TASH Meeting 16 December
Attendees
Core Team
Willy Kitchen
Steve Collier
Tim Herrick
Louise Woodcock
Kath Linehan
Linda Gray
Diane Rossiter
Colleagues
Emma Jeggo, Student Services
Richard Ward, LeTS
Alison Cox, Counselling Services
Julie Maragh, Careers Service
Maria Mawson, Library
Lyn Parker, Library
Stephen Walker, Architecture
Danny Monaghan, LeTS
Juliet Wilson, LeTS
Deborah Cobbett, ELTC
Cilla Holman-Sykes, ELTC
Marcin Szczerbinski, Human
Communication Sciences
Key points highlighted during introductions
 How to balance generic and subject specific needs.
 Different roles and responsibilities – how academic staff can
support/collaborate with professional services.
 The importance of student engagement, which needs to be borne in mind at
every stage of development.
Willy’s update presentation (see http://www.shef.ac.uk/tash for the slides)
1. Three Core Elements
- Inner ring – guidance about skills development, targeted primarily at users
who intend to engage with the resource in a sustained and reflective manner.
- Middle ring – reflective activities and tasks to scaffold learning, and indicate to
students where they may want to focus their development.
- Outer ring – signposting pages which link to the skills development resources
themselves.
- There will be multiple navigation pathways through the resource, e.g. a search
facility, structured progressions, rapid routes to take the user quickly to
specific resources. These are intended to meet the different needs of
different users (see below).
2. Student focus groups and discussions with staff have identified three kinds of
potential student use, with movement likely between categories over time:
- New students – use in pre-arrival and transition phases, where orientation and
developing general awareness are as valuable as specific academic skills
- Quick fix – TASH accessed to address a particular concern, often with a strict
time-limit – stereotypically, the student staying up the night before to complete
their essay. This was seen by the focus groups as one of the most likely
ways students would initially access the resource, although their habits might
well change if their first experience is positive.
-
Long term engagement – users engage with whole resource, working through
the reflective exercises, and repeatedly returning to consolidate and extend
their skills.
Time management is a key concern for students, and will not just be addressed by
specific resources within TASH, but developed as a structural principle for the rest of
the resource (for example, through a calendar of academic activities, or time-limited
exercises).
3. Generic/ versus embedded.
- It was noted that Geography has reused the online ELTC writing skills
tutorial materials. To date the usage data indicates that whilst a large number
of the registered students have accessed the site, they are not staying online
to use the materials for any length of time. This reflects a long established
understanding that guidance and support for skills development needs to be
embedded in the curriculum, rather than resources being bolted on from the
outside.
4. Developing the TASH site: “bagging, tagging and adding”
- Have agreed academic skills framework (http://www.shef.ac.uk/tash/asf.html)
- Have used Delicious to tag resources by skill type/s– see the delicious link via
TASH site (http://delicious.com/tashproject)
- New material – the core team is working on guidance materials, including
tutor facing guides, and intends to commission materials to cover specific
gaps identified in TUOS or other external resource materials.
Willy’s presentation includes a slide with a ‘route map’ showing different levels and
entry points to TASH.
Questions/comments:
Timeline route – queried whether this means student day to day or level? Group felt
that it would be very difficult to define by level of study, and not necessarily helpful to
the user. A ‘Student Journey’ timeline may be preferable, which could include
certain generic dates (approx. semester start dates, exam periods etc.), as well as
consideration of wider issues over whole degree cycle (e.g. planning work
experience, job or post-graduate opportunities etc.) and perhaps also offer option to
customise own personal study calendar? Could TASH include an interactive
department based calendar – with tagged resources?
Assessment could be used as a topic to engage students, e.g. noted that success in
assessments is in part down to planning/time management (an academic and
transferable skill).
Tutor role/academic programme structure can help or hinder engagement, for
example, if PDP or similar works effectively, students might be encouraged to use
TASH to follow up areas they have identified with their tutor.
Build into feedback from formative and/or summative assessments, i.e. if identifying
an area that could be addressed via TASH, point user to the relevant info.
Some discussion about the form the site “search box” might take – would this
accommodate free text searches, or would search terms be prescribed e.g. by only
offering specific terms in a drop-down menu or glossary/index?
A general glossary of terms used on the site, possibly mouse activated, should be
considered.
In terms of indicating “popular” sites/resources, UoCanterbury use a tag cloud and
rating system (see http://www.canterbury.ac.uk/graduate-skills/index.asp) … though
it is not clear whether this is “real” or illusory – the suggestion was made in
discussions about Amazon-like “you might also look at” suggestions that we simply
contrive these suggestions, rather than making them actually dependent upon other
users’ behaviour …
Rapid Routes Feedback:
Examples of six different rapid routes texts were circulated for discussion – each by
a different author, and each relevant to a different skills area. Participants were
invited to offer comments on approach taken.

Easily understood and direct style of the “writing skills” and “personal/interpersonal skills” appreciated;

Danger many pages are repetitious leading to too many layers/steps – are
some of these intermediate stages necessary?; user wants “value per click”
(i.e. reward in terms of significant new input for each page visited), while at
the same time, there is a need for succinctness;

Need to balance this with likelihood that users will come to outer signposting
pages via range of different routes, so need to realign expectations as they
move through resource; also mustn’t overlook fact users can short-circuit
process via search box and/or concertina dropdown boxes;

Need to agree one format, develop and beta test – but final format will have to
emerge in part through writing and testing process?

Need variety of formats, including media-rich forms, depending on task; option
to have audio delivery of all text content on rapid routes pages has always
been seen as standard;

Particular concerns raised about (a) possibly patronising tone of “you’re a
busy, intelligent adult” language on time management resource page; (b)
terms like “savvy” on learning styles page – there was the suggestion that we
follow Plain English Campaign guidelines.
Interactive Exercises
Examples of three possible exercises, sketched out in brief, were circulated. An
example of a student video reflecting on presentation styles was also viewed.
 Clear that there is a long way to be travelled in terms of developing suitable
exercises of this kind; this needs to be one area of significant focus in the
next couple of months;
 Clear tension between developing more generic interactive activities of
potential use to any student working independently, and developing specific
activities that individual members of staff/departments would be willing to
promote/embed directly within their curriculum – in which case how subjectspecific need the tasks to be? Example cited of success of HCS information
skills work when embedded and integrated within curriculum from start.
 We need to be able to show the potential for the exercises to work, so that
staff in particular are encouraged to add material to TASH after its launch.
 Similarly, what weight do the exercises have? Are they voluntary for students,
or are we encouraging staff to make them compulsory? This impacts on
questions about the scale of the exercise, and leads us to consider what
rewards we can offer students for taking part.
 Resources need to be substantial enough to get students working on them –
but not so substantial that they feel there are more important things to do with
their time; they also need to be sufficiently unfinished to encourage
significant active engagement;
 Quality of personalised feedback may be critical in ensuring engagement with
tasks – but can this be achieved without f2f inputs?
 The work of Martin Oliver was referred to in this context, in relation to
pedagogical frameworks underpinning the use of learning technology;
 Important to remember the purpose of these exercises is “self-assessment”
and more targeted signposting – not to achieve any specific teaching function
(that’s what the resources we signpost to will hopefully achieve);
Suggested embedding activities

Crucial role in dissemination of Info Literacy Strategy and MOLE tutorials of
specific references to IL in departmental LTAS – TASH might do the same via
specific skills similarly referred to?

Possibility of speaking to library staff development session (speak to Lyn
Parker);

Possibility of speaking to Student Services regular staff briefing on a Tuesday
morning (see Emma Jeggo for further info).