JISC DigiFest 2019 - Reflections

I attended the JISC Digital Festival March 12-13^th 2019, at Birmingham International Convention Centre.

Most of the sessions I attended are freely available on the JISC website, as such I have just recorded what I picked up as the main points for me to consider.

Opening keynote - educating for the future, now / Speaker: Anne-Marie Imafidon, CEO of the Stemettes.

Key points:

• Digital literacy the fourth literacy (reading, writing and arithmetic); support digital literacy as a basic skill
• Inclusivity – gender, race, class

DigiReady: preparing learners for a digital workplace / Speakers: Andrew Sprake, lecturer in physical education, University of Central Lancashire, Neesha Ridley, senior lecturer in midwifery, University of Central Lancashire, Chris Melia , senior learning technologist, University of Central Lancashire

https://www.slideshare.net/JISC/digiready-preparing-learners-for-a-digital-workplace

Key points:

• Preparing students for the workplace
• Use Microsoft Teams platform as a collaborative space
• Digital Skills programme – including workshops and accreditation
• Academic staff led – required update of skills

Microsoft Teams

I had a chat with a member of the Microsoft Team about Microsoft Teams – basically I am a Microsoft girl at heart.

https://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software

Microsoft Educator

I didn’t have time to investigate the tools available here, but these look interesting for CPD.

https://education.microsoft.com/

Why students think digital skills are important for the workplace?

https://youtu.be/_x3cF2_owgQ

Key Points:

• Use of digital tools allowed students to be more flexible and adaptable
• Gained access to industry standard software
• Supported collaboration with fellow students
• Multi-device compatibility
• Cloud tools allowed students to study anywhere
• Students felt that gaining good digital skills would give them “an edge” in a competitive workplace

Digital storytelling for all / Speaker: Gordon Duffy-McGhie, director - teaching, learning and student development, Middlesbrough College

https://www.slideshare.net/JISC/digital-storytelling-for-all

Key Points:

• Educational use of creating digital stories (videos)
• Engaged students more than “flat text”
• Students liked to see themselves and activities that they would be studying
• Process (of creating a video) by the students is as important as the end product

Welcome and opening keynote - how to create a broader, fairer and smarter education system? / Speaker: Joysy John, director of education, Nesta.

https://youtu.be/3ULMAWckFeo

You can find more information about Nesta here.

Key Points:

• Reiterated some of the key points mentioned above – inclusion & employability

Listening to teachers: implications for education and digital / Chair: Lawrie Phipps, senior co-design manager, Jisc; Speakers: Donna Lanclos, anthropologist consultant, Nikki Rivers, lecturer in English literature, University of Gloucestershire, Sarah Davies, director of education innovation, University of Bristol

https://www.slideshare.net/JISC/listening-to-teachers-implications-for-education-and-digital

This was a discussion of the research published in summary here.

Key Points:

• Innovation does not necessarily mean technology
• Is a digital detox leading to isolation vrs digital is isolating because it is not face-to-face
• Questions about sign-posting in libraries for academic staff

Responding to the digital accessibility regulations / Chair: Alistair McNaught, subject specialist (accessibility and inclusion), Jisc; Speakers: Abi James, senior accessibility and usability consultant, Ability Net, Anthony Ilona, policy engagement manager, Government Digital Service, Cabinet Office, Julia Taylor, subject specialist (accessibility and inclusion), Jisc

https://www.slideshare.net/JISC/responding-to-the-digital-accessibility-regulations

Key Points:

• Disabilities may impact on people in a number of ways, including visual, hearing, motor abilities and cognitive abilities
• New disability accessibility regulations affect public sector digital assets including websites and apps; to ensure that content is available to all in some format.
• New regulations came into force 23/09/2018
• Timeline: new websites compliant by 23/09/2019; existing websites compliant by 23/09/2020; apps compliant by 23/06/2021
• How to make your public sector website or mobile app more inclusive and meet accessibility standards / https://www.gov.uk/guidance/accessibility-requirements-for-public-sector-websites-and-apps
• As content creators we need to ensure that content we add to digital spaces complies with the regulations.
• Content includes: websites, documents hosted on websites, videos and multimedia content, intranets and extranets VLEs, libraries, student portals , staff portals

Further Help:

JISC Accessibility: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/accessibility

DIGITAL ACCESSIBILITY REGULATIONS Jisc email list http://tiny.cc/DigRegMail

Automatic checkers:

• W3C Easy Checks https://www.w3.org/WAI/test-evaluate/preliminary/
• WAVE http://wave.webaim.org/
• MS Office Accessibility Checker (MS Office 365)

Understanding WCAG 2.1 https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/helping-people-to-use-your-service/understanding-wcag

Testing for Accessibility https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/helping-people-to-use-your-service/testing-for-accessibility

Government Digital Service https://gds.blog.gov.uk/

How you are embracing the change of technological capability, and the needs of the students of the future, not the past? / Speaker: Andrew Proctor, director of digital services, Staffordshire University.

https://www.slideshare.net/JISC/how-you-are-embracing-the-change-of-technological-capability-and-the-needs-of-the-students-of-the-future-not-the-past

Key Points:

• Education 4.0 – more learner centric, more personalisation
• Everything connects – data, AI, personalisation, digital skills – more understanding of what is happening with students
• AI replacing the user interface - Beacon

Hints and Tips for doing Social Media on the Side

On Thursday 6^th December 2018 I attended an “unconference” for Keele social media staff.

What is an “unconference”?

The idea of an unconference is that it is an informal gathering of people, around a common theme or topic, where they can discuss and share ideas. The agenda is set by the participants and can be on an adhoc basis.

For the social media unconference I decided to share my experiences, hints and tips for providing a social media outlet where it is only a small part of the job, and you have limited access to time and resources. This blog posts relays what I delivered to the unconference.

Social Media on the Side – for the time-poor, for the resource-poor

So I am an eresources librarian at the Health Library, and the main part of my job is to ensure our NHS users can access their subscribed online resources. I also support our social media streams, including Twitter and Facebook. This activity needs to be fitted around my current job responsibilities. The topic of this post will relate to my use of Twitter. Hopefully if you are in a similar situation you will be able to pick up a couple of helpful tips.

Audience

The Health Library twitter feed is aimed at our key users – nursing, midwifery and medical students at the University and NHS staff who work for the NHS organisations we support. I use SumAll to thank our most generous followers and this was generated one week in November:

SUMALL thank you card to our biggest fans

The aim of our social media is to promote the facilities, services and resources of the library, encourage our user groups to utilise good quality healthcare resources and develop a positive reputation for the library.

Creating Images

Twitter seems to be always telling us that using images in social media feeds is a good idea. Attractive images can catch the eye of the browser as they scroll through their feed, hopefully making them stop to checkout your message.

I use PowerPoint for creating images. It is a standard install on our PCs, available if I need to hot-desk and uses a standard Microsoft toolbar I am familiar with. I don’t have to use specialist software (which I don’t have a budget for) or develop specialist skills (which I don’t have time for).

Using PowerPoint you can:

Screen-shot of the powerpoint toolbar

• Resize the slide to a custom size that is standard for social media.
• Add images and photos
• Edit images and photos via resize, crop, re-colour, use “artistic” effects, add borders
• Add title bars to highlight what the post is about
• Add text (keep the message simple, you can even use bullet points if you want to)
• Use shapes to create your own icons
• Compress images to reduce the file size (particularly if you have used large images and have cropped images)

Use the “save as…” option to save your PowerPoint slides as images. You can do this either on a single slide basis or for all slides at the same time.

Here are a couple of examples:

Opening Hours at the Health Library: this image uses a photo of the clock in the library, title bar, simple text and our logo.

Twitter image for library opening times

NHS Journals – check for full-text access: this image uses a stock image from our web content team with title bar, text and logo.

Twitter image for NHS eJournals

Patient Voices collection: here I scanned in some of our book cover pages to promote our Patient Voices collection.

Twitter image for Patient Voices collection

NHS Resources – here I used some icons that I had created in PowerPoint

Twitter image for NHS resources, using icons created in powerpoint

You can be as creative as you like. You can create simple, smart and clean images in relatively little time. Take a look at the images other organisations are creating and learn from them. There are lots of videos on Youtube demonstrating the power of PowerPoint in creating images.

Content

Using Themes

I have found that grouping tweets into themes is an efficient way to create content. Examples of themes I have used include:

• What can the Library do for you – series of tweets, with images, about our facilities
• Be Prepared – series of tweets promoting our training to students to help them prepare for their assignments / dissertation. Here are some of the images I used:

Compilation of twitter images used in the "Be Prepared" theme

I can create a template and then just change a few things to create a series of images.

Repeat and Re-Use Content

Messages can be repeated. Bear in mind that users won’t see all your tweets. Try posting messages on different days and at different times. Content can be repeated to appeal to a new audience. For example I regularly post messages about our facilities (What can the Library do for you) when new NHS staff start, and when new students start.

You can re-use existing content such as blog posts and web pages. I regularly post blog items about how to use our resources. These will automatically be added to the twitter feed, but a couple of months later I do a series of tweets to remind our followers and refer back to the blog posts.

Re-Tweeting Others

You can re-tweet relevant content from other feeds that you follow. I follow a wide range of health-related twitter feeds – news, research, NHS organisations, Keele-related departments. It can be helpful to add these into Lists that you can quickly check for new, relevant content. I have a list of Keele twitter feeds – this includes schools, research institutes, student support services, SU, and staff members.

Planning

Planning also helps me to post content on a regular basis. I can decide on several themes for the year, though I tend to work about 3 months ahead. I can create content in batches. Here is a screen-shot of my completed themes for 2018.

Screen-shot of example themes

I use the scheduling tool HootSuite. You can set up a free account, which allows you to link to 3 social media accounts and schedule 30 messages at a time. Here is a screen-shot of my schedule for December:

Screen-shot of my scheduled tweets in hootsuite 

You can see that I have scheduled to send messages to both our Twitter feed and our Facebook page.

In Summary

The processes I have described above helps me to create content which includes simple attractive images, themed content, scheduled in advance at regular intervals. This allows me to develop a twitter feed with limited resources and limited time:

• Use simple, available tools to create images
• Create content in themes
• Repeat, Re-use, Retweet
• Plan and schedule ahead

Related post: Social Media-can you tell it’s working yet?

eLearning 101: Lesson 10 – how to take your elearning skills to the next level (option 3)

10 Things you could create instead of an elearning course

1. Quick skills-based scenario
2. Short self-study exercises
3. “Best of…” tips video
4. Interactive tour of a form
5. Job-aid or tool
6. Podcasts
7. Interactive Infographic
8. “How to…” videos
9. Decision-making tool
10. Online repository

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This was a helpful reminder that you don’t always have to create an all-encompassing elearning object. And in fact on reflection I also do many of these things – as I think it can be helpful to learners to learn in small-bites. Most of my learning activities are presented to learners via our Information Skills for Health blog.

eLearning 101: Lesson 10 – how to take your elearning skills to the next level (option 2)

Improve your questions to create more effective assessments

Here are some hints & tips:

1. Align quiz questions with course objectives
2. Use a variety of quiz question types. Try scenario-based questions and case studies to mimic realistic situations
3. Be clear and concise; give clear directions
4. Create feedback – keep it short and try to reinforce the lesson

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This is a handy checklist of things to keep in mind when you are developing your quiz ideas. I am definitely trying to make questions more relevant to students by making them scenario-based.

eLearning 101: Lesson 10 – how to take your elearning skills to the next level (option 1)

The final lesson presented various options to select to carry on learning. I looked at:

How to measure the satisfaction of learners taking your online course.

Here are some suggested questions:

1. How would you rate the overall difficulty of this course?
2. What are the 3 most relevant things you learnt in this course?
3. How confident are you that you can apply the new skill on the job?
4. What’s the most useful thing you learned on this course?
5. Is there anything the course didn’t cover that would’ve been helpful to know?

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Again this is something that I need to improve on. We do have a feedback form. I have tried to make it as easy as possible for the users to complete but I think we need to gather more qualitative data.

eLearning 101: Lesson 9 – how to measure the effectiveness of your elearning course

This lesson posed the questions:

• How can you tell if your course is successful?
• Does it change learner behaviour?
• What can you measure?

Different types of courses may have different performance metrics. Articulate suggest the following:

Type 1 Performance Improvement Courses

Participants learn a new skill or are given information to help them do their jobs or study better. Recommended measurement – consider pre vrs post course assessments, or improvement in a particular task.

Type 2 Organisational Compliance Courses

Recommended measurement – pre vrs post course assessment

Type 3 Sharing Information

Recommended measurement – could track access to the information source, eg download of a file or direction to a web page.

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This is an area that I need to improve on, in order to make any feedback to the user relevant. There have been various discussions on the forums within Articulate about this topic which have been interesting.

eLearning 101: Lesson 8 – how to share your elearning course with learners

This lesson looked at different ways to publish your learning online.

Via a web server

Suggested external web hosting options:

• Tempshare – for temporary sharing content. This might allow you to share content for review
• Amazon S3 – free and fee-based hosting packages

Via a Learning Management Service (LMS)

In this scenario you need to include protocols that allow the learning object to “talk” to the LMS, such as Tin Can API, Scorm or AICC

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We deliver our courses via the university web server. This is something that I sorted out early on in our project so that we had some proof that we could get a workable system.

eLearning 101: Lesson 7 – how to create great-looking elearning

This lesson included a number of hints and tips on what to do or consider in order to deliver good elearning elements. I’ll list the ones that I picked out.

Apply Branding Guidelines

Decide on what your corporate look and feel will be; use a consistent tone and voice; use the logo; use branding fonts if available; decide on a colour-scheme to match / complement the corporate scheme.

Identify the Course Theme

The course theme would be dictated by the subject matter and audience, directing how the course could be presented. This might include considering professional, corporate, fun or casual presentation.

Header and Body Fonts

The advice given is to consider the subject and theme; decide whether to use decorative or simple fonts; above be consistent and obviously make it legible.

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Our courses have to appeal to a number of different user groups, from students learning something for new to healthcare professionals refreshing their skill-set. We have chosen to take a slightly professional tone, although with a theme that “we are learning this together”. I use the Articulate photo-characters, using one character as the help avatar and the others as the learner avatar. The exception to this is the “Check Your Skills” tutorial – here it is more lighter in tone and we use “cartoon” characters. This is to present a non-threatening, more fun tone as students are asked to assess their skills and we didn’t want it to appear like a test.

We are appealing to users from both Keele University and the NHS, so tend to take the corporate theme as “the Health Library”.

In terms of fonts – this is not something I get really excited about. I have chosen to use open sans which is clear and readable. I use font-size and bold to provide emphasis and headers.

eLearning 101: Lesson 6 – storyboarding, creating a blueprint for an elearning course

I was always mystified a bit by storyboarding – it seemed like something of an art-form. This lesson laid out what you needed to do.

Identify the stakeholders and participants, identify their roles – this will be the audience for the storyboard and will help to determine the format of your storyboard and the detail of the content.

Instructional Design – what learning activities are needed and how will they be sequenced?

Format – various formats could be used eg MS Word, Ms Powerpoint, authoring software. Whichever tool is used it must be made available to the stakeholders. Articulate offer a number of templates that could be used to create a storyboard.

Building your Storyboard - Items that should be included: navigation, links, media, text, interactions, on-screen elements, programming notes. Consider including a visual map to represent complex branching or dynamic content. Use reference labels to map the storyboard slide to an actual storyline slide.

Using your Storyboard – the storyboard should act as a living document, and followed during the lifetime of the project. It can act as a place to consolidate feedback and be used as a review checkpoint.

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So this is something that I am really bad at. At the start of our elearning project we were quite meticulous in creating scripts (which in essence were storyboards). During our upgrade phase these were really useful as a starting point for the upgrade. Since then I have been a bit lax. Sometimes I create lots of scribbled “boards” in a notebook to help me to work out how I am going to do something. However since I have no audience, other than myself, there doesn’t feel like any incentive to do anything extravagant.

I wonder if investigating the proposed templates will help me to find something that will suit my style and way of working.

eLearning 101: Lesson 5 – how to manage elearning projects effectively

Best practices for effective elearning project management were listed in this lesson:

Starting the Project:

• Identify who is in charge, who has the authority?
• What are the expectations?
• What is the budget?
• Who signs the project off? What is that expected date?

Establish a Common Understanding of…

• Success
• Goals
• Timelines
• Deliverables

Clarify Learning Objectives:

• What needs to be learnt?
• Who needs to learn it?
• What do they need to know before they start?

Identify Technology Considerations / Issues such as

• Computer set up
• Mobile devices
• Headphones
• Multimedia
• Hosting solution

Lots more lists in this lesson:

Planning the project – identify tasks, establish a schedule, set target milestones, set dependencies, plan for review and rework, buffer for the unexpected, allocate resources (including people).

Suggestions for keeping the project moving – be flexible to incorporate changes, but be aware of the possibility of project creep; keep communication open and transparent; include regular reviews and build in time to change things. Once the project is finished have a final checklist and sign-off. It is also a good idea to have a post-implementation review to determine what went well and what can be learnt.

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So this is the basics of project management. Again something I am familiar with from my computing days. But again something that tends to put off my fellow librarians so how it is presented needs to be considered. When we upgraded our etutorials I did draw up a plan (spreadsheet) but it did have to be very flexible, but I think you do need it to detail what needs to happen and monitor milestones.

Planning is also pretty difficult in my current role as the elearning development aspect is a relatively minor role and will almost always be trumped by other events occurring.

eLearning 101: Lesson 4 – how the course creation process works

This lesson described the steps which make up the workflow and design process.

Step 1 – discuss with the client

You should discuss the requirements of the proposer or sponsor (client) or the course to determine: why the course is needed, what the objectives are, what the performance gap is that needs filling. This will help you to identify: high level objectives, budget, tools, timeline, review process, branding requirements and where the course can be accessed from. You may also need to meet with a subject matter expert (SME) who has content specific knowledge.

Step 2 – gather and organise content

Identify what information is “need to know” and what is “nice to know”; identify task-based content. You may need to breakdown the content into smaller chunks, and work out how to organise the different elements into an order that makes sense.

Step 3 - storyboard

Use storyboard techniques to identify:

The text that will be used

Places for multimedia, images and video

Navigation

The level of detail required here depends on who the audience for the storyboard is – client, developer, you.

Step 4 – review and edit

Present the storyboard to someone else for review – this may be a colleague or the client. This is an iterative process – make changes as required.

Step 5 – develop the course

Use the authoring tool of your choice to create your course. Here are some visual design basics:

• Leave white space
• Avoid clutter
• Restrict use of fonts to 1 or 2
• Restrict the colour palette to use
• Be consistent – with buttons, links and other navigation tools
• Align items and text
• Use relevant and meaningful images
• Be consistent in use of types of images

Step 6 – quality assurance testing

Review and test to pick up problems.

Step 7 – publish and deploy

Make the learning object available to users.

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This process sounds very familiar to me – dredging up years of working on computing projects, lots of, basically, specifications of differing detail depending on who it was aimed at.

As I work with librarians now I find that this kind of language can be alienating, so although I follow the process it can be called different things. As the client is really us, I also probably don’t record things in sufficient detail.

eLearning 101: Lesson 3 – how to choose the best app to create your course

Lesson 3 looked at the different types of elearning authoring software. Three different types are listed:

• Web Applications – these are tools hosted on a server and made accessible via the web
• Desktop Applications – these are installed on a PC; are typically more robust and are often feature-rich
• Powerpoint Plugins – additional plugins to MS PowerPoint to enhance the functionality

The types of functionality required include the following:

Text	Audio
Shapes	Interactivity
Photos	Screen-recording
Animations	Quiz / Assessment feature
Video

Functionality should also include the ability to create linear courses (where the navigation is fixed in one direction) and non-linear courses (where navigation is branched and users can make choices).

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When we were looking at updating our etutorial package (from mediator), in 2015, I completed an exercise to evaluate which tools we should use. This involved:

• Creating a list of functions that we needed to include to deliver the same functionality that we already delivered
• Creating a list of functions that we believed we could use to enhance our package
• Talking to experienced staff within the University to identify various suitable apps
• Matching the applications against our list of needs
• Identifying the most likely applications that would work for us
• Trialling the most likely candidates
• Identifying the one application that we would use

And in the end we chose Articulate Storyline – which is why we are here.

eLearning 101: Lesson 2 – how instructional design relates to elearning

In this lesson the ADDIE model of design is introduced – I‘ve come across something similar before in another course:

A – Analyse – the needs, objectives and profile of the learner

D – Design – plan the learning object, identify the elements required to achieve the objectives, use storyboarding to record this

D – Develop – create and test the learning objects

I – Implementation – publish the learning object and make it available to the users

E – Evaluate – evaluate whether the object is achieving its objectives

Here is my diagram of the DADDIE model (similar)

DADDIE model

The evaluation process should then feed back into the analyse phase – to result in improvements to the course.

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I perhaps have far too informal approach to my design. So far I have generally produced online learning that often replicates or complements face-to-face learning. The etutorials offer an alternative route to the face-to-face training sessions, which learners sometimes find difficult to attend. Thus much of the analysis is based on what is already being delivered by the face-to-face training. The design phase can be informal (scribbled boxes on notepads) if I am only doing it for me but if I am working with colleagues then I make much more effort to document what will be done so that everyone else can review it. Evaluation is probably the trickiest phase. I have an informal distribution ie the etutorials are freely available via the web server, so learners can choose whether to complete the tutorials or not. Although every tutorial offers a feedback form, I cannot “make” a learner complete it. It is quite difficult to get feedback that can be used to re-analyse the content. This is an area that I think I need to work on.

eLearning 101: Lesson 1 – exploring the essential qualities of e-learning

So to start at the beginning…

What is e-learning?

I think there are a number of definitions, articulate plum for:

“use of electronic devices (computers, tablets, phones) 

to deliver educational or training content to learners”

eLearning has also been called web-based training, online learning and computer-based training.

Typically content has included slide-based content with simple navigation and incorporating some interactivity such as quizzes. Content can be developed to include responsive web-based content, software simulations and interactive courses with role-playing and complex decision-making.

Why is elearning valuable?

Some of the benefits identified include:

• asynchronous or synchronous activities
• global reach – anytime, anywhere
• proceed at learners own pace
• use of multiple devices eg tablets / mobiles
• flexible for the user
• just in time / needs based – available when the user needs it
• can reach more people, more quickly compared to face-to-face training
• allows consistency of quality and content – same message delivered to all participants

How do you create eLearning courses?

So at this point Articulate products are introduced – I’m not going to do the sales pitch.

How is eLearning shared?

Two possible routes are offered:

• Informal Distribution – eg freely available via a web server. Users can decide whether to participate.
• Formal Distribution – eg via a learning management system (LMS), such as Blackboard. Here the LMS tracks and record user activity. Standards are required to allow the learning object to “talk” to the LMS. I have heard of SCORM and TinCan protocols, although never used them.

What makes an elearning project successful?

1. Using the right applications

Use the application that can provide the functionality and interactivity that you want for your learners. You need to consider how easy it is for you to use, so that the learning curve is manageable and you don’t spend time dealing with technical issues.

2. Instructional design

You need to be able to create the most effective, educational experience for your learners, to maximise learning and help users to improve their knowledge and skill.

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The definition seems to change with the times – it always wants to be the new kid on the block, although the concept now must be pretty old (although efficacy is still argued over). I was trying to remember my first experience of “elearning”. Certainly not at school – I remember fund-raising activities to collect enough money to buy a computer for the school (one computer for the whole school!). You’ve never seen so many cake sales. Not at university either, we just about had a computer-based catalogue. I think it was when I first started work (in the 1990s). I was learning coding and I remember a “video disk” – something the size of an LP (if you remember what that was) which played video on a TV screen. We learnt all about the adabas database from shiny-faced americans.

I have found elearning to be very useful – for all the benefits described. I’m not sure that I would do any CPD if I had to rely on booking on face-to-face training events. I remember when I learnt visual basic (mid-90s) – it was a 1 week course and a book for 2 weeks. Now I am learning Articulate Storyline, it is an ongoing process with access to a variety of learning opportunities, in different formats, with peer support from people that I have never even met. Quite a change.

eLearning 101 – online course from Articulate

At the end of last year (Sept/ Oct 2017) I signed up for an online course delivered by Articulate – eLearning 101. This was a series of lessons delivered weekly. Although I didn’t quite manage to keep to the 10-week schedule I have finished it and so am somewhat belatedly writing up my reflections.

I have been using Articulate Storyline for a few years now to create our online tutorials. These are aimed at students and staff who use the Health Library I work in. They are intended to offer users an online learning experience to help them to find and use our resources as well as develop their information literacy skills.

I have used the Articulate forums extensively and really enjoy the learning opportunities available. They offer tutorials on how to use the product, whether via videos or simple step by step instructions. There is also a forum where you can post queries and they have a regular challenge where participants submit ideas to solve particular problems. It is a very welcoming environment and I have found it very useful in order to get ideas and solve problems.

I suppose given that Articulate are selling products to deliver online learning it is good to see that they can offer a good online learning environment.

The course consisted of a number of blog posts, with links to articles for further reading. It looked like a number of the articles were relatively old – a few years anyway – so you could say this is an example of pulling existing material together and re-purposing it for a new audience, (an idea to squirrel away).

I’ll try to complete a blog post for each weekly lesson. This is purely my reflection on what I picked up on from the lessons.

Health Libraries Group Conference 2018

The Health Libraries Group Conference was held 14^th and 15^th of June at Keele University. As it was in my backyard I applied to attend. This was the first library conference I attended, although not my first conference. I decided to make sure that as well as attending sessions I also built in some time to sit, think and reflect – I was worn out by the first conference I attended.

Here are my comments on the sessions I attended:

(presentations, where available, are online here)

Library Statistics – why you do that thing you do

This session was presented by the task and finish group looking at the collection of statistical data within libraries. They presented the work that they had completed so far and then asked the group for ideas about what should go into the toolkit they were developing.

Some ideas presented were: templates, be modular, dashboard, guidance on gathering qualitative data to “flesh out” what the statistics might mean, guidance on factors that might be impacting on statistics, ability to benchmark.

I think the abstract for this session possibly over-sold it a little as I was hoping (and I’m sure some others were too) to have some take-home points. It looks like we’ll have to wait a little longer for the toolkit.

Working Collaboratively with your Non-Library Colleagues

Mary Hill explained how her library service had worked with event organisers and clinical staff on 2 different projects to present information via a blog. She worked with her trust’s conference event staff to develop a “reading list” type information source relating to study days / conference events held within the trust. She also worked with clinical staff to produce a “Medical Oncology Update” blog based on the selection and appraisal of current research papers.

These projects have allowed the librarian team to work with different departments within the trust, where not only do the resources relate to the teams but the blog posts also help to promote the trust’s events.

This was a really interesting presentation, demonstrating the potential of the library service to enhance other trust activities.

The Multi-Disciplinary Clinical Innovations Database at RBHT

Samantha Unamboowe presented the development of an Innovations Database at her trust, on the trust intranet. This is intended to help staff learn about activities within the trust and to keep a record of what is happening, creating an “institutional memory”. Her idea was developed from an awareness of trust activities generated from the literature searches completed. The database is manged by library staff, although contributions come from many different staff. The content recorded includes: service improvement projects, quality improvement projects, research, conference presentations, educational lectures, posters.

Although Samantha was not able to provide any details of analytics or impact yet, this did look like an interesting project.

Service Oriented Libraries: changing the conversation by design

In this presentation Kate Kelly shared how the library service for the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) was created in a new build. The building also included educational elements such as a lecture theatre and clinical skills rooms, as well as leisure facilities such as a gym.

This talk wasn’t quite what I expected, but was interesting none-the-less. Kate seemed to be trying to steer us into thinking about the library as a range of services, moving away from the physical space. So even the space is a service to allow users to “do something”, rather than a space the library occupies.

I think this is a helpful way to look at the library service, to try to move our marketing messages to be more about what the users can do here, rather than what we have here. So I am thinking of re-doing my “What’s at the Library…” information cards to be more “What can the library do for you?”

Social Media and Collaborative Tools Knowledge Café

This session was held as a discussion session. It seemed to be more concerned about the process of the session – a Knowledge Café – rather than the topic of social media.

So what is a knowledge café? There was a main question to discuss and there were several topics relating to the question. We were put into groups, each group was to discuss a topic – in this case a social media tool. The group was to write / express their thoughts on the question and the topic on a piece of paper. After 5-10 minutes of discussion the groups changed. One member of the group remained to be able to explain the content of the piece of paper but the other members all moved to a different topic. This occurs several times so that you get a chance to participate in a few of the topics.

I think the idea is that you learn from your peers rather than from a presenter. Of course this only works if the members of the group know something about the question / topics. There wasn’t any “show and tell” at the end so I missed a couple of topics and didn’t get to see what everyone had added to the papers.

In terms of what I can take away – use local #tags on twitter

Collecting Meaningful Feedback on Information Literacy Training: results of a project to evaluate feedback methods

This was another session where I was expecting more. Zoe Thomas presented the results of a project carried out by her predecessors which looked into gathering effective feedback from training sessions. However the results seemed to be only about the type of method most effective for gathering feedback, rather than about the quality of the actual feedback.

I think that we need to improve how and what we gather as feedback for our etutorials, but this didn’t really help me in this area.

Ready from Day One: developing evidence-based practitioners

This was probably my favourite session. Shirley Yarwood-Jackman described the information literacy sessions that she delivers to her group of clinical psychologists. Shirley described the current situation that I am sure many of us are familiar with – students / staff who don’t realise what they don’t know and over-estimate their literature searching skills.

The information literacy sessions are embedded in the curriculum and use reflection to allow students to explore their own searching abilities, both on their own and as a group. Shirley emphasised that the students are required (by their professional code) to become evidence-based practitioners. This was used with the students to demonstrate how important it is to develop the right skills to find the evidence easily.

The reflective approach was so successful that Shirley has also looked at how to use it in library inductions – start with a question, rather than give a presentation of everything at the library.

This is a problem that we deal with at the library with our students. They don’t appreciate how specialist their searching needs to be, and how their skills development or non-development will impact on their professional career going forward. We have tried to make some headway by developing our Check Your Skills etutorial, which allows students to think about their searching behaviour and provides suggested actions if there are gaps in their knowledge.

I like the idea of asking students / staff whether they want to be evidence-based practitioners and how they think that they are going to achieve this.

Expand Journal Access for Health Professionals with BrowZine

This presentation demonstrated some of the features of BrowZine and how it has been used at an example library – The Christie NHS Foundation Trust. BrowZine is available as an app and desktop system. It allows you to present your A-Z list of journals as an attractive visual interface. Users can also add journal titles to their own “shelf” and thence get updates when new issues of their selected titles are released.

This offers a way to present the journals A-Z list in a more visually appealing way and possibly allows users to set up their own personalised journal current awareness shelf.

It was reportedly relatively easy to set up. Users found that it was easier to find content and the library service that it was making their journal collection more visible.

Have to say that I really like the look of this and think that it might help to deliver a current awareness service.

Themes that I can carry forward

Emphasise that students / staff want to be evidence-based professionals – how can they achieve that?

Stop telling people what we do but show them how we can help.