Library Day in the Life

I am the E-resources officer at Liverpool John Moores university library, well for the time being anyway (covering maternity leave) but I am also a member of the Marketing team so some of the stuff I get up to relates to that especially this week.

So first thing this morning is was off to one of our other sites for a walk round to see where I can put up posters for our first marketing campaign of the year. We are promoting the availability of PCs and our laptop loans scheme.

That sorted it was off for a quick chat with my manager about a job I am going to apply for, got to be in on Friday. I will be glad when it's finished to be honest. This was followed by a walk across town to the site I am currently based in, to start the day job.

After spending most of last Friday designing posters I needed to catch up with emails, some of which has come in over the weekend. Bit of a mix bag as always but that is the nature of this job. There were a couple from students trying to access resources, a couple of journal queries that have now been resolved, hurrah. Then it was a licence agreement to sign, an invoice to process then lunch.

After lunch more queries, whilst checking out Twitter for any snippets of useful information and postings from others. Then another licence agreement to fill in and sign and more invoice queries.

Tomorrow I'm off to our third site first thing to check out poster locations, then I just need to do the one I'm based at - isn't it always the way that the place you are in gets sorted last!

JISC Online Conference - Day 4

Finally got around to writing up day 4, after catching up with my day job this week. I firstly listened to the recording of Peter Bradwell's session on The Edgeless University, which had been recorded the day before. When he talked about being edgeless he was talking function not form. He asked what are the challenges for UK Universities:

• maintaining standards
• rising demand and widening participation
• strained resources

How can we maintain standards, continue to improve access all with strained resources? and what can technology do to help? He said technology aids collaboration, the availability of information and gets more people involved in learning. Technology poses a new set of possibilities but isn't just a threat. We need to emphasise the value, the quality, affiliation and authority that comes from the institution. Universities become partners in learning rather than sole providers. They validate learning, they are a driving force for research and collaboration. This the way in which they become "edgeless", not disappearing but broadening out. Learning happens beyond individual campuses and institutions. We need to rediscover why we still need universities.

He then asked a number of questions looking at different areas and what the priorities and challenges are in those areas. Obviously this was just a recording so I wasn't actively involved in this but could see the results produced the previous day. The results were interesting (I'm not going to list it all here) and I think in some cases possibly reflected the majority of the audience as teaching featured heavily in the responses, but that could just be me making assumptions about the make up of the audience.

After that I listened to the closing keynote (which was a live session) by Nigel Paine "From courses to communities". Again a very interesting session. He said you should be open to what might work, cull to what will work, and then focus your energies - sound advice, rather than trying to get into everything focus on what works for you and your students, in your institution. Don't just jump onto the latest band wagon.

He also said environment for learning is very important. It's not just about people - you do need to spend time developing yourself but you also need to work on the environment. He quoted Patrick Dixon, who when talking about companies said - visionary companies think radically, embrace radical new partnerships, integrate processes to create realistic products that meet real needs. This is just as applicable for universities.

He argued that leaders need to move from framing to shaping - it's not your job to tell people what to think - you need to build environments in which people can create their own learning.

Learning to know, learning to be, learning to do, learning to live

Things to consider:

• the good enough revolution - cheap and simple is just fine - get it out there, don't worry if it's not perfect
• venue is very important both for online and face to face
• the key to learning success = fun
• develop tools for communities not communities for tools
• make it easy to get started
• be flexible and be emotional

The quote of the day has to be "not everything is equally important" - how true.

And that was it. By this point my ears were numb from wearing headphones for too long and my head was banging from concentrating so hard. Good conference but in some ways harder than a face to face conference because you spend so much time staring at a computer screen.

JISC online conference 2009 - Day 3

Day 3 was a bit of washout in conferencing terms for me. My son's nursery had a flood (so literally a washout for them) so I had to be off work. Oh dear that was my full days conferencing gone, no chance of doing it at home with an almost 4 year old around. So we went around Liverpool looking for penguins instead. He was happy because he got to see the "big tree" and the lights as well as getting a couple of rides before home. I was happy because I fitted in a bit of Christmas shopping and got to spend the day with my boy.

So day 4 of conference will be me catching up on day 3....watch this space

JISC online conference 2009 - Day 2

On day 2 there were no live sessions I wanted to attend so I could concentrate on other presentations. I was only around in the afternoon so focused on the presentation from the University of Bradford, which I found really easy to follow. I liked the fact they had a PowerPoint with audio that I could listen to at my own pace and go back if I missed stuff, which always happens in a live session. They also provided other useful materials to support their presentation. The presentation was by Becka Currant, Neil Currant and Neil McKeown and they talked about Develop Me! This came out of a review of the student experience, so given what LJMU have been going through it seemed really relevant to me. Develop Me! is an integrated package of transition, induction and study skills support for students to complement what they do face to face. There are 5 areas to this:

• a social network (they used Ning)
• online skills development resources
• SaPRA (the university's in-house Skills and Personal Development Activity
• mobile guides - www.braduni.mobi - they are currently considering a iphone app
• research into the student experience

They found that early engagement with academic materials helped develop skills. They created learning objects that can be accessed 24/7. Student and staff feedback has been very positive and this year they had around 2000 members in the social network.

As well as the presentation there was a podcast on why use a social network and why Ning, which was really interesting. The social network is designed to create a supportive community, it helps student to see that everyone else is in the same boat and no-one knows all the answers. They can join the social network before arriving at university so are making friends before they get here, that can only help that transition into university life. Ning was identified as a suitable option because it is more flexible than Facebook, it's easier to install 3rd party widgits too, it's more stable and older students were not as comfortable using Facebook because that's where their kids hang out. They wanted something for work stuff that was different to the place for social stuff. This is now managed by the central university web team in conjunction with the student union. They paid to remove adverts from the site and it is moderated. They wouldn't remove negative posts from students, but rather try to act on the bad feedback. However they have had to remove spammers and would remove offensive material.

It's branded to look like part of the university website, which was important to students and links to the student union Facebook page and twitter feeds. Academic groups have been created and some students have created social groups too.

I think we need to get on board with this kind of technology and are in danger of being left behind, if we haven't been already. I hadn't considered Ning before because lots of universities and university libraries use Facebook. Maybe something other than Facebook would serve our purposes better

JISC online conference 2009 - day 1

So day one was yesterday and I attended the two live sessions. The first was by Charlie Leadbeater and he talked about the role of innovation education. He said the question you ask largely determines the answer you get. He then asked the audience "where would you look to see what education and learning might become?" there was a wide range of answers from the audience. I personally said nursery school children and some others said similar "my grandchildren", "children's play" so some people think like me, which is reassuring that I'm not completely off the mark. Charlie said that we need to take larger range of questions to get a larger range of answers.

Learning takes place in many different settings, both formal and informal and he showed us a grid of innovation. There are four sections:

• Formal sustaining - Improve - this is improving what we already have


• Formal disruptive - Reform - developing new types of schools, focusing on personalised learning, which is learning with and by not to and from


• Informal sustaining - Supplement - this is social and emotion conditions, the cultures and environments that influence


• Informal disruptive - Transform - this alternatives to school, its about collaboration, connection - this tends to come from social entrepreneurs

He asked - What are the keys to transformational innovation in learning?
How do these areas relate to each other, which should be the driver (the largest)? Where do you invest time and money? It’s about how radical solutions from the informal sector get sustained and mainstreamed.

The was much discussion on all aspects of how we make this happen in the conference discussion area after the presentation - some of which I haven't had chance to read yet.

Later in the day there was a presentation from Rhona Sharpe and Helen Beetham about responding to learners. Some of the things they found which may be quite surprise given all the hype about digital natives were:

• Students are often surprised by the amount of technology use expected of them when they arrive at F&HE colleges


• actually have few (or no) expectations


• are familiar with but don’t use (as in survey)


• appreciate online resources (this crops up a lot), because strategies they have developed from school, social, leisure technology use often aren’t appropriate to f/he.


• are guided by tutors in what they use

They outlined a developmental model as one way of understanding how effective e-learners can be developed. They defined effective e-learners as those who are using technology in positive ways to support their learning. They asked the questions What practices do learners need in the digital age? and what are the challenges for learners? One of things that I got from this was we need to enable learners to learn across contexts and apply skills across contexts

JISC online conference 2009 - first impressions

I have to say first off I am exhausted. Online conferencing is much more tiring than normal face to face conferences. I don't know whether it's because there is a lot of sitting with headphones on, staring at a netbook screen or whether it's the wealth of information to read through. Whatever it is I'm shattered and it's only day 2 of 4.

That said I am getting lots from the conference and have enjoyed my first experience of using Eluminate to listen to presentations and actively engage in discussion (and voting). However like some other delegates I have found the on-going discussion a bit distracting at times and it's just not the same watching someone sitting at their PC talking to you as it is in person. The two keynote sessions were very good yesterday. I do think I missed some bits but having Charlie's slides to refer back to after helped a great deal.

I don't want to make this a massive post to read so will split it up as seems appropriate.

I haven't been into the social area of Eluminate but have popped into the coffee bar and left a post in there. I'm not as active in the discussions as some others but this is my first time and I am getting to grips with it all. Also I am of the opinion if you don't have anything useful to say, don't say anything at all.

Right onto the first presentation.....

PPRG Annual Conference - Evaluation

The hotel was lovely, the food gorgeous (at least 4lbs put on) and the facilities great (pool was fab).

I liked that the conference programme was split into short sections with breaks in between, this gave you time to stretch your legs and regroup before the next person was speaking. Given that most people cannot maintain their concentration for long periods, I thought this was really helpful - I wish other conference organisers would take note.

Perhaps more practical sessions or sessions that used group work would be an improvement, I've been to this conference before I remember working in small groups more - nothing too scary but something like the layout session we did on the Saturday morning.

The library debate was probably my least favourite bit but others probably enjoyed it more - I didn't feel I had anything to contribute and it felt like a long session (it was longer than the speaker sessions had been) - just a personal preference.

All in all a good and enjoyable conference, which I hope to be able to attend again next year.