Excerpt from the ‘user stories’ document
Last week the SkillSet team, along with Lou McGill presented the initial user stories and wireframes for the diagnostic tool and the priority themes covering both the diagnostic tool and the Scaling up online learning toolkit to the project’s working group during a webinar workshop for their comment and feedback.
The workshop began with an introduction by the SkillSet team to the ‘user stories’ for the diagnostic tool which describes what a user does as they interact with it. This is a functional level description of the tool which avoids descriptions of how the user interacts with it. This was followed with a demonstration of the proposed wireframe for the tool, presenting all levels of access from the user to the administrator. Note: again, the wireframes presented are a functional mockup to show what the user will do, and do not indicate what the colours, layout etc. will be of the final version.
Example wireframe from the Diagnostic Tool
The workshop then went on to outline the 6 broad priority themes which Lou has identified (based on the work previously done by the projects working group) for the Online Learning Toolkit, which are:
1. Understanding and penetrating the market
2. Institutional administrative & organisational aspects
3. Pedagogic models
4. Technology and tools
5. Staff roles and skills
6. Student support
Whilst all of these themes need to be considered when Scaling up online learning it is anticipated that the Diagnostic Tool (and the online course) will focus more on the individual (rather than institutional) aspects. So Lou has proposed that priority themes 3 (pedagogic models), 4 (technology and tools) and 5 (staff roles and skills) should be the focus for the Diagnostic Tool and Online course.
As part of her work on identifying the priority themes for the online toolkit, Lou has also developed a ‘key questions & concepts’ spicy node (see below), which I think readers of this blog will be interested to view (and play with).
The project’s working group will be providing their feedback on the diagnostic tool/priority themes up until 26th June, at which point Lou and the SkillSet team will take all of the feedback to incorporate into the final developments to the diagnostic tool – so watch this space!
If you have any thoughts/feedback about anything shared or raised in this blog post please do comment below as it would be great to add this to the feedback from the projects working group for the SkillSet team or Lou (as appropriate) to incorporate into the development process.
This looks really interesting, Heather, and much needed.
The one thing I might add would be in the ‘what skills are needed’ area where I think a consideration of staff mentoring/coaching would be valuable to accompany the ‘student support’ aspect.
As well as skills-building, I think that staff also need mentors to act as motivators, advocates and to boost their confidence levels – which I feel is often ‘half the battle’ when encouraging practitioners to embrace online learning.
I look forward to reading about the progress of the project!
Best wishes
Lynne
I agree that this looks interesting and the focus on elements 3,4, and 5 is good. However even the individual needs to understand the market they are working in, what is motivating the students and that market penetration is as much about individuals personally promoting your course as its the marketing department. Perhaps this can be picked up in item 3, but it should not be missed out altogether.
I look forward to reading further posts and seeing the results of the project in the autumn
Kind regards
Dawn Buzzard
I agree Dawn. I think that although these broader aspects are not a focus of the Diagnostic Tool – we can incorporate these within some questions to highlight that they need to think about them and then direct them to the online learning toolkit which will cover these aspects in detail.
Yes good suggestion Lynne. I have added this to the spicy nodes.