Today as part of our on-going work to integrate and launch DIVERSE, we took part in a session introducing computing students to DIVERSE. In this session myself and Max gave a talk to level 3 computing students. This talk consisted of giving students an insight into the on-going development of DIVERSE, as well as highlighting the benefits and changes we hope DIVERSE will have on their own studies. This talk also involved a guided and informative tour of how to use DIVERSE, and also was linked back into the students current studies by introducing DIVERSE as a case study for component based software engineering.

Overall myself and Max believe the session went well and ran smoothly, and hopefully has had a positive impact on students and helped raise their awareness of not only DIVERSE, but also other university projects linked to DIVERSE such as Nucleus, OAuth & Jerome etc. Which students may previously have been unfamiliar with.

The second part of this session consists of a workshop which will take place this Friday. This workshop will involve the 40 or so students who took part today actually using DIVERSE and populating resource clouds for a given topic. In this session we will hand out questionnaires and gather volunteers to gain further feedback on the DIVERSE tool. We hope that this feedback can then be used to enhance and improve DIVERSE overall.

The lecture slides from today’s session can be accessed below.

DIVERSE presentation 26/10/2011

We’ve recently updated our video library to bring you even more instructional videos on how to use DIVERSE! These new videos walk you through the process of installing and using the toolbar; check them out here!

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.

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.

Just dropping by with a quick update about what we’re doing here at DIVERSE. We’ve stepped back from developing the clouds for a short while to focus on researching similar tools to that of DIVERSE. We’re hoping through a deep analysis that we’ll be able to build on existing work to help make DIVERSE even better! Once we’ve carried out some research we’ll get back to making DIVERSE even better!

Keep posted for any new updates.

– DIVERSE