nice! However, this may be more of a judgement call, as it is usually obvious when viewed on the screen. Blackboard suggests downloading this tool to fix contrast issues.

One issue Ally flags is untagged PDF files. If, say, your source document is a Word file, and you correctly use styles such as Title, Heading 1, Heading 2, Normal, etc. and then decide to produce a PDF, I recommend that you do so by saving the document as PDF, but just before saving, press the Options button in the dialog box, and ensure the Document Tags for Accessibility option is ticked.

I have come to the conclusion, however, that it is better to upload Word or PowerPoint documents, rather than PDFs to Blackboard. Students can readily download such documents (in whatever format) and can change them as they require – such as adding notes to PowerPoint slides, for instance.

Using notes in PowerPoint

In 2017, I attended one of the public lectures I help to organise for the local IET on the Internet of Insecure Things. It was a very engaging lecture, comprising slides mainly composed of pictures, which the speaker in effect used as prompts. In contrast, if a slide comprises text which the speaker reads, albeit with some embellishments, a lecture can be dull.

However, from an accessibility point of view, such an approach does not provide much support. A solution to this is to use the notes section in PowerPoint. In fact, there is brief guidance in a few web sites which recommend that it is good practice if slides are decluttered and detail put in the notes section, though not specifically from an accessibility point of view.

I therefore experimented with one of my modules in the Spring term, where I simplified the text on slides, moving and embellishing some of the text into the notes section. The slides are less cluttered, and the students have access to the notes as they can download the PowerPoint from Blackboard, and they can add more detail if they want. That module went much better.

In 2018, JISC did an accessibility audit of some of the university pages and systems, and two courses in Blackboard, one of which being my second year Neural Networks module. It was noted that my lecture notes did not utilise the notes section, but that did not matter as sufficient information was there, and there were other resources on the module. However, I took it as affirmation that decluttering slides and using the notes section were good from an accessibility point of view.

Therefore, as I had planned, for this year I have reduced the amount of material on the slides for all my courses, and utilised the notes section. For this to be effective in the lecture room, the lecturer needs to use Presenter mode, where the students see the full slide, but the presenter on their screen sees, the slide, the next slide, and the notes section.

I asked IT for guidance on how this is achieved, as searches I did online did not help, and was told the following:

The reason presenter mode doesn’t work in the lecture theatres is that, although there are 2 physical screens, the system behaves as if there is only 1, it duplicates the first across all others.

This can be changed by holding the windows button + P. Then you can switch from ‘duplicate’ to ‘extend’ screens with the keyboard directional arrows + enter.

Once you have set the screen to extend, the PC will recognise 2 separate windows to operate with, and so presenter mode will work.

Please reset the room to the way you found it whenever you use this function, by pressing windows button + P and reselecting ‘duplicate’.

I have found that this works in some rooms – but not all, though I am lobbying.

What I can say is that I feel the lectures are going better, are more engaging, but it works best when the notes are visible (and hence provide some prompts) to the presenter.

Summary

From my experience, Ally is a useful tool for accessibility, though I do not have experience of students downloading material in alternative formats. There are some discrepancies between the assessment of accessibility between Ally and Word and PowerPoint, such as in the use of Alt Text. The score given by Ally seems disproportionate and it is a shame that you don’t get an immediate reassessment when you upload a changed version. It will be better when there is more guidance on addressing issues.

I also recommend the use of the notes section in PowerPoint, and believe it to be good practice in general and for accessibility. I hope that Presenter view will be working in all lecture theatres.

The EMA Symposium: Sharing Knowledge, Good Practice, and Cake

By edwardwhite Comment Closed

Dr Madeleine Davies and Dr Emma Mayhew

On Tuesday 22nd May 2018, over 150 colleagues from across the university gathered in the Meadow Suite to hear a series of presentations and to engage in conversations about the work that the EMA Programme has been doing to prepare for roll-out of online assessment and feedback. Colleagues from the majority of Schools and units across the university were represented and staff from academic Schools, Support Centres, and CQSD shared experience and good practice. An active Twitter feed provided live commentary on the presentations and activities (120 tweets and re-tweets) and reflected an atmosphere that was informative and wholly positive.

The event was organised by Dr Emma Mayhew (EMA Academic Director) and Dr Madeleine Davies (EMA Academic Partner) and was introduced by Professor Gavin Brooks, the Programme’s sponsor. The Vice-Chancellor attended for the first hour of the event which was supported throughout by colleagues from TEL. As well as seven panels involving presentations given by 21 colleagues, the day of activities included a Q&A session, a roundtable, a Menti quiz, a talk about Learning Analytics, and a demonstration of online marking for beginners: the result was a permanent movement between learning and dialogue. Piles of EMA cup-cakes and biscuits retained energy levels throughout the day.

The Symposium was designed to offer events for colleagues new to online assessment as well as to those with more experience. Colleagues attending the Symposium provided information about their level of technological confidence: of 40 surveyed participants, 5% rated themselves as having low levels of confidence with technology, 45% rated themselves as having average levels of confidence, and 48% rated themselves as having advanced confidence. The Symposium offered talks and events for all levels.

Presentations from the Early Adopter Schools discussed the process of change and offered advice about successfully implementing online assessment in departments; a panel was also convened where ‘nervous adopters’ who had already transitioned to online marking spoke about the training and tactics that had worked for them. For more experienced users the Symposium offered presentations on the use of rubrics and QuickMarks, explaining the several ‘hidden’ benefits of online marking and demonstrating the potential of previously unidentified buttons.

Throughout the day, the emphasis remained on student experience and marking quality: several presentations commented on ways in which online assessment could enhance feedback and release a range of marking options that had not been available previously. At the same time, presentations emphasised that ‘good marking is still good marking’, as Rob Hosfield stated: the change to a new delivery model does not alter the fact that it is the usability of feedback that matters most in relation to teaching and learning.

Participants also heard presentations from the Support Centres and their experience of change: Luisa Ciampi’s presentation explained how online assessment benefits our colleagues in the Support Centres and Marguerite Gascoine spoke of the process of change. Advice about managing the potential impact of increased screen-time was given in a session led by Dr Eileen Hyder, and a presentation by Dr Calvin Smith demonstrated how new screens in RISIS support the move towards the Academic Tutoring System (Calvin was the winner of the ‘Best Title’ Menti Prize for ‘Spotting Crisis in RISIS’).

The feedback that was collected at the end of the afternoon was overwhelmingly positive:

39/40 colleagues rated the event as good or excellent and 38/40 said that the event would impact positively on their teaching and learning provision. Colleagues commented positively on the benefit of hearing the experience of a wide range of colleagues, the broad range of topics covered, and the advice on good practice. The feedback also noted how useful it had been to bring academic and professional staff together to discuss experiences, and several colleagues mentioned how they had enjoyed putting faces to the names of Support Centre colleagues. Also praised was the emphasis on how new data can be used, sessions on the practical use of marking tools, and hearing the experiences of Early Adopter schools. There was a great deal of positive feedback on a talk given by Dr Alex Knox on Learning Analytics.

As the organisers of the Symposium, we were delighted by colleagues’ positivity, collegiality, and eagerness to share online assessment experience. We hope that our colleagues will be able to join us again in September when the Programme is hosting a conference in association with the the Advance HE’s (formerly HEA) Assessment and Feedback Community of Practice. In the meantime, screencasts of key presentations will be posted on the EMA website together with a collection of helpful links and information.

Thank you to all our colleagues who attended the Symposium to share experience and to listen to that of others. We were overwhelmed by the generosity of staff who contributed their time and expertise to the event, and by the goodwill of our colleagues who attended.

Collaborating across the country (and beyond) with Collaborate by Dr Mark Shanahan

By edwardwhite Comment Closed

10 Days before the US election, almost 40 students and four academics from across England came together to debate the Trump v Clinton fight for the White House, using Blackboard’s Collaborate platform, writes Politics & IR Director of Teaching & Learning, Mark Shanahan. I’d first come across collaborate at a TEL Showcase event, and had discussed its potential use with colleagues from other universities at the British International Studies Association’s Teaching and Learning conference at Newcastle University in September. When the university was looking for innovative Week 6 events, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to land on the political theme of the day and get students and lecturers from a range of universities talking – all without the need for anyone to book a room or a coach…or even (in theory) get out of bed.  

The benefit of using Blackboard’s Collaborate tool was the relative ease with which we could bring academics from Reading, Manchester, De Montfort and Huddersfield Universities together both with their students and a US-based journalist for 90 minutes’ discussion of the US elections. The sound and picture quality wasn’t always perfect – but that was probably more down to user equipment than the tool itself.

Allied to the video content, we had a live chat stream which was incredibly popular. There was a constant flow of questions from students for the academic participants and comments and responses between the students themselves. There was actually so much chat going on that it wasn’t always able to quite keep up with the flow and bring it into our video/audio. We started early with a pre-chat, and ended up running well past our planned hour. We learned a lot. Between myself and Senior TEL advisor, Adam Bailey, we agreed it would have been great to capture both all the chat for future use (we got some), and more so to use screen capture technology to keep a record of the event. We also realised early on that we needed a chair/moderator to keep the event in shape – and I fell into that role.

The response from both students and academic participants after the event was very positive. All the students who responded to a brief Surveymonkey questionnaire after the event want to do more of these link-ups via Collaborate – and want them to be longer. Equally, my colleagues Pete Woodcock, Head of Politics at Huddersfield, Alison Statham a Senior Lecturer in Politics from de Montfort and Howell Williams who’s at Manchester are all keen to get in front of a webcam again – perhaps to pick over the bones of the US election, and definitely to look at other politics subjects where we can share our views and expose our students to opinions beyond their own institutions.

 

Reading Lists at Reading: improving the student and staff experience by Kerry Webb and Helen Hathaway

By edwardwhite Comment Closed

 

The University is investing in an online reading list and digital content management system from Talis Aspire. Implementation at Reading begins at Easter 2015. This initial phase will involve Library staff transferring all 2014-15 reading lists (which have existing copyright cleared scans associated with them) on to the new system, ready for review and revision by the list owner, following training provided by Liaison Librarians. These lists and more if time allows, will be available to students in September 2015. If any departments not included within this initial phase would like to become early adopters, please contact Kerry Webb, the Library’s Course Support Co-ordinator (email: readinglists@reading.ac.uk).  After this initial phase, we will then work with a wider range of academics to gradually integrate more lists. Our aim is to upload 75% of reading lists by 2016/17.

Academic tutors will be able to create online reading lists within a single interface, linked to from Blackboard. Using a simple bookmarking tool you will be able to link to items on the Library catalogue, items from our e-journals and subscription databases, external web pages and embedded multimedia. You will also be able to provide guidance to your students on approaches to specific resources, and will gain a faster, easier scanning request process incorporating assured copyright compliance. Automated checking of Library stock against your online lists will ensure faster ordering and more efficient library budget management.

Students will benefit from engaging with online reading lists providing real-time information about Library print material availability, direct links to our online resources and scans requested by academic staff through the Library’s scanning service, plus links to any other relevant resources and any guidance provided by you through annotations added to your lists.

The following are examples of lists produced using the Talis system (clicking on the title of a resource provides availability information):

Reading list with tutor annotations: http://readinglists.anglia.ac.uk/lists/8C8785CB-C465-298E-EB9D-91E170E4E600.html

Reading list with links to scans: http://resourcelists.stir.ac.uk/lists/28233A26-4435-71AF-5A2C-01FE1900C876.html

Reading lists set out in weekly sections: http://myreadinglists.kcl.ac.uk/lists/390BE867-9105-46F1-0EA7-4904093D94DE.html

http://readinglists.ucl.ac.uk/lists/28940452-8182-68BC-70AC-08123F69353F.html

Support will be provided in several ways: through online guides and screencasts, one-to-one, drop-in and bespoke training sessions, and making use of existing networks to assist colleagues with getting started on the system.

Find out more

Briefing sessions about the new system will be held at the end of the Spring Term, on Tuesday 24th and Friday 27th March, 1-2pm, in S@iL 107 (Library, 1st Floor). These are open to all staff involved in the creation of reading lists on Blackboard, no need to book.

We hope that as many of you as possible will be able to see for yourselves what the system will be able to do for you and your students. These sessions will provide an opportunity to see how the system works, and members of the implementation project team from the Library will be on hand to answer any questions you might have about online reading lists.

Or, book up to attend the CQSD T&L session, ‘Online reading lists: TEL to improve student engagement’ on Wednesday 22nd April, 1-2pm. For details of how to book, see: http://www.reading.ac.uk/cqsd/TandLEvents/cqsd-ComingSoon.aspx.

To find out more about the Talis system and what it can do for you and your students, go to: www.talis.com/reading-lists and http://www.talis.com/digitised-content/  or contact Kerry Webb, the Library’s Course Support Co-ordinator, email: readinglists@reading.ac.uk