HE Preparation Project

Tim and I met with Jo Laycock from SRAM last Friday. Jo is heading up an Aimhigher funded HE Preparation Project through which she hopes to engage a number of cohorts of year 12-13 students in schools and colleges in the region through a range of workshops on and off campus. The specific focus is upon developing study skills which will stand students in good stead when they progress on to degree courses here at TUOS and elsewhere.

Jo is currently meeting with colleagues around the institution to pick brains on the most appropriate ways to tackle and present study skills work of this kind - and she will shortly be consulting with teachers in the region to see how her project can best complement their work in the classroom. One suggestion to emerge from our meeting was the organisation of a workshop in the autumn at which TUOS colleagues who teach study skills in a variety of different guises might come together to swap ideas, techniques and research to inform one another's work on this and related areas.

We wish Jo well with her important work and look forward to her pulling off this workshop in the academic new year ... it would certainly be of interest to TASH as we move to embed the online resource in a range of different face-to-face teaching contexts.

Pilot testing 25 June

Thanks to the students who kindly gave up their time yesterday morning to run a critical eye over the TASH site as it now stands. Still very much a work in progress, but I think all of the project team present shared my relief when we were offered an overwhelmingly positive set of responses; and plenty of helpful suggestions as to where we might tinker with the design and feel of the site to make it better still.

It seems then that we are not barking up the wrong tree - quite the reverse in fact from what a number of the students had to say - and will, with renewed confidence, get on with the substantial work that remains to be done in developing and refining the site in preparation for a "soft launch" to interested parties and likely key users in mid-September.

Preparing for pilot testing

It's been a very busy month or so, with a lot of work going into the design and structure of the TASH resource. It currently looks really nice, albeit with a few rough edges; and we're at a stage now where, by the end of June, we're hoping to pilot test the site with students (more info at the end of the post). The pilot testing should identify issues of structure, content, navigation, and design that will help us develop the resource further, and make sure it meets the needs of its core users, the students. Building on this testing, there will be a student read-through of the revised resource later in July to make sure that the authors haven't come on like disco vicars, trying to be down with the kids, but revealing themselves to be the crusty old men they actually are.

What seems most likely at the moment is that the TASH resource will be launched softly and selectively in September 2009, to key stakeholders such as Level One tutors, learning and teaching advocates, professional services staff involved in induction and transition support, and so on. We'll use the first semester of 09/10 as an extended beta testing phase, gathering feedback and adding resources and materials to the site. We'll then have a more public launch at the start of the second semester, at a time when hopefully students will have more time and space to engage, and perhaps even the direct motivation if their autumn semester experiences haven't been all they expected. We're also clear now, as we have been all along, that the TASH site that gets signed off is only version 1, and it will be expected to develop and grow as more uses and needs are recognised. The aim is to create a simple site with room to grow, and that aim still looks to be achievable in a realistic timeframe.

If you're a Sheffield student and would like to pilot test the resource, some time in the last week of June, please contact us. Your feedback will be essential for making sure we get the look, feel, and content of the resource right, and we will be able to reward you for your time.

Brief update from the core team

We've been disseminating stuff by email and via our website of late, so this blog has fallen a little by the wayside. However, to return it to its original purpose of providing short, pithy updates about where we are, here goes a summary of the last few weeks' activity within the core team...

The TASH website has been updated with all sorts of materials exploring the content, design, and scope of the resource, and is intended to be an introduction to the whole project - so tell your friends. We're publicising vigorously the next general update meeting on December 16th, where you'll be able to find out more about all these things, and carry on the big-tent discussions we've been threading through the project. You can express your interest in the meeting here. In preparation for this meeting, the core team have divvied up jobs between them, preparing materials, scoping out what's available, and adding more detail to the questions of design and structure, which, we all know, will be crucial for getting students engaged. In some areas, it's been really good to see we have loads of academic support resources, as this makes our job choosing between them and working out how to make connections. In others, we're still looking for support materials, and will have a more specific list of these topics after the 16th; in the meantime, you're most welcome to send to Chris any resources or websites that you find help your students develop their academic skills. And finally, with The Sheffield Graduate project going live, it's great that the environment has been created for discussing transferable skills amongst staff and students, and that some of the best practice in the university has been shared. We look forward to working with and building on the Sheffield Graduate project, and continuing to help students go further in what they already do.

And I'll stop here, as if it's one skill I want to improve through this project, it's concision.

Patchworks and frameworks: core team meeting

The TASH core team has met to catch up, exchange progress reports, and work out where we're going next; and it's all looking pretty positive. The biggest piece of news is that we've decided to cancel the October 31st meeting, although aim to have all the documents and ideas ready for that date, and release them through our ever-evolving website. The thinking is if we're going to do mostly front-led update stuff, we might as well save everyone's time, and do it virtually, rather than ask people to give up a couple of hours at a busy time of year. So, if it has been in your diary, thank you; and feel free to reclaim it for catching up with blogs / talking to colleagues / going fishing, or whatever.

It was really nice for everyone to get together and find out what's been going on. And it's a lot - Steve has been beavering away at the technical side, and exploring the best ways for our core team (growing like topsy) to communicate with one another; and his LeTS colleague, Louise, has been sorting out the finances, the website, and generally keeping us all pulling in the same direction. Chris has been talking with the Medical faculty, and organising a meeting where we can all sit round the same table to discuss TASH; and Jen and Linda have carried on their ferreting out of resources from Engineers, and putting them into some kind of coherent framework. Kath's been talking to the Science faculty and working on the design and feel of the site - her rather natty metaphor today was about a patchwork resource, stitching together disparate sources into something coherent, structured, and with little somethings for everyone. And Willy and myself haven't, contrary to appearances, just been scratching ourselves and drafting gargantuan emails; we've been organising focus groups, thinking about what we want in the resource, and working out how to do it. We've now divided up the different tasks going forward, and it's hoped by the end of October we'll have an outline map of the resource, some more concrete ideas about design, and maybe even some examples of how it might all work to publicise via the website. More details about events as they unfold will be posted here, and we'll carry on with this more public side of the conversation and debate throughout the project's lifespan.

What we did on our summer holidays ...

Lest the lacuna in the blog be taken as evidence for a complete lack of activity during the oh so sunny month of August, I should record here (since I failed to do so at the time) that the core project team, in various combinations, met on 14 and 29 August to take stock of where we've got to individually and collectively, and to consider where we're going from here. Louise and Steve have variously knocked our heads together to ensure that something more concrete emerges going forward - within a meaningful timeframe and without breaking the bank - and let me assure you all that things continue to progress to the plan inside our heads, even if it might not always look like that from the outside; increasingly tangible and, we hope, coherent statements of what that plan might be will be appearing over the coming months (remember to watch the project webpages for meeting details etc.).

We look forward to beginning this process at the next open meeting on Tuesday 16 September, 11am to 1pm (with tea/coffee to start and sandwiches from midday). Amongst other things we plan to provide a general project update, circulate draft tutor-facing guides to resources, report on the first student focus group hosted today, and talk you through our first working draft of how the TASH resource itself may function. By way of a sneak preview, here's something else inpenetrable I drew at the meeting on 29 August.