Technologies, peer-assisted learning, FHEA case studies...with a touch of Frost.

This is part of my series of blog posts on gaining Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.

Reader, I submitted my portfolio! My blog posts on this topic have been intermittent but in case you were wondering whether I’d given it up entirely; while the thought did cross my mind, I am a finisher so I’ve been plugging away at it and finally got it all in.

As I was thinking about my case studies at the end of the last blog post, I’ll write about those here and then write one more which sums up the entire process later.

So, as you are aware by now, if you’ve been reading this, there are several roads to accreditation and I took the one less travelled…actually, I took the APEX Open route which is reasonably well worn by academics and professional staff at my institution. This involved, along with all the other bits I’ve previously mentioned, two large case studies. I chose to focus on the use of technology in the workshop for my first one and, for the second, looked at peer-assisted learning.

Case Study One: Poll Everywhere and Twitter

Approaches to staff development. Write up of #cpd25_rlt event

On 8th June I made my way down (pretty much) the entire length of the Metropolitan line to give a presentation at CPD25’s alternative approaches to library staff development and accreditation event. Cpd25 is the Staff Development and Training programme of the M25 Consortium of Academic Libraries which aims to provide training for library staff of institutions within the M25 region. The day was designed to give attendees a flavour of the various development routes staff working in higher education had taken that were considered out of the ‘norm’ or not specifically designed with librarians in mind. The norm being: attending University staff training days; LIS qualifications; CILIP chartership and qualifications; and conferences.

 

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with going down the usual route of staff development and in one way it seems perfectly sensible to do so because when applying for jobs others will recognise what you’ve done and the value implicit within it. However, staff developments budgets are getting smaller, even in higher education which normally has much more money to play around with than their poorer further education counterparts. As a result of this, it seems sensible to consider alternatives to see if these could be beneficial too. 

 

 

The day itself:

 

After lunch, attendees learned how Elizabeth Charles from Birkbeck University had become a CMALT (chartered membership of Association for Learning Technology) holder - a portfolio- based open to anyone with strong interest in learning technology, not only learning technologists. Marina Burroughs from UEL talking about Associate Fellowship of Higher Education Academy (AFHEA) and how all library assistants, including shelvers, were able to complete this as they all met the criteria, despite not directly teaching students in workshop or lecture sessions. Finally, Paul Allchin, from the British Library, talked about his Erasmus work exchange to the Austrian National Library and how this had helped improve his German language skills. 

 

 

Flowers featured heavily in my presentation because.. well, PTTLs. Also, growing.

My bit:

 

I spoke about my experience doing a PTTLS (Preparing to teaching in the Lifelong Learning Sector) in a previous job. It is a City and Guilds Course, now renamed as Level 3 Award in Teaching and Learning, and is aimed at those teaching adults. I completed this course because it was the only teaching qualification financially open to me at the time and I wanted to discover specific tips on teaching techniques, as well as a qualification to improve my job prospects. 

 

This practical, portfolio based course provided me with everything I set out to achieve, including ideas for lesson planning and structure. It improved my confidence and skills and provided my with the qualification I needed to land a job in higher education. Now, alongside my day to day offering of workshops and lectures to students and staff, I have a teaching and learning functional role and am working on my FHEA accreditation submission.

 

My presentation is available via HaikuDeck

 

What else is available?

 

Ultimately, these courses referred to were only a snapshot of some of the staff development opportunities available. While organisations have a responsibility to train their staff (and I’d recommend checking out what is on offer at your workplace as sometimes it can be quite hidden) , it is worth knowing what else is available that could be cheaper (or free) and more accessible than the ones mentioned, e.g. 

 

• CILIP’s special interest groups provide training opportunities as well as bursaries to more traditional events, including the CILIP Information Literacy Group version of the PTTLS course
• the excellent #UKLibChat is a great way of learn about a subject and network with peers while at home/on a train/wrangling small children/eating dinner
• reading blogs and journal articles
• Webinars, Youtube, groups on LinkedIn etc and, one I’ve personally found amazing, my peer group on Twitter

Digital literacy: sharing good practice

Finding myself last Thursday (Feb 4th) inside a very sleek, clean building located right in the prime location of London's Finsbury Square, with toilets which wouldn't have been out of place in a hotel, I thought I couldn't possibly be in a university - but luckily I was, otherwise I would have been very lost! I was in the University of Liverpool, London Campus to present at the joint Information Literacy (IL) Group and the Tinder Foundation event and a very swish looking place it was indeed.

This was a free event, designed for public librarians and those in the Higher and Further education sectors to share knowledge regarding the library's increasing role in improving the digital literacy of its users. Jane Secker, opening the day's programme, explained how both the IL Group and the Tinder Foundation shared concerns over the digital literacy of the UK public in a landscape where there is increased emphasis to apply for jobs, benefits and pay bills online and yet, according to the UK Digital Inclusion Charter,  11 million people lack basic digital skills. Having spent a lot of time supporting digital literacy in colleges and universities, librarians in the academic sector are in a very good position to be able to share with those working in the public sector what works, what doesn't and can help them save both valuable time and resources.

Enthusiasm

There were three speakers in the morning and again in the afternoon, followed by themed discussions after each trio had presented. The speakers came from a variety of Universities, myself included, and spoke enthusiastically for ten minutes on topics ranging from a demonstration of Aurasma, as well as Vines, digital footprint workshops, Libguides and big data. I spoke about the social media masterclasses I had set up in my own workplace and what I had learned from them, as well as how they had also been integrated into the subject librarians' digital literacy programme. My ten minutes zoomed by but there was chance for plenty of conversation over lunch and despite the struggles public library staff are facing they seemed genuinely excited and motivated to be there and to be picking up tips they could use.

The discussion tables in the room consisted of a speaker, a facilitator who took notes and then the rest of the attendees moved round in turn. I'd thought initially that we might be discussing the presentations and how they could be utilised in a public library setting; however, we were each given a theme to consider and ours was welfare reform.

Welfare Reform

Throughout the day, public library staff from Islington, Coventry, Worcester, Lambeth, Hampshire, and Richmond libraries engaged in conversation about how Universal Credit and changes in applications for other benefits, such as Freedom Passes, were affecting their workload. Unanimously, and unsurprisingly, human resources were said to be the main issue staff faced due to an increased demand from users being directed to the Library, not always with the staff members' knowledge, and a lack of skills to deal with the advice users were asking for when filling out the paperwork. I was surprised that very few mentioned a lack of computers and having to charge for pcs because I remember quite clearly when my husband was out of work and we didn't have a computer he hated having to spend money to fill out long application forms on the public library pcs, which would invariably crash as he went to click send!

To deal with the issues, some said they recruited volunteers who signed up to a code of practice, others decided to signpost help rather than refer (and made the distinction between those two terms very clear), and others spoke to services such as the Job Centre to tell them to stop sending people to them and refrain from offering false promises that the Library staff could not possibly fulfil. One Library staff member tried to focus on the positive of more feet through the door can't be bad and adopted a 'let's show them what we have while they are here' approach.


Volunteers, ethics and a trusted brand

The majority of the public library staff there said they were using volunteers to deal with the human resource issues, and this led to a question of responsibilities and the importance of them being provided with oversight, training, and ethics guidance, especially in light of staff possibly being provided with personal information about claimants when helping them to fill out forms. Ethics was also raised as a concern with the arrival of Halifax and Barclay staff providing IT lessons in libraries and how this could potentially tarnish the reputation of a public library as a safe, neutral environment as it becomes associated with corporations and commercial advertising.

Conclusion

While I'm not sure anyone discovered a solution to relieve the turmoil public library staff are experiencing, there did seem to be a lot of hope in the room. Although I keep up to date with what is going on in public libraries and even though my family and I are regular users of several near us, it was nevertheless still enlightening to hear of front line experiences and led me to appreciate even further the effort the staff put in and the motivation they have to provide the best service they can. It felt like a really worthwhile day for me personally as I was asked quite a few questions about what we provide at Brunel University London for students and I was exceptionally pleased to think it had been useful.

I would like to thank the Information Literacy Group and Tinder Foundation for inviting me to this and I hope they continue to work together. Some huge topics were very quickly touched upon on the day and therefore in this blogpost. If you are interested in following up any of the themes mentioned, I would recommend the following links:

Lauren Smith's  list of what public library staff do
Ian Anstice's Pros and cons of commercial involvement with libraries
Ian Clark's post asking Why are Barclay's in our libraries?

A festive UKSG Forum #UKSGforum15

Christmas trees and glittery chandeliers in the Grand Connaught Rooms provided a festive welcome to attendees of the UKSG Forum on Wednesday 18th November. I’d arrived early and managed to get a sneak peek of Covent Garden in before and while I managed to take a picture of the HUGE mistletoe balls and Christmas tree completely forgot to take any of the actual forum – oops! I’m blaming it on still being exhausted as my tiny person still sees sleep as an optional extra. 

 

This was my first event since becoming a mum and my first time at a UKSG event. The former meaning that I could not hang around for the usual drinks and networking after the event, which was a real shame, but also meant I had to try to pack in as much as I could in the time I had.  

 

 

The UKSG Forum is put on by a group of people who work within the scholarly and information community and is designed to be a networking event rather than a conference. All the sessions were very short, i.e. ten minutes or so long which, while it didn’t leave much time for detail, did cut out a lot of the unnecessary waffling which can happen in conference lectures. This also meant I was able to take some key messages away from the majority of the presenters: 

 

Don’t make things harder than they need to be.

 

One theme which linked the talks was to focus on making things easier for our users. I don’t think any of us go out of our way to make things difficult for them but sometimes we forget that we are used to how things work. We might have forgotten that it’s actually quite complicated, especially for a beginner. A few ways to do this included getting rid of captcha authentication (there was an audible hiss from the audience at the mention of this!), reducing the amount of choices open to users and making the language user friendly by using first person language e.g. ‘I want to see’ ‘show me’ etc. Additionally, stop using the word ‘submit’ due to its aggressive overtones! The audience were asked to consider how we can ensure students feel comfortable using our resources with no risk to themselves through either wasting time or by embarrassment when it doesn’t work out for them. I’m not sure many of have cracked this one yet. 

 

Don’t just listen, observe. 

A second theme that emerged from the sessions I attended was that, in addition to asking students or customers what they wanted, it would be wise to observe the students. David Sommer’s presentation on user interfaces, Andy Priestner’s talk on ethnography in libraries and Ken Chad’s lecture all raised this as something any organisation who wishes to understand their users should do. Examples of how this could be done ranged from analysing statistics and using user behaviour software, such as Crazy Egg, or actually getting out and about to observe and record students going about their daily business. Doing this will reduce the risk of librarians relying on assumptions and help them to piece together the bigger picture. 

 

Watch out for the culture clash. 

The third thread running through the talks was a reminder to acknowledge that times have changed since we were entering university for the first time. This may seem obvious; however. it can be easy to forget just how quickly time and technology move on - even the youngest attendee at UKSG will have left college several years ago. Students, we were told, are  now are used to information being in bite-size chunks at school and get a sudden sharp shock when they arrive at university and are faced with huge reading lists and several simultaneous deadlines. We sometimes don't truly understand what our students want and need even if we think we know what is best for them and the best way to do this is to start trying to get to know them and understand their day-to-day life. A small scale example of doing this is through the use of empathy maps. On a much larger scale is the absolutely amazing SpaceFinder project at Cambridge. 

 

Ultimately, it was lovely to get out and about again, learn something new, and meet up with some familiar faces. Thanks UKSG for organising it.

 

Slides from the day are all on the UGSG website

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside...

Sat by the beach in Brighton: the sun glistens on the calm gentle waves of the sea; families walk past eating their ice creams; a pensioner relays his memories of the attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher and her party at the Grand Hotel bombing; and a lone man uses ski poles to navigate his way across the pebble beach.

It was 23rd June and I was in a very warm Brighton to facilitate a workshop [presentation here] at my first ARLG conference and had managed to breathe in a little of the sea air to prepare myself before it started. I was glad I did! The three days I spent there were full of sunshine, cups of tea, way too many Star Trek references (I realise I may be in a minority thinking this), lots of sharing of ideas and great opportunities to meet other academic librarians.

The start of the conference

Jon Purcell, Librarian at Durham University, opened up the conference by asking how many of the audience had had new responsibilities and tasks thrust upon them – almost everyone had, himself included. He examined why libraries have expanded their remit beyond their core activities and came to the conclusion that it is because they can be trusted to get the job done. He emphasised that being relevant and having visual proof of the impact made is essential for survival.

One thing he said which resonated with me was that if you are going to take on new tasks and new responsibilities then in order to fulfill those duties effectively something has to be dropped. Working out what these things are can help clarify priorities as well as maintain stress levels, which can easily rise when trying to do more with the same resources. He had a really good photo, which unfortunately I didn't take a picture of, which showed predicted trends in librarianship with green post-its indicating what needs to be done more of and pink for what needs to be done less.

Another keynote I particularly liked was by Madeleine Lefebvre from Ryerson University in Toronto in which she talked us through the design of the new building. It is going to change significantly and each level is designed around a theme of nature. Many of the members of the audience tweeted that they’d be on the beach floor – I think you’d find me either on the garden or on the forest floor. It would be great to see how it actually works in practice, especially as much of it was open plan and Toronto gets very cold, so I hope she does a follow up talk at some point [hint hint, ARLG!].

Learning from my experience at the LILAC conference, I found writing a list of takeaway points to be quite useful so here are my main ones:

• Some of the main successes people spoke about came about through collaboration, whether that be on a small scale such as collaboration across a library service e.g. the international project at Bradford or a much larger scale e.g. collaboration between a university, the council and the archives at the Keep
• Don’t treat information literacy skills as generic; try as much as you can to link them with skills they need in their profession. This worked a treat with Journalism students at Dublin University where the skills needed are almost identical. I’m going to be looking after journalism students soon so want to utilise this quite a bit
• Drawing road maps of the (assignment/dissertation/study) journey ahead is surprisingly effective. As a person who is quite happy working with bullet-points and lists I found the workshop by Kaye Towlson and Carol Keddie from DeMontfort University certainly took me out of my comfort zone but it gave me a very clear structure and plan to work with – something I will consider in some of the Getting Started sessions I provide 
• Credo has written an info lit course with materials – including a humorous but quite cringe-inducing video featuring Stu Dent versus big baddie Bias
• It’s quite possible to (almost, and despite not being very ‘games-minded’) create an information literacy game on the topic of getting started with literature reviews within 45 minutes, featuring counters, teams, competition, and cooperation – I also got chance to relive my love of Play-Doh!
  

  

  Plans for the game

While it was a bit of a shock to the system to be in halls (although much nicer than any places I stayed when I was a student – no silver fish or fizzing light bulbs to inch my way around) I got a lot out of my time at ARLG. Like LILAC, it was a great opportunity to meet other subject librarians -  many of whom aren't on Twitter. Additionally, it contained very practical tips related to my everyday job as opposed to the softer skills that have been the focus of other conferences I have previously attended.  While both have their place I do appreciate something I can try out within a short period of time.

Ultimately, it was worthwhile attending and I'd like to thank the ARLG Committee for putting together a very informative and well organised conference.

#LILAC14 : You don't have to be an old woman to wear purple.

I was surrounded by people in lilac; lilac t-shirts, lilac dresses, lilac shirts. All sporting a lilac-coloured conference bag. Normally, I would think "Wow - that's a lot of people wearing purple!" and it would remind me of the Jenny Joseph poem, but this wasn't a normal occasion;  indeed, I was attending my first LILAC conference and attendees were dressed accordingly!

I had heard from several people I respect that this was the UK conference to attend so I was very much looking forward to it. In addition, it was a chance to catch up with people and put a few more faces to Twitter names. It being in Sheffield also meant I could tie it in with a quick visit to family in nearby Barnsley, which was an added bonus.

My old library in Barnsley. Now closed and waiting to be demolished.

I was expecting the conference to have a very narrow focus, e.g. on the minutiae of information literacy teaching,  the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy and on encouraging students to become critical researchers. While there was plenty of this, many of the presentations, especially the keynotes, had a much wider angle, for example, with SLA President, Kate Arnold,  we heard about the Financial Times report on the future career of the information professional.

The BBC's  Bill Thomas, too, emphasised the need for librarians to understand the systems we use. His reasoning being that we lose our civic freedoms by not engaging with them and can't promote a free, liberal society without being able to challenge how they are being used. These were big topics to digest.

I try to go to as many conferences as time and bursaries will allow and I mainly go along for the following:

• To learn new things
• To confirm knowledge that I already have
• To meet interesting people

I don't generally go for the swag but must admit the LILAC notebooks were lovely.

So, at LILAC I learned:

• How to create and edit Wikipedia
• That reflection is a form of coaching for the self
• That reflection in action (very similar to mindfulness, in my opinion) is considered more effective than reflection on action
• That librarians and information professionals should have a global plan to use information skills to maintain democracy and push against the influx of information overload
• That presenters can't get enough of wordles

At LILAC, I confirmed:

• That trying to attend every single session possible is sometimes counterproductive. I found doing this to be really quite exhausting. I still haven't quite established the balance between fear of missing out and giving my brain space to process
• That students spend too much time worrying about the style of their referencing rather than the whys and the wherefores - this is definitely something that we could spend more time addressing in my own workplace
• That students often use the same few sources they have been recommended by their lecturers 
• That both staff and students struggle with keeping up to date - they can feel overwhelmed by the choices available. We currently provide this information in our workshops and on our website and it's certainly worth reviewing whether this format is still appropriate 
• That we don't always know what skills people have. This came out in session run by Jess Haigh where she talked about how putting together an online murder mystery in the library was a chance for people to use under-utilised skills. Doing so also helped to bring creativity into the workspace, helped staff enjoy their job again and encouraged students to try resources they hadn't used before. It sounded fun.

One of the best pieces of advice came from Nancy Graham while she sat at the conference's closing panel. She recommended sharing what we had learned via practical tips rather than sending a report round to colleagues. Reports can sometimes be unwieldy and less likely to lead to any changes whereas as tips are straightforward and can be much easier to implement.

So in the spirit of this, in addition to what I mention above, some of the most practical tips I took away were:

• Keep a diary of teaching reflections - what went well, what didn't etc
• When teaching referencing, focus much more on the why rather than the how
• Focus on helping students get started with research (Dr Alison Head's Project Information Literacy identified this as the most difficult part for students)
• Have an identifiable brand for Library programmes. One example of this was the Steps to Success scheme at Edge Hill,  which I liked the sound of. It encapsulates a variety of subjects, including the Digital Tattoo workshops - a title which I am very tempted to pinch, erm... borrow and give credit for obviously

In conclusion...
I thoroughly enjoyed what was a friendly, informative and motivating couple of days. I've only ever organised half-day conferences and they are exhausting so my sincere thanks to the Information Literacy Group for putting together such a well-organised event and doing a fantastic job. I would definitely recommend the conference to anyone interested in information literacy - there are usually plenty of bursaries advertised in the run up to the conference, especially for less represented sectors such as Further Education and Health so do keep an eye out.

From the road less travelled to the information super highway...

On 31st January, I made my way to the British Library to attend the free conference, From the road less travelled to the information super highway: information literacy in the 21st Century, organised jointly by the M25  and the CILIP Information Literacy Group. The conference had sold out within two hours so I was feeling lucky to have received a place and was expecting good things. All the topics on the day, as you’d expect, focused on information literacy, and ranged from the broad and theoretical, e.g. Emma Coonan’s and Jane Secker’s impassioned lecture on ANCIL to the very specific and practical, e.g. games in libraries.

The conference opened with a look at the Research Information and Digital Literacies Coalition. I hadn’t heard of this before and it seemed that neither had many people in the room. We found out that it is a HEFCE funded project and is an informal network of librarians, pedagogists, career experts and similar whose aim is to take information literacy out of the higher education library and into the workplace. They do this by investigating the gap between higher education and employment by speaking to careers advisers, unions, organisations etc.

Obama announced October to be
 National Information Literacy Month in 2009.
 Found on FlickrCC.net

Their remit for 2014 is to help staff formulate and develop courses and to discover how information literacy skills can increase students’ employability. Since the rise in tuition fees, I have found students to be increasingly nervous about finding employment after university and becoming much more vocal about the costs of their courses so this seems like a sensible step to take. Part of their plans also involve increasing their international outreach; the US National Forum on Information Literacy was provided as a positive example of a group who have successfully put information literacy on the government agenda leading to President Obama implementing an information literacy month.

A project I found interesting due to the impact it had at University as well as Library level was Project DigitISE: Digital information skills for employability, which was undertaken at University of Westminster. This was a JISC funded exercise which studied the links between student attitudes towards digital literacy and employability. The team distributed surveys, held workshops and focus groups for both students and academic staff, and developed definitions, all of which culminated in a one day student conference entitled Get the Digital Edge. Promoted as a way of improving employability, students were encouraged to choose six topics covering areas such as using social media for job searching, researching companies for job interviews and social media and reputation , to name  a few. As a result of this project, the university is now reviewing its digital literacy strategy and more digital edge days are being planned.

Another session I particularly liked was one on games in information literacy sessions; this was led by Adam Edwards and Vanessa Hill from University of Middlesex. They explained how they had faced the usual problems library staff face in that information literacy wasn’t integrated into modules and that the sessions they held were far too general in their nature. In an effort to resolve this library staff embarked on getting more qualifications, e.g. teaching fellowships, postgraduate certificates in Higher Education etc. They felt this gave them the skills and confidence to feel they were on an equal footing with academic staff and able to implement more innovative teaching methods. While not everyone can do this due to time and money constraints the gaming suggestions felt achievable, easy to implement, and affordable, i.e. no large grants needed.

Sonic and Tails - found on FlickrCC.net

Apart from a brief foray into Sonic the Hedgehog when I was much, much younger, games have never really been my thing (perhaps because my brother always had to be Sonic, which meant I had to be Tails). So even though I have taken part in several workshops on games in information literacy teaching I have yet to try them out. Adam and Vanessa encouraged us to play some of the games they use with students which covered areas like thinking about resources, keywords, searching, and evaluating (these are all free open educational resources and can be found at Jorum. They gave us a couple of rules to think about when including games:

• Games should be no more than 10 minutes in length
• Games should meet a specific need
• They should have a clear objective
• There shouldn’t be a need for any instruction

While these may seem fairly obvious rules it does help to have these in mind so that games are not just being shoehorned into a workshop. One of my reservations about games was that students might find it patronising, however, more ‘grown-up’ options could be included like marking reference lists out of 10 to get them to think about the types of resources being used and showing students the marking schedule to see how the lesson fits the criteria and provide proof that the skills they are learning will improve their marks.

I generally find conferences quite motivating and this was no exception. It had a well thought out range of sessions and because there weren't any options to choose from I didn't feel like I was missing out! Not only has it helped to maintain enthusiasm in my teaching, it was
a welcome reminder of the useful materials which are already available for library and information professionals to freely use, which when you are short on time or ideas can be a very beneficial resource.

LIKE 45: Open Access

"By “open access” to [peer-reviewed research literature], we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited." 

This is the definition of open access devised by the Budapest Open Access Initiative and, according to them, if it doesn't fit this model then it isn't open access. This is how Ross Mounce, a PhD student from Bath University and Open Knowledge Foundation “Panton Fellow” opened his speech at the London Information and Knowledge Exchange (LIKE) 45th event. While studying, Ross has come across numerous interruptions and barriers to his research which he thinks would not have been the case if access to information was more easily available. As a researcher, it is important to have access to all the previous research carried out on a topic to avoid duplication and wasting both time and funds. It is also important to have access to both data and information so that experiments are transparent and possible to replicate, decreasing the risk of fraud.

Ross's slides

This led us onto Velichka Dimitrov's, an OpenEconomics coordinator, talk, the second of the nights three presenters. Velichka opened with a well known quote from Isaac Newton's letters:

                       "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants"

This quote epitomises the raison d'etre of research - to use the knowledge of what has gone before and build upon it for the future. 

If research data is available then it is replicable and verifiable: it is precisely for this reason that the American Economic Association  have made it their policy to only publish papers whose authors allow their data to be available. Velichka's presentation led to discussions about whether open access would solve the problems referred to or whether there also needs to be a shift in the attitudes of universities and those who work in them. There was some suggestion that academics, rather than let their data and findings be openly accessible, would rather either choose select journal titles to be published in due to their perceived status or keep it under wraps so they can potentially publish further research in the future while preventing others from doing so at the same time. We were left with the quote from someone in the room that "academic culture is not suited to modernity".

To counter this view, our final presenter for the evening was John Murtagh, a Project Officer for Training in Data Management at University of East London. John spoke to us about open data and research data management (RDM) from a librarian's point of view, starting with a breakdown of the many of the acronyms which tie into this area. He then went onto explain the rationale behind the push to manage research data, namely that it is was a financial decision as the ESPRC funding body gave the ultimatum to universities that they would no longer fund research if it couldn't be proven how the data was being organised and preserved. However, it was also to prevent cases like Diederik Stapel, the psychologist found to have faked much of his data. 

John told us that RDM sits easily within libraries because librarians are impartial so don't have an agenda linked to funding and also because they are good collaborators which is necessary in this type of work. As part of the ongoing project at UEL, they provide tailored training for the individual departments as well as a generic workshop for the Graduate School and an online course for the subject librarians who are instrumental at getting their departments on board.

Overall, and like most LIKE events,  it was a very interesting and informative evening and I left feeling more knowledgeable about the issues than before. As I currently work in a university and have come across many of the issues that the speakers, especially Ross, spoke about, I think it will be fascinating to see how it develops. Even though there is currently strong resistance to open access being accepted, I can see that the momentum is growing for it and that it really can't come soon enough. 

E-Safety: Developing effective Practice.

I know this blog post is quite late after the event but I was going to use some of its contents to write an article (a proper one) for my workplace. As I am now leaving there, I will no longer be doing this so I thought I would share it as a post instead...

On 8th February 2012, I attended the very swish JISC headquarters in London. The event was free and was aimed at raising awareness and highlighting issues so practioners could ensure their organisations were providing safe environments for young people. I was attending because I had recently been involved in creating web safety guides and intranet pages for my place of work and had also been involved in putting together an event for the, as was, Colleges of Further and Higher Education London and South East Committee. CoFHE LASEC.

 

Firstly, Martin King from Ealing Hammersmith and West London College (EHWLC) started by quoting from Douglas Adams:

“Everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal”

 

“ Anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative”

 

“Anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation"These quotes to me accurately sum up people’s approaches to the internet and how we should approach web safety. For adults involved in teaching and promoting web safety we often see the virtual and real world as two different entities, however, young adults and children have become used to the two becoming intertwined and now see them as one.

Martin elaborated on the evolvement of the internet:

 

Web.1 (1990-2004) when only organisations published pages to sell products or services

 

Web.2 (2005 onwards) which is more collaborative and involves people networking and participating rather than having static web pages

 

Web 3 (2010 onward) the internet is not only being used socially but in real time and having an immediate and outstanding effect on the world, from the Arab spring to computer hacking.

He then went on to explain that due to the increase in smartphones, a symbiotic relationship was developing between people and their technology and as change becomes increasingly faster it is made much harder for educators and trainers to promote and teach safety.

 

He claimed in his research that students and institutions wanted very different things from safety. Students want privacy i.e. they want to know who is monitoring them and what they are going to do with the information they have and senior management want control and protection so are highly concerned with access issues. Those in the middle who teach and promote safety are mostly concerned with protection and guidance.I found this to be thought provoking and surprising where the students were concerned. I wasn’t surprised regarding the comments of those in senior management athough s often banning everything can often seem like such a simple and easy solution, if not a very enlightened or democratic one.

 

Amrik Aujila was also from EHWLC. His presentation focused on raising awareness of online risks and the responsibilities of members of staff in promoting and maintaining good safety practice. He gave us these OFCOM statistics:

 

50% of British teenagers (12-15) own a SMARTPHONE 60% of which classify themselves as 'addicted' / crackberry?

 

Top 3 - Social networking, Music, gaming and apps by comparison, only 27% adult own a SMARTPHONE, 37% 'addicted' Top 3 - email, surfing, social networking/apps.

 

He emphasised:

•  the importance of having all policies in a well known and easily accessible place
• ensuring they are consistent and also compatible with each other
• all staff must be trained, even contractors, as everybody has the opportunity to come into contact with students and/or computers 
• they ensure students know what is going on by integrating their policies and guidance into the SHAPE agenda, the Student Portal and National Be Safe week
• Esafety has to be driven from the top down for it to work and have any impact

At EHWLC, elearning is embedded throughout the entire college. They have created a central staff resource for safeguarding including; policies, procedures, training materials, report abuse button. A ‘keep safe week’ is run once a term.

Nicola Prime, the elearning manager from Uxbridge College, like Amrik, emphasised the need to take a whole college approach.  All students have to go through a tutorial during safety week.

• They have a panic button on Moodle where any type of abuse, not just web, can be reported.
• There is a monthly esafety report which keeps staff up to date so they can alter the pages accordingly
• All new staff have online web safety training within two weeks of joining and a face to face training session within 6 months. Non-contract people are included in this, including cleaners, volunteers etc.
• An safety resource tutorial and quiz was created so that students could go thought it in one sitting or refer back to it over time. I particularly liked the getting students to locate on screen where the Facebook privacy settings were.
• They have a dedicated Moodle course for esafety

Graham Francis from Havering Sixth Form College spoke about the issues from an I.T. perspective. He emphasised the importance of getting everyone to sign an acceptable use policy as otherwise people who commit misdemeanours cannot be punished as they can claim they didn’t know. 

•  Havering College only blocks the category porn - they don’t block large categories, for example, violence.
• hey use E-safe and Palo Alto 2020 to monitor what people are looking at
• The college doesn’t allow people to use their own devices, however, this may be subject to change   
• Documentation needs to be very clear and accessible – not hidden away on Sharepoint
• Have to be reliant on third party software but means no personal agenda
• There is a very big grey area with regards confidentiality versus duty of care – should parents, carers be told what students are looking at? No test case as yet
• Tumblr now becoming an issue for phishing and spam

 To me this all seems very time-consuming to keep a check on what everyone looks at but it seems to work for them. An example was given of a young student looking at how to write a suicide note who had no reason to for their classwork. This person was then being offered counselling within fifteen minutes of typing. I can see that a duty of care is needed for youngsters but something about this freaked me out slightly. These comments all led to much discussion amongst the group over whether the education sector’s response to safety is to create a police state, much as they often went overboard with health and safety initiatives. Questions raised include: where does duty of care start and finish – just in school? Does filtering raise awareness?

 

 Other comments which arose during the discussion were that safe searching tips need to be taught so that students studying controversial topics don’t get blacklisted and that students are using encryption to maintain privacy so the students who lose out are the ones without the knowhow and/or technology as it becomes an ‘armsrace’ to stop students getting round access.

  

Dr Emma Bond from University Campus Suffolk spoke about students' perception of risk compared to ours. Below are some highlights:

• We shouldn’t treat esafety and responsibility any differently to safety in the real world. For many young people the virtual world is part of their real world. It is the responsibility of all staff to promote safety and not just pass the book to the elearning or I.T. people because it has an e in front of it. It has moved on from I.T.  to safeguarding to everybody’s responsibility
• Schools blocking social media are disadvantaging students who don’t have internet access at home
• Higher Education is an area which isn’t being looked at despite older people not being brought up with it and often having children of their own
• We should promote responsibility rather than lock down
• Not all teachers know their legal responsibilities
• Risks and opportunities are different from students and professionals views
• If students are going to do things then offer practical advice, for example, if you’re going to take a naked pic of yourself then don’t put your head in it
• Some sales jobs now use Facebook as a way of you getting a job, e.g. must have over 5000 friends to get job
• Should be advising anxious and depressed students to go to welfare rather than go to pro ana or suicide sites
• Emphasis should be on talking to someone after they’ve seen something or having an issue

Questions/considerations I have passed on to my instution are:

• Do we have clear e-safety policies?
• Are they clearly accessible?
• How is filtering decided?
• How do students disclose?
• Do students and staff know what they should do?

 For more information about the day, including the presentations and useful links go the JISC RSC page. I really hope the web safety issues aren't dropped when I leave because I think it is very important and I have passed on the details of the follow up event for someone to attend. Dr Emma's comments about esafety not being a consideration in universities is an interesting one for me, especially as I work mostly with higher education students. My new job will be in a university so there may be some scope for starting something there - we will see...