StudyNet Developments for 2013/14

What I’ll cover

• New interface

– New navigation

– New portal

– Search

– Student Support

• Module

– Assignment changes

– Content creation

• Some last minute things I’ve just thought you might be interesting in

New interface

Navigation

• Too many top-level links?

– Confusing to new students?

– Less complaints when we had more top-level links.

– Less links means more depth?

• We don’t manage information that sits under the top-level. Some areas will not be reviewed because of Hutton Hub development

• Voyager removed from top-level in 2011/12 - 4th most searched for item

• Schools and support services include the navigation links in printed materials to help students find their information.

Top Searches

eduroam - 3663timetable - 3580vpn - 2381voyager - 2294asu - 1948student allocator - 1929study room - 1539athens - 1500turnitin - 1419harvard referencing - 1291book a room - 1180referencing - 1148study abroad - 1010exam timetable - 981mintel - 932book room - 931level 4 timetable - 901student record - 792Eduroam - 763

web of knowledge - 685 council tax - 620book study room - 615 study rooms - 604 ASU - 594book a study room - 578 room booking - 547timetable link - 520 referencing guideline - 514exam results - 4995lfs0037 - 478studyroom - 461student handbook - 448westlaw - 4325lfs0030 - 431map - 430bob - 426degree classification - 426group study room - 423

Key:

Bold - Level 2 link

Red - Available every page

Blue - Should be highlighted on module page

* - IH managed

Navigation

• Information is owned by and structured into ‘Services’

• Students search for answers not services.

• Most questions related to IH, Student Centre, ASU

• 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.

• Challenge is to balance ‘New user’ vs ‘Old user’

Navigation - What students are not searching for

• News

• Social

• Services (ASU are the exception)

• StudyNet support (but currently top-level link)

• 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 SupportInformation Hertfordshire (Help)StudyNet Support

Called it ‘Help and Support’ in case there’sdocumentation that says click on ‘Help’ or‘Student Support’.

Search StudyNet

Portal

• University pushes information to students ‘for their own good’. But students want their information displayed - Subscription is not the answer

• Space is at a premium

• 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

• So should categorisation continue?

• Should we encourage scrolling?

• Should we loose side menus to create extra space?

Portal

Portal

Un-categorised news

Icon reflects ‘category’Other systems(Staff continue to seemodule links + ‘Staff’ and‘Research’ link)

Single UHSU link

Events - currently. Future upcoming assignmentsand possibly feed from timetabling system

Space for ‘adverts’

Link to careers

Portal

• Restructured news page displaying most popular news

• 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

• Restructured portal functionality. Some sections merged.

• Removing some under utilised functionality (by December 2013)

• Prominent search box

Search - Do people use ‘Search’ to navigate?

Page Footer

VPN - 2381Voyager - 2294Athens - 1500

Available from tab on homepage

Booking a room - 6800 Timetable - 5001Student record - 792Exam results - 499

Available on modules?

Referencing - 2953Mintel - 932Web of knowledge - 685 Student handbook - 448Westlaw - 432

Facebook and Google Plus have no navigation - only search

Search - Target Results

Page Footer

VPN - 2381Voyager - 2294Athens - 1500

Available from tab on homepage

Booking a room - 6800 Timetable - 5001Student record - 792Exam results - 499

Available on modules?

Referencing - 2953Mintel - 932Web of knowledge - 685 Student handbook - 448Westlaw - 432

Google is tweaked to always return prioritised results for most of the keywords

Search - Limitations

Page Footer

VPN - 2381Voyager - 2294Athens - 1500

Available from tab on homepage

Booking a room - 6800 Timetable - 5001Student record - 792Exam results - 499

Available on modules?

Referencing - 2953Mintel - 932Web of knowledge - 685 Student handbook - 448Westlaw - 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

• 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.

• 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

Search Term ‘All StudyNet’ ‘Course Collection’

Problem Thinking 4000 38

Student Support

• Tablet and laptop trackpad use have changed page interaction. Scrolling in websites is becoming popular.

• Merging all support areas into one long page

• Top-half of the page is focused on solutions to problems rather than by which service manages the pages.

• But all services will be presented at the top-level.

Student Support

Student Support

Modules

Assignments

• Marking Scheme generator

– Create schemes at School level

– Weightings per column per assignment

– General comments per column

• Weightings of assignment within overall module structure

– Export overall marks

• Module leader to have edit rights on first marker results so results can be released

• 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 canchange the weighting’s per assignment

Marking using the scheme

Students can't find things on StudyNet

• The majority of content on StudyNet is generated for teaching purposes

• 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

• 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 in-context.

• Render teaching resources as single page for students so they don’t have to click in and out of folder

Example wizard

• Welcome message

• How do you intend to use the module

– 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)

• Add resources directly under topic.

Student Support

Single edit screenfor updating commonmodule features

As you can see - it’s verymuch work in progress!

Some last minute stuff

‘Achievements’ (name still to be decide)

• Get ‘badges’ for doing stuff. Get prompted for not

• 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

• Initially concentrate on induction related ‘achievements’

• Acts as an alternative help system. e.g. ‘You’ve not borrow a book. Do you want to see how?’

QMP

• 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

• Authoring - as now

• Scheduling

– Developing a scheduling tool on StudyNet that manages timetable

– Auto-enrolls students on to quiz