StudyNet Developments for 2013/14
What I’ll cover
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New interface
– New navigation
– New portal
– Search
– Student Support
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Module
– Assignment changes
– Content creation
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Some last minute things I’ve just thought you might be interesting in
New interface
Navigation
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Too many top-level links?
– Confusing to new students?
– Less complaints when we had more top-level links.
– Less links means more depth?
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We don’t manage information that sits under the top-level. Some areas will not be reviewed
because of Hutton Hub development
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Voyager removed from top-level in 2011/12 - 4th most searched for item
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Schools and support services include the navigation links in printed materials to help students
find their information.
Top Searches
eduroam - 3663
timetable - 3580
vpn - 2381
voyager - 2294
asu - 1948
student allocator - 1929
study room - 1539
athens - 1500
turnitin - 1419
harvard referencing - 1291
book a room - 1180
referencing - 1148
study abroad - 1010
exam timetable - 981
mintel - 932
book room - 931
level 4 timetable - 901
student record - 792
Eduroam - 763
web of knowledge - 685
council tax - 620
book study room - 615
study rooms - 604
ASU - 594
book a study room - 578
room booking - 547
timetable link - 520
referencing guideline - 514
exam results - 499
5lfs0037 - 478
studyroom - 461
student handbook - 448
westlaw - 432
5lfs0030 - 431
map - 430
bob - 426
degree classification - 426
group study room - 423
Key:
Bold - Level 2 link
Red - Available every page
Blue - Should be highlighted on module page
* - IH managed
Navigation
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Information is owned by and structured into ‘Services’
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Students search for answers not services.
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Most questions related to IH, Student Centre, ASU
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Help was directed to IH’s website after ‘LIS’ was removed from the top-level and students
weren’t navigating into ‘Student Support’ -> ‘LIS’. Removing links is risky.
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Challenge is to balance ‘New user’ vs ‘Old user’
Navigation - What students are not searching for
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News
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Social
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Services (ASU are the exception)
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StudyNet support (but currently top-level link)
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So we going to remove 'Social', 'News' and merge all support areas under a new top-level
page
New navigation
Personal links
Course activity
‘Learning Resource’ page
Student Support
Information Hertfordshire (Help)
StudyNet Support
Called it ‘Help and Support’ in case there’s
documentation that says click on ‘Help’ or
‘Student Support’.
Search StudyNet
Portal
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University pushes information to students ‘for their own good’. But students want their
information displayed - Subscription is not the answer
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Space is at a premium
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Current design evolved to avoid scrolling. But:
– More news categories were added
– Everyone wanted their news to be immediately visible
– So ‘news since last logged in’ introduced
– But this has led to certain staff continuously reposting
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So should categorisation continue?
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Should we encourage scrolling?
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Should we loose side menus to create extra space?
Portal
Portal
Space for ‘adverts’
Un-categorised news
Link to careers
Other systems
(Staff continue to see
module links + ‘Staff’ and
‘Research’ link)
Icon reflects ‘category’
Single UHSU link
Events - currently. Future upcoming assignments
and possibly feed from timetabling system
Portal
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Restructured news page displaying most popular news
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No need to repost. If your message is being read, students will continue to click through.
‘Are you aged 25-35......’ was posted 7 days ago (read nearly 700 times)
Portal
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Restructured portal functionality. Some sections merged.
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Removing some under utilised functionality (by December 2013)
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Prominent search box
Search - Do people use ‘Search’ to navigate?
Page Footer
Available from tab on homepage
Available on modules?
VPN - 2381
Voyager - 2294
Athens - 1500
Booking a room - 6800
Timetable - 5001
Student record - 792
Exam results - 499
Referencing - 2953
Mintel - 932
Web of knowledge - 685
Student handbook - 448
Westlaw - 432
Facebook and Google Plus have no navigation - only search
Search - Target Results
Page Footer
Available from tab on homepage
Available on modules?
VPN - 2381
Voyager - 2294
Athens - 1500
Booking a room - 6800
Timetable - 5001
Student record - 792
Exam results - 499
Referencing - 2953
Mintel - 932
Web of knowledge - 685
Student handbook - 448
Westlaw - 432
Google is tweaked to always return
prioritised results for most of the
keywords
Search - Limitations
Page Footer
Available from tab on homepage
Available on modules?
VPN - 2381
Voyager - 2294
Athens - 1500
Booking a room - 6800
Timetable - 5001
Student record - 792
Exam results - 499
Referencing - 2953
Mintel - 932
Web of knowledge - 685
Student handbook - 448
Westlaw - 432
But we can’t tweak the majority of
content. So the content needs to be
improved or filtered (or ideally both)
Search - what we’re doing
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Google supports 1500 ‘search collections’ - results filtered by url
– Automatically creating collections based on module data in Quercus and StudyNet’s course
builder
– Introducing a new ‘by course’ search option.
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Search Term
‘All StudyNet’
‘Course Collection’
Problem Thinking
4000
38
Moving our keyword list out of Google to a separate database
– Easier to maintain.
– Will be used to provide a type-ahead on the search box so don’t need to actually search for
most common items
Student Support
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Tablet and laptop trackpad use have changed page
interaction. Scrolling in websites is becoming popular.
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Merging all support areas into one long page
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Top-half of the page is focused on solutions to problems
rather than by which service manages the pages.
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But all services will be presented at the top-level.
Student Support
Student Support
Modules
Assignments
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Marking Scheme generator
– Create schemes at School level
– Weightings per column per assignment
– General comments per column
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Weightings of assignment within overall module structure
– Export overall marks
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Module leader to have edit rights on first marker results so results can be released
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Moving assignment system to new servers:
– improved virus checker
– changes to file structures to increase download speed
– Support much large ZIP’d assignment downloads
Marking Scheme
Once you select a scheme, you can
change the weighting’s per assignment
Marking using the scheme
Students can't find things on StudyNet
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The majority of content on StudyNet is generated for teaching purposes
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Not designed to be found
– Inconsistent use across a programme
– Often poor titles or file names. e.g. ‘Lecture notes’
– No descriptions or tags
– Inconsistent folder structure - Sometimes a mixture of week, topic and person folders
– Confusion over where teaching materials should go
• Teaching materials in ‘module information’
• Placed on umbrella ‘programme sites’ so can’t find them on modules
– Information not always ‘timely’
What we’re going to do
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Introducing new (optional) ‘creation template’
– Structured content
– Encourage good practice by recommending information to add
– Reduce link depth by encouraging a single level of ‘topics’ (folders)
• Content can be added to topic
– New function to add a discussion topic
• Auto naming of some content - for example ‘4COM0053 - Module Guide’ to improve search
results
• Auto tagging to relate items such as assignments to topics so that they can appear incontext.
• Render teaching resources as single page for students so they don’t have to click in and out
of folder
Example wizard
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Welcome message
How do you intend to use the module
–
–
•
•
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configures module’s options
choose banner and ‘module icon’ (to help students identify material in activity
stream)
Choose the types of learning resources categories
Add a module guide - we’ll control it’s name to make it more identifiable
Main Module Structure
–
Add Topic (or week)
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Add resources directly under topic.
Student Support
Single edit screen
for updating common
module features
As you can see - it’s very
much work in progress!
Some last minute stuff
‘Achievements’ (name still to be decide)
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Get ‘badges’ for doing stuff. Get prompted for not
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Monitors ‘soft skills’. Examples might be:
– Update your profile with a photo and information
– Search for and access a journal
– Access a referencing guideline
– Borrow a book
– Access your student record
– View the induction video
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Initially concentrate on induction related ‘achievements’
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Acts as an alternative help system. e.g. ‘You’ve not borrow a book. Do you want to see
how?’
QMP
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IH developing new architecture
– Moving QMP from Oracle to Microsoft SQL
– 1 Admin Server, 1 Reporting Server, 5 front-end test servers
– Login to be integrated with University account system
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Authoring - as now
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Scheduling
– Developing a scheduling tool on StudyNet that manages timetable
– Auto-enrolls students on to quiz