Posts Tagged ‘CERD’

University of Lincoln author lists on the Lincoln Repository

Posted on August 13th, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp

It’s now possible to browse the Lincoln Repository by ‘creator’, to view lists of publications by staff at the University of Lincoln. These are the lists of publications which now populate individual authors’ profiles on the University staff directory (http://phone.online.lincoln.ac.uk/)

To browse for publications by University of Lincoln authors:

  1. Go to the Repository at: http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/
  2. Click on “Browse”;Screenshot of the Lincoln Repository
  3. From the menu, click on “Creator”;
    Screenshot of the Lincoln Repository
  4. Then use the alphabetical menu to find the name of the author by surname.
    Screenshot of the Lincoln Repository

As an example, here’s the publication list of Dr Julian Beckton in CERD:

You can construct easy links to your own profile using the following URL formats. In all cases, replace XXXXXX with your own staff ID, the six-digit number you use to log in to the SafeCom printing system:

  • (Your publications on the Repository) – http://lncn.eu/ep/XXXXXX
  • (Your publications in RSS format) – http://lncn.eu/eprss/XXXXXX
  • (Your profile on the staff directory) – http://lncn.eu/me/XXXXXX

For example, my own lists are at:

LNCD is Not a Central Development group, but it is a Recursive Acronym (and a Pun)

Posted on September 7th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

We’re about to formally launch LNCD, the new University-wide technology for education group convened by Joss Winn from the Centre for Educational Research & Development, and including people from CERD, ICT Services, and the Library. LNCD’s website is now live, at lncd.lincoln.ac.uk (and also at lncd.org). LNCD is Not a Central Development group.

LNCD logo

A couple of people from the Library are already involved in LNCD, but anyone with an interest in the use of technology in higher education is welcome to join using this form.

“LNCD is a progressive group that includes educational developers, technologists, teachers, researchers and students, [and library people! – PHS] and was set up to support the objectives of Student as Producer through the research and development of technology for education…

“LNCD offers incentives to people who wish to contribute to the rapid innovation of appropriate technology for education at the university, through work-experience, research bursaries and assistance with internal and external applications for funding. We also provide advice and support for the use of technology in research, teaching and learning…

“LNCD is Not a Central Development group!”

N.B. the Library’s intern Steve Pannett designed the LNCD logo.

RT @josswinn LNCD: Web Developer Intern

Posted on June 15th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

Last month, [Joss Winn] wrote about LNCD, a new progressive new group that includes educational developers, technologists, teachers, researchers and students and was set up to support the objectives of Student as Producer through the research and development of technology for education. With the formation of LNCD, we’re also looking to employ a recent graduate (or an MComp student on their placement year). The job is advertised from today and more details can be found on our Careers website.

This Internship is designed to help recent graduates develop the skills and experience required for a number of potential roles in web development and open source hacking. We’re looking to work with, support and mentor an enthusiastic developer with a genuine interest in the use of the open, data-driven web in higher education. We’re looking for someone who enjoys working both face-to-face and in a distributed online environment and who is keen to share their work with others across the university.

Based in the Centre for Educational Research and Development (CERD) but working across the university, you’ll be a member of LNCD, a progressive group that was recently set up to support the research and development of technology for education and includes educational developers, technologists, teachers, researchers and students. This graduate Internship is a new 12-month position, designed to provide you with the relevant mentoring, experience and skills for working in a cutting-edge web development and research environment. The role will require significant interaction with students and academic staff and you will be encouraged and supported to write about your work and present your work to peers across the university sector.

I really want this to be a rewarding 12 month Internship for someone, who’ll be working alongside colleagues in CERD, ICT (i.e. Nick and Alex) and the Library (i.e. Paul), as well as with academic staff and students. We’re asking for a lot, but you’ll get a lot back in return and you should end the year with experience working on several internal and externally funded projects, producing and contributing to publicly hosted open source code, attending and presenting at workshops and conferences and being a named contributor to at least one published academic paper.

If you’re interested in the Internship and wondering what you might be getting into, please do read about the LNCD group, its remit and the tools we use, and take a look at some of the work we’ve been doing over the  last year, too. Read about Student as Producer and what its objectives are and think about how you want to contribute to the work we’re doing at Lincoln.  Thanks.

Taking a look at Blackboard 9.1

Posted on May 19th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

The University of Lincoln is planning to upgrade its Blackboard VLE, currently at version 8.0, to the new release, ‘Blackboard Learn 9.1‘, in time for the next academic year 2011/12.

Julian Beckton (CERD) has been blogging about the features of 9.1 for a while. The upgrade happening this summer is an opportunity to review how the Library is using Bb, as well as a chance to check for any potential problems / compatibility issues with the change in versions.

So, where does the Library turn up in Blackboard at the moment?

  1. We have a Bb Library ‘tab’, existing both pre- and post-login, which contains a range of Bb widgets advertising and linking to various Library’s services:
  2. We’re using Talis Keystone to provide an overview of each Blackboard user’s library borrowing activity. The ‘My Library Account‘ widget (mentioned above) displays a summary of a user’s borrowing, derived—in real time—from their own Horizon account. Future iterations of the same widget will allow users to pay library fines online (imminent!) and to view and interact more detail about their borrowing. There’s also a shorter, ‘My Library Account (Overview)’ widget, which appears on the Blackboard home page tab.
    My Library Account (Overview) widget
  3. We also use Blackboard to manage our digitisation (under the CLA Comprehensive HE Licence for photocopying, scanning, and digital copying). Bb’s Content Store [Content Collection? I'm not sure of the terminology] provides a pretty simple file storage tool, with access via the browser or WebDAV folders. It also allows us to set file & folder permissions for student/staff users and for ‘authorised persons’—i.e. Library staff—for individual courses of study (=modules, usually), as specified by the CLA licence. Academic staff are then given the deep-linking URLs for ‘their’ digitised extracts, which they can add to their Bb module Sites. We just use ‘normal’ Bb folders for our digitisation – Blackboard also offers a dedicated ‘eReserves‘ feature, but when we initially configured Blackboard—in 2007/08—we decided not to use it and now I can’t remember why. The Content Store works well enough for managing digitised extracts, although it’s rather labour-intensive. We could really do with a dedicated Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool.
  4. Reading lists:  we pay an annual subscription for a reading list management application called LearnBuild LibraryLink. This comes with its own Blackboard plugin, which generates and associates a reading list (or multiple lists) with a single Bb module Site. I’m going to be talking about reading list management, and our use of LibraryLink, in a separate blog post very soon.
  5. My colleagues the Academic Subject Librarians are involved with the teaching-and-learning / delivery / ‘subject’ aspect of Blackboard. This involvement can take many forms: training students on the use of Bb at induction; assisting CERD in supporting academic staff use of Bb; maintaining dedicated sections of module Sites and Bb subject ‘communities’ to house links to library resources and help guides; the occasional foray into plagiarism detection using the Turnitin plugin; and developing information-literacy-type materials under the University-wide banner of Learning Development.
  6. Finally: I’m a SysAdmin for Blackboard, so I occasionally get called upon to assign Site permissions, create page widgets, troubleshoot, etc. This does only happen occasionally, because there are other SysAdmins in CERD and University ICT Services who spend far more time with Bb, and know more about it, than I do.

These six areas are what we’ll need to bear in mind as we plan for Blackboard 9.1. I’ll address each one of them in a future blog post, and I’ll be working with ICT and CERD staff to look at how they might be affected using a test installation of 9.1 – I’ll also take the opportunity to make recommendations about how we might be able to do things better in future.