The acquisition of the Blackboard Community Engagement system in September 2013 provided Edge Hill University with an opportunity to further develop and customise our VLE for students and staff. This workshop will showcase the work we have done to maximise our investment by exploiting the Tabs, Modules and Secondary Roles to deliver bespoke content to our users, and help participants to think about the potential of these features in their own context. We will talk about the: • Technical set up, including challenges, to auto-assign secondary roles, • Development of tab and module content • Handover of module administration to academic librarians and department reps to establish local control of tailored information Group activities will address aspects of: • Who? Identifying user groups that would benefit from customised content and mapping institutional data sources to those users • What? Designing the interface to present relevant tabs and modules • How? Building content and ongoing administration The positive responses that we have had to these developments from our students and staff has been excellent. One student comment received on the Learning Edge blog the day the development was announced simply read, fabulous, just what I needed! Feedback gathered in our bi-annual e-learning Survey evidences the impact that these developments have had on our students’ experience and success: • Being able to easily access resources from the same place. • I love the tabs • It is a good ‘go to’ resource. It is my starting point for most things. • The new tabs on the homepage - quick access to library resources. Plus faculty news. • The specific subject tabs allow me to access certain content easily without having to search for it all over the website. We welcome both new and experienced Community Engagement users to this workshop.

1. “I love the Tabs”
Customising the Learning Environment to
Enhance Student Success
1

2. “I love the Tabs”
John Langford
Learning Technology Development Systems Officer
john.Langford@edgehill.ac.uk
Carol Chatten
Learning Technology Development Officer
carol.chatten@edgehill.ac.uk
Megan Juss
Learning Technology Development Manager
megan.juss@edgehill.ac.uk

3. Session Structure
1. Jargon Busting
2. Edge Hill Customisation
3. Technical Foundations
4. Design & User Experience

4. Jargon Busting – Tabs, Modules, Secondary Roles
ROLES – groups define the content that can be seen
TABS – are pages displayed in the Blackboard navigation bar
MODULES – are content panels that appear on TAB pages*
*not modules in the educational sense

5. Edge Hill Customisation – 1st Year
Sept 2013 – Dec 2014 Jan 2014 - Apr 2014 May 2014 - Sept 2014
Custom Resources Pilot
• Faculty & Department Secondary
Roles Automation for Faculty of
Health & Social Care students
• Custom Tabs & Modules Content
for Nursing & ODP Resources
• Delegated Administration for
Academic Librarian Content
Management
Custom Resources Full Launch
• Faculty & Department Secondary
Roles Automation for ALL students
– still manually processed for staff
• Custom Tabs & Modules Content
for ALL Faculty-Department
Resources
Institutional Set-Up
• Installation
• Portal integration
• Generic Tabs & Modules Content
for Library Resources, Communities
& Help

6. Edge Hill Customisation – 2nd Year
Sept 2014 – Dec 2014 Jan 2015 - Apr 2015 May 2015 - Sept 2015
Library Systems Integration
• Custom My Library Account
Module
• Library Search Tool for all
Custom Homepage Content
• Custom Tabs & Modules Content
for Faculty/Departments on
Homepage – Psychology, Media,
Clinical Education, Health
• Custom Tabs & Modules Content
for new students with
New_Student_m1 role
• UX Study
Future Plans
• Staff roles automation
• Reading list integration
• Employability, TLA & Research Tabs
& Modules
Evaluation & Refinement
• Feedback
• Faculty ownership & management
of staff secondary roles
• Secondary Roles via SIS Framework

7. VLE Use
User Numbers & Blackboard Logins
Edge Hill Customisation – A Snapshot of Term 1 2014-15
0
500
1,000
1,500
2,000
2,500
3,000
3,500
4,000
4,500
5,000
Education Health FAS
00:02:35
00:03:33
00:03:11
15,036Students
12,267.38 FTE
15,575active VLE users each month
4,860logins each day
1,359
academic staff
00:07:31time spent on site per visit
Custom Tab Use
Page Views & Av. Time Spent

8. Edge Hill Customisation – Feedback
“Being able to easily access resources from the same place.”
“I love the tabs”
“It is a good 'go to' resource. It is my starting point for most things.”
“The new tabs on the homepage - quick access to library resources. Plus
faculty news.”
“The specific subject tabs allow me to access certain content easily without
having to search for it all over the website.”

9. Secondary Roles (Institutional roles)
• The underlying foundations of targeting content [via tabs/modules]
• How did we scope the roles?
• Incorporating / feed files
• Frequency of allocation

10. Data Sources
• Student Data Feed
• How – Flat File
• Where – Student Information Database (SID)
• Staff Data Feed
• How – Flat File
• Where – LDAP Active Directory
• Who was involved:
• Business Systems (IT Services) |Academic Registry (AR) | Human Resources (HR)

11. What was achieved?
• Pilot with April FOHSC Nursing & ODP students
• Automated feed file for Student (Faculty/Dept.) Secondary Roles
• Targeted information for events & groups of users
• Future plans to:
• Automate staff secondary roles
• Target student roles based on module department & faculty association

12. ACTIVITY – Targeting Users
• Using Staff & Students as examples, create spider diagrams
listing information those users would find useful. E.g. Faculty
Resources, Departmental information, Research, NSS, New
starter information etc.
• Group together common themes and suggest a role name. E.g.
Faculty, Department, Academic Year, Campus etc.

13. ACTIVITY – Example
STUDENTS STAFF
Faculty
Resources
Department
Information
Year 1
Year 2 Year 3
Undergraduate
Resources
Postgraduate
Resources
Research
Support
Faculty
Resources
Department
Information
NSS
Revision
Resources
Help / Guides
DEPARTMENT SECONDARY ROLE
FACULTY SECONDARY ROLE
Subject
Resources

14. Edge Hill University – Secondary Roles
Department Roles x51
DEPT_
Faculty Roles x3
FACULTY_
Students
STUDENT
Staff
STAFF
Primary Institutional Roles Secondary Institutional Roles
New Students
NEW_STARTER_M1
New Institutional Role
Academic Year
YR_
Wish List
Campus ID
ORM_

15. Two roles don’t make a right
Operating Department Practice
HODP
Faculty of Health & Social Care
FOHSC
Pre Registration Nursing
HPRN
Students
STUDENT
Staff
STAFF
Primary Institutional Roles Secondary Institutional Roles
• Limitations of a secondary role – can’t ‘add’ together

16. Front end - User Experience
• What do the students want?
• How was it managed?
• Who was involved?

17. Challenges
Everyone wants a piece of the pie…
• “I want a tab!”
• “I want it to be called…”
• “I want to change it to…”
• “I want it to be placed here…”
• “I want my panel (module) there…”

18. ACTIVITY – What the users see
• Think of a name for your tab
• What content would you have within that tab?
• How many modules (panels)?
• Where would they be placed?
• What would they look like? (content/design)

19. Design
• Consistent theme
• .css on the Blackboard page (applied via ‘Themes and Branding’)
• Module template in PPT
• Training

24. Thanks and Questions?
Images from http://pixabay.com/
John Langford
Learning Technology Development Systems Officer
john.Langford@edgehill.ac.uk
Carol Chatten
Learning Technology Development Officer
carol.chatten@edgehill.ac.uk
Megan Juss
Learning Technology Development Manager
megan.juss@edgehill.ac.uk