Comms and Collaboration Consultation
- 1. The University’s future Online Learning Environment Consultation on Communications and Collaboration
- 2. The purpose of these slides is to provide a brief update on the future Online Learning Environment consultation and its next steps; update you on current development work; and seek your feedback on the ideas and potential implications for staff.
- 3. Background • The University is in the process of reviewing its Online Learning Environment to make sure it meets the needs of staff and students for the next decade • Several core principles inherent in StudyNet will remain. For example, the notion of a single personalised portal which is a key channel of communication; facilities that encourage and support collaborative working; and rich tools to manage assessment and feedback • But some changes are envisaged. For example, providing a structured learner journey through each module, the greater use of 3rd party services; more timely and targeted messaging; and enhanced data analytics • A key output from the first consultation round is the need for a better Communications and Collaboration Environment
- 4. Consultation on Communications and Collaboration • This part of the consultation relates to how we might provide an online environment for communications and collaborations between all members of the University, and in particular to support interactions with students throughout their studies • The aim of this is to address points raised in the initial consultation relating to the challenges of enabling timely, personalised and effective communication between staff and students, and students and students
- 5. The key messages from the previous consultations included a wish for: • A mechanism to be alerted to relevant changes on StudyNet (new resources, etc) to home page and mobile devices – Ability to subscribe/unsubscribe to different alerts – Ability to mark/hide items that have been read – Prioritisation of news between urgent, important and adverts – Ability to select some messages and alerts to be delivered in the form of daily or weekly digests • More relevant channels for communications, which meet individual preferences for sending and receiving messages – Add instant and social messaging channels – Integrate messaging within client of choice – Automated lists to send messages to different groups of students – Better targeting options for messages • Better directory of University members – Searchable profile and contact details (and times for students) – Public presence for students, including blog – Enhanced groupwork facilities, allowing more interactivity
- 6. What would we like to achieve? For students • Offer a choice of channels to receive messages, eg social media, personal email (direct or digest), apps/notifications • Provide a collaborative learning environment with online storage – personal and shareable (dropbox) – and online meetings/groupwork tools, with managed lists to communicate with (eg my cohort, my module tutorial group) • Provide a range of academic software applications on students’ own devices
- 7. What would we like to achieve? For staff • Provide a familiar and convenient, Outlook- centred, managed messaging environment that allows communications to individuals and to groups of students (eg Module, Cohort, Programme) • Provide a collaborative learning environment with online storage – personal and shareable (dropbox) – and online meetings/groupwork tools
- 8. What would we like to achieve? For the University • Need to ensure essential messages are delivered to the relevant recipients and are not lost in blanket coverage • Enable targeted messages to specific groups • Need to broadcast messages/news, with indication of priority • Analytical tools to assess effectiveness of communications
- 9. How do we propose to deliver this? • As part of the solution we intend to implement the Microsoft Office 365 suite of applications – see next slide for details • We will provide integrations with the Student and HR systems to provide target groups for communications • We will develop a mechanism to send and deliver messages from sender preferred channels to recipient preferred channels (eg staff send from Outlook, student receives instant message)
- 10. What is Microsoft Office 365? A suite of tools that delivers: • Cloud storage for staff and students, which can be private or shared with others (similar to Dropbox), accessible anywhere, on any device (see OneDrive) • Ability to collaborate on the production of Office documents with others (see Office and SharePoint) • Online communications tools for instant messaging, voice and video, and a social media interface (see Lync and Yammer) • An online profile, with the ability to view who is present and available to communicate with • Integration with Outlook for desktop use
- 11. Staff - We need your feedback… Please consider the following and email your comments to Greg Bowie, OLE Review Project Manager g.bowie@herts.ac.uk by Friday 29th August • What sort of communications do you send out, to whom, and why? Do you expect a response? • How would you like students to contact you online – email or via instant message/virtual office at set times? • How do you make yourself available to students now? Do you have open office hours? If students could see when you were available online, would you be happy for them to contact you directly? • How would you like to receive messages? If you had to choose a particular channel, what would it be? • If some alerts to students could be automated, would this be useful and save you time (eg hand-in deadline reminders)? • Any other comments?
- 12. Students - We need your feedback… Please consider the following and email your comments to Greg Bowie, OLE Review Project Manager g.bowie@herts.ac.uk by Friday 29th August • What types of messaging services do you use? How would you like to receive messages from the University? If you had to choose one channel, what would it be? • What are the high priority messages you want to receive immediately and what would you prefer to find at your convenience. • How would you like to communicate with your lecturers online? Do you prefer to send them emails, or would you prefer instant messaging? • What notifications or alerts of changes or new information in StudyNet would be useful? • Any other comments?