Summer school

Despite appearances, I'm told it's currently summer; and like most of the University, the TASH project has been both trying to tidy up from the previous year, and look ahead to the next. In our case, this has meant a lot of editing and writing of pages, and location of suitable academic skills resources. The bulk of the work has been done here by Bob McKay, who, from his secret Arctic base - well, his house in Glasgow - has been lovingly crafting and smoothing numerous pages for the site, and locating high-quality academic skills development resources to support them. Danny and Karen have also been carrying on with the technical side of the site, both making it look pretty and that it all works; and trying to make sure it fits together in the most comprehensible way. That structural side is still something we're working on, as it looks like from our original plan of seven skills / seven hills, after the processes of writing and finding resources, we're left with five skills / five...erm...rivers? Much of the content has stayed the same, we've just found other ways to locate it that we think will be more comprehensible to users.

We're aiming for a soft launch at the end of September, offering promotional material and support to key personnel, such as Level One tutors, staff who look after induction processes, and support and academic staff who have shown a commitment to TASH as it has developed. Keeping this initial launch relatively small will enable us to gather high-quality feedback on the resource and its uses, and enable us to improve it for a more full-blooded launch at the start of the second semester. So if you're reading this, we're likely to be in touch in the next month or so with information about that soft launch, and quite possibly a range of promotional goodies. The site launched in September will be version 1.0 of the resource; and we hope that this phased release will enable us to amend and update the site in response to user feedback. I hope you'll be part of that conversation!