Author Archives: Ben Trott

Meeting with Faculties 10/10/2011

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Earlier today we met up with the two interested faculties (Business & Law and Health, Life & Social Sciences) to demonstrate DIVERSE and also arrange its integration into modules in the coming weeks.

This meeting allowed us to demonstrate the DIVERSE tool and provided us a good opportunity to gauge opinions on the tool, as well as gather any improvements that we could incorporate; for example some features mentioned in this meeting were overlooked previously, but will be integrated into DIVERSE shortly. Similarly a positive point to take away from this meeting was that there is definite interest in the DIVERSE tool and that on first impressions the tool itself seems simple and accessible.

In terms of the outcomes of this meeting, myself and Max have arranged to work with both faculties and provide support as the faculties begin testing the tool in their respective faculties. Furthermore we plan to set up a support hub this week for lecturers and students alike to use in order to provide good technical support for DIVERSE throughout the projects life. Additionally based on feedback we will be rolling out some extra functionality for DIVERSE ready for its full deployment to students in the near future.

 

Diverse Videos

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An essential goal of DIVERSE is simplicity, and so we aim to make the DIVERSE tool simple and easy to use. As part of this  we have just started releasing instructional videos for DIVERSE which supplement the original user guide. The idea is that these videos will provide a virtual walkthrough of the many aspects of DIVERSE for new users.

These videos are all located on the DIVERSE Videos Page

DIVERSE Update: OAuth

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Following on from my last post about our meeting with ICT, OAuth is now integrated into DIVERSE; this update was somewhat delayed as a result of the technical issues outlined previously.

As part of OAuths integration a number of changes have been made to DIVERSE so far, with many more planned in the near future.

Currently the changes are centred on the toolbar, for users this means once they have signed in they receive a more personalised content through the toolbar, and so will only get options to add links to clouds that are part of their course. Similarly when a signed in users tries to like/dislike a link it now defaults to relevant clouds that are associated with their course. The concept behind this is that it provides a cleaner user experience for the user.

This change also affects the main DIVERSE application, as introducing course specific content filtering means the structure of the application is undergoing some changes. So this means future clouds addresses will become http://diverse.lincoln.ac.uk/index.php?module=MODCODE&topic=TOPICNAME.

Although the current plan is that these ugly URLs will be turned into more user friendly URLs in the near future. When this happens instead of http://diverse.lincoln.ac.uk/index.php?module=MODCODE&topic=TOPICNAME the link would be http://diverse.lincoln.ac.uk/module/cloudname ; which is much nicer and easier to remember.

However at the same time we want to allow users to experiment and use DIVERSE freely, and so as part of this update a separate sandbox is being created which will allow users to create their own clouds; this sandbox will be reached by users like this http://diverse.lincoln.ac.uk/101/mycloudname.

Other planned updates include a few additions to the toolbar such as the inclusion of the universities link shortening service linking you, as well as the introduction of course sites ahead of DIVERSEs full deployment in the near future.

 

Meeting with ICT 15/09/2011

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Just a quick update in terms of DIVERSE’s development. Following on from a meeting with ICT today DIVERSE now has access to information stored by some of the universities other projects such as Nucleus. This access allows for a few improvements  to be made to DIVERSE. Firstly this  information allows us to make DIVERSE more personalised, so students will get a more relevant selection of resource clouds based on their course. Secondly  this update also allows the DIVERSE team to access more detailed analytics about how DIVERSE is used, which will ultimately help us to shape the development of the DIVERSE tool more effectively, as well as also helping assist us in our ongoing research.

So stay tuned, the current aim is to have these updates fully deployed alongside the upcoming course sites within the next few weeks.