Progress update

From within the press of the taught semester, it's hard to find space to reflect on longer-term projects and work still in progress. So, apologies for the silence on the blog; and many thanks to those who have commented on and supported TASH via the uSpace group.

The resource is now live, and a number of specific groups of students are being targeted as beta-testers for the site. These include:

• TILL students who have the misfortune to be taught by me and Willy, especially in study skills contexts;
• Engineers, with whom Linda Gray is working; and
• English Literature students, who Bob McKay is supporting.
  

There are also other students working with staff associated with TASH who have been pointed towards it in less systematic ways; and bits of feedback are reaching us from different colleagues about how useful they've found it. We're hoping to arrange more formal evaluations of the resource next semester (1) with (or via) the Union Links, and (2) with the Study Abroad / Erasmus students arriving for the spring semester. This formal evaluation will sit alongside the uSpace area for feedback and comments from all users of the site, which will remain open and vibrant during the next semester.

Behind the scenes, we're working to ensure the stability of the resource. In the short term, this stability involves someone doing some technical work at the back end, a someone we're close to appointing. It also involves continuing to respond to the uSpace feedback, tidying up the resource, and adding new links when they are suggested. Medium term, we will be designing the promotion strategy for the spring semester in the next few weeks. Strong ideas already on the table are (1) a Faculty-specific approach, making sure there's engagement and awareness on this level, and responses to requests to feedback; and (2) sitting with departmental Learning and Teaching Advocates, offering hands-on tuition for the resource, and exploring how it might be embedded in different learning contexts.

And longer-term, ensuring stability means creating a post to look after the whole kit and caboodle. We're getting there with this project, although such things will always take a certain amount of time, and are of course subject to the whims of future internal and external policy demands. And the future is, for everyone, currently looking rather whimful.

Moving on...report on the September 16th meeting

Today’s project meeting was very successful, both in terms of being able to disseminate what has happened on the project thus far, and for getting feedback, questions, steers, and more interested parties on board. In terms of disseminating project activities, this was done through a series of presentations by core team members – Kath Linehan on her work with the Pure Science LTAs and the tutor-facing guides written to date; Linda Gray sharing her work with the Engineering LTAs and the location of academic skills resources within her faculty; Steve Collier reporting on our first focus group with students; and Willy Kitchen talking about the evolving design and structure of the resource. (Copies of all these presentations are available by clicking the links, or from the project website). There were very helpful questions asked, and lots of good discussion points raised, both in this reporting section and the more general discussion; and I’ll discuss a few of the ones that stayed with me.

The over-riding message was that we need to emphasise the relevance to students of the resource. Their motivation, it was suggested, includes fair slices of wanting to get a job, and wanting to learn more about a subject that interests them; so we need to ensure that TASH addresses both these user needs. This relates closely to getting the language right – not all staff, let along students, will respond to phrases like “academic literacy”, so we need to ensure the terms we use are broad and welcome enough to encompass a range of perspectives and users. One way to achieve this is via student-generated material, or, equally excitingly, materials generated by recent graduates; there are precedents for both of these, for example the excellent CILASS Student Ambassador Network pages, and the Careers Service’s podcasts about “A day in the life of…” all sorts of exciting people. We also need to ensure that the resource meets its promises of being multimedia and rich, to cater for the wide range of learning styles and backgrounds of our students. This is by way of some defensiveness – if at the moment the project team are concentrating a lot on written documents, it doesn’t mean that the entire resource will have outputs in this format! And finally, we need to ensure the whole range of staff in the university are included and interested in the resource. The particular groups identified in discussion included hourly-paid staff, in teaching and support capacities, and full-time support staff; often, these people are the more friendly face within a department, to whom the student will turn. They, therefore, need to be in-tune with TASH, and aware of what it has to offer.

So, what next? Organising focus groups is the next big task, and we’re in active discussions with the Union of Students, CILASS, and other established networks to support this. We’ll also be concentrating on finding what resources are already available within the institution, and where possible, generating tutor-facing guides to communicate these in a standard form. And we’ll also be continuing to look at our skills areas, and benchmarking them against documents with general currency, such as The Sheffield Graduate profile. If we receive as much support and enthusiasm for the rest of the project as we did in today’s meeting, then it should be (relatively speaking) a walk in the park.

Responses from announce message

Having successfully emailed the whole university, without any Ronald Reagan-style gaffes, it's nice to sit back now and think a little about the responses we've had. Let's start with the fact there's been a lot of interest - at close of play today, 22 positive responses, from 15 different departments. What's been particularly nice is the spread of interest, from students to early-career academics to bigwigs to support staff and learning development colleagues; it seems that everyone's interested in this, and has something to contribute. Secondly, there's been an offering-up of ideas, materials, prospective projects, and talents already, which is pleasing, given the collaborative intention of the project. And thirdly, those who have responded have often emphasised the things Willy and I have talked about between ourselves, such as the importance of ensuring key skills, the language of enhancement and development rather than deficiency and remedy, and the necessity of the overall project. No matter how many people email in response, and/or come along on June 24th, the announce email has helped launch the project publicly, and foster a certain degree of awareness. This may make knocking on doors to find out what people are doing, and what they want to do - almost certainly one of the next steps in the project development - easier, and even more rewarding.

And lastly, two other great things have happened this week, namely the confirmation of Kath Linehan and Linda Gray as members of the core project team. TASH will be all the better for your contribution, and I look forward very much to working with you!