All,

I have captured the video for the last presentation, and converted it into several parts for easier downloading/viewing.

Part 1: Roadmap review
Part 2: Demo of Plymouth “live”
Part 3: Plymouth team discuss their “pilot” experiences
Part 4: Whats Next
Part 5: Feedback from call attendees (the last 5 mins are missing due to recording problem)

I have recorded these as .wmvs this time rather than flash. We will need to see how it goes with this approach, both the .wmv’s and slicing it up (which took a LONG time). Next time I may just provide as a flash video in the web again, but provide the time-stamps for each area so you can skip to the bit you want.

Any questions or queries, please drop me a line

Is anyone aware of any quantitative information/reports regarding the use of mobile devices by students to access library or university services via the web? Alternatively, have you (or the institutions IT team) looked into this or monitored it via your server logs?

I am more than aware that we have been quiet recently. I just want to reassure everyone that this is not a result of “nothing happening”. In fact, I can confidently say its been because the reverse has occurred!

Over the last 10 weeks, the team have been working closely with Plymouth to prepare for the pilot release of the student interface for the start of term. We are on track to achieve this goal, working with a small subset of lists (covering 22 modules) serving around 1000 students. The pilot itself is focusing on what I will term “core” functionality, though there are one or two “nice things” in there which I hope you will like! More in the demo…

…which I will be scheduling in around 2-3 weeks, once we have gone live, to cover project progress in more detail and provide a run-through of what we have delivered.

If there are any immediate questions, please email or ring me.

Yesterday, I mentioned in the webinar we would like to collate a bit more information about ZFG member’s z-targets. As well as potentially being of use in future for release 2, we are looking at this as one means of performing an availability query. So…

1. Assuming everyone has a z-target, have you opened this up and made it publically available?

2. If so, do you have the connection details to hand (or could you send me a mail with them)

3. Do you know if it supports holdings/availability information - if you’re contributing to COPAC, you may very well be providing this info, or found a way to?

Thanks in advance,
Ian

All,

As I stated in the webinar yesterday, I am very keen to find the opportunity to meet academics at your institutions, and discuss the role reading lists plays in the learning process, and what a tool like Zephyr should provide them with to achieve this.

At this point, only two institutions have indicated they would be able to help with this and I would like to arrange at least half a dozen site visits to get a representative view from this important class of users.

I would like to arrange visits ideally in August/September, but can push this out to October (and even early November, though this isn’t ideal as this work is for Release Two). I do recognise we have a lot of people on holiday, and lecturers are will also be winding up to the beginning of a new term, but anything you can do to find academics who are (or, even more interesting, are not!) interested in reading lists / Zephyr would be really appreciated.

Thanks in advance, Ian

In the existing Talislist, under utilities, there is the facility to “add a list name”. On the edit screen for this, a field is available for URL which (when populated) puts a link in the “List Name” header. I am very interested to find out how this URL link is being used (I really need to get out more…)

Some early feedback from PLYM is that they use this to link to the “Module folder” on the VLE, or to a related list (such as a list where the modules are optional). How are other people using this?

PS: My reason for asking is in consideration of the wider data conversion. Would it be acceptable to put this link in as just another resource on the list? Maybe by putting the link in there, you are trying to meet a specific goal which we could tackle in a better way? Looking forward to responses!

Just stumbled on this - http://www.futuremedia.co.uk/learning/?p=217 - which talks about how lecturers can use scrum to plan, create course content, etc. Thought some may find it of interest…

Over August/Sept (though this may run into October), I’d like to arrange a site visit at a few institutions to meet with academics and discuss reading lists - why they do them, benefits they bring or could bring, how they build them, how they use them to engage with students, what would make their life easier, etc. I am still mulling over the details for the visits at the moment, but remain fairly flexible in the set-up - either meeting several academics individually, or running a group workshop (with 4-6 attendees), or a mix of both.

Are any ZFG members in a position to facilitate a visit during this time period, and arrange to get me “in front of” some of your academic staff? From our recent experience at Plymouth with the student workshop, Plymouth themselves got a lot out of the day and found the effort they put in getting the group together very rewarding in terms of feedback about their services. I’d hope this would be repeated with the academics.

If you think you’d like to arrange something and get involved, drop me an email and I’ll give you a call to discuss in more depth.

I have just sent a webinar invite out to the wider focus group for a project update, on the 29th of July (10:30am). This will get into some more depth on the email chris sent out recently regarding the project over the next 12 months, look at some student discovery prototypes, and look at what we’ve done in the first 2 iterations leading to the pilot.

Its a bit tricky keeping the webinar invite list up to date - so if you have not received an invite, and would like one, drop me an email and I’ll get you added to the list. On the flip side, if you got an invite and didn’t want them in future, drop me a mail too!

Cheers
Ian

I’ve recorded the video for Sprint 7, and have split this into three parts:

Part 1: Review of Research and Development (powerpoint)
Part 2: Demo of new features added in Sprint 7 (live)
Part 3: Student Discovery, and What’s next (powerpoint)

Enjoy!