Student as Producer

One of the initiatives heavily tied in with projects like DIVERSE is the Student as Producer agenda. The Student as Producer agenda is all about putting the focus back on research at university. In their own words Student as Producer:

“Student as Producer restates the meaning and purpose of higher education by reconnecting the core activities of universities, i.e., research and teaching, in a way that consolidates and substantiates the values of academic life. The core values of academic life are reflected in the quality of students that the University of Lincoln aims to produce. Student as Producer emphasises the role of the student as collaborators in the production of knowledge. The capacity for Student as Producer is grounded in the human attributes of creativity and desire, so that students can recognise themselves in a world of their own design.”

As part of the I’m a Producer day ran yesterday, we gave a demonstration of DIVERSE and also took part in a Q & A session regarding DIVERSE and Student as Producer. Overall this session went well, and provided us a good oppurtunity to further spread the word about DIVERSE. Furthermore the students who attended this session  showed a definite interest in DIVERSE and liked the idea. All of this will hopefully prove invaluable when DIVERSE is fully rolled out and in use properly next semester.

For more information about the Student as Producer click here

DIVERSE heads Mobile!

One of the things we’ve been looking into developing here at DIVERSE is a mobile application. We’re hoping to make it even easier to access and view your clouds while on the move. For now development is underway for an iPhone app but once this is completed we’ll be looking to roll it out to other mobile platforms. On top of the dedicated app we’re also looking at making a mobile version of DIVERSE that can be accessed through your phones web browser, again this will allow for east navigation on mobile platforms..

Check out the current image of the DIVERSE app below!

DIVERSE iPhone App

DIVERSE iPhone App

DIVERSE updates

Based on previous feedback from students and staff using DIVERSE we have made a number of changes to DIVERSE. So to keep everyone up to speed l decided to write this blog post to keep everyone updated with what has been happening lately.

Firstly DIVERSE is in full swing in terms of its deployment to faculties and is being actively used by computing students currently. The hope is to have classes from other faculties using it regularly in the near future.

From a more technical perspective DIVERSE has seen a number of overhauls aimed at improving usability for users of DIVERSE. These changes have been heavily driven by the feedback we have received from users.

These changes include the new more user friendly and SEO (search engine optimised) links.This means rather than having to go to diverse.lincoln.ac.uk/application/index.php?module=101&topic=hello-world which is difficult to remember and also bad from a security perspective. Instead clouds can be accessed in the following manner: http://diverse.lincoln.ac.uk/module/101/topic/hello-world, which is much cleaner and simpler. This may however change in the near future to become http://diverse.lincoln.ac.uk/101/hello-world, depending on user feedback.

The second usability change is that resource clouds themselves have been made to fit more consistently with the rest of the project website; consistency was an issue raised by many users. This means that all DIVERSE pages share the same header and footer allowing users constant access to key parts of the project website e.g. support, documentation etc.

Following on from this, the add page functionality has also been reworked and updated. The new system involves a 2 step process. Firstly the user fills out the URL as normal:

Step 1 for adding a resource

 

Then if necessary the user is taken to a second step in which an image selection form is presented, the aim of this is to help reduce the number of default icons being used and to ultimately make resource clouds look more varied and useful to users.

Add a resource step 2

In addition there have also been some smaller additions made to DIVERSE, these include the inclusion of a profile page and cloud list page which allow users to see the clouds they have access to currently. As well as this as part of the research aspect of DIVERSE a statistics page has been created which presents the data  DIVERSE is collecting in a more user friendly manner. An example of part of the stats section can be seen below:

Statistics

Stay tuned for more updates and news.

Meeting with Business and Law

Just a quick update about our recent meeting with Business and Law. Myself and Ben took part in two lectures (one with first year students, one with third year) to introduce them to the work we’ve been doing on DIVERSE. We went through the steps involved with using DIVERSE and highlighted how we think it can benefit them. The plan for the coming weeks is to get the two groups actively working with DIVERSE and using it as a research aid to the work they are currently undertaking. We’re hoping that through this not only will they benefit but they will also provide us with active feedback regarding DIVERSE.

It shouldn’t be long until DIVERSE is fully underway in both Business and Law and HLSS so keep posted for more updates!

Meeting with Health, Life and Social Sciences

Just a quick update of recent events regarding DIVERSE. The main news for today is that myself and Max took part in a meeting with lectures from the faculty of Health, Life and Social Sciences who are interested in using DIVERSE in their modules. The meeting proved there was a definite interest amongst the lecturers regarding DIVERSE. Furthermore we gathered yet more ideas and opinions on what can be added to DIVERSE in the future; for example one interesting area to consider is the idea of staff creating their own semi private clouds as part of their research, so DIVERSE becomes helpful not only for student research, but also for staff collaboration on research projects. This alongside the other demonstrations of the tool means we have a wealth of ideas to improve DIVERSE.

The current plan is to start integrate DIVERSE with students in HLSS in the coming weeks. More on this will be posted once the timetable for this roll out is finalised.

Finally just to keep you updated with other project goings on, myself and Max have 2 sessions with students from Business & Law tomorrow, so keep your eyes peeled for more news on that shortly.