Consultation slides

1. The University’s future Online Learning
Environment Consultation on
Communications and Collaboration

2. The purpose of these slides is to provide a brief
update on the future Online Learning
Environment consultation and its next steps;
update you on current development work; and
seek your feedback on the ideas and potential
implications for staff.

3. Background
• The University is in the process of reviewing its Online
Learning Environment to make sure it meets the needs of
staff and students for the next decade
• Several core principles inherent in StudyNet will remain.
For example, the notion of a single personalised portal
which is a key channel of communication; facilities that
encourage and support collaborative working; and rich
tools to manage assessment and feedback
• But some changes are envisaged. For example, providing a
structured learner journey through each module, the
greater use of 3rd party services; more timely and targeted
messaging; and enhanced data analytics
• A key output from the first consultation round is the need
for a better Communications and Collaboration
Environment

4. Consultation on Communications and Collaboration
• This part of the consultation relates to how we
might provide an online environment for
communications and collaborations between all
members of the University, and in particular to
support interactions with students throughout
their studies
• The aim of this is to address points raised in the
initial consultation relating to the challenges of
enabling timely, personalised and effective
communication between staff and students, and
students and students

5. The key messages from the previous consultations
included a wish for:
• A mechanism to be alerted to relevant changes on StudyNet (new
resources, etc) to home page and mobile devices
– Ability to subscribe/unsubscribe to different alerts
– Ability to mark/hide items that have been read
– Prioritisation of news between urgent, important and adverts
– Ability to select some messages and alerts to be delivered in the form of daily
or weekly digests
• More relevant channels for communications, which meet individual
preferences for sending and receiving messages
– Add instant and social messaging channels
– Integrate messaging within client of choice
– Automated lists to send messages to different groups of students
– Better targeting options for messages
• Better directory of University members
– Searchable profile and contact details (and times for students)
– Public presence for students, including blog
– Enhanced groupwork facilities, allowing more interactivity

6. What would we like to achieve?
For students
• Offer a choice of channels to receive messages,
eg social media, personal email (direct or digest),
apps/notifications
• Provide a collaborative learning environment
with online storage – personal and shareable
(dropbox) – and online meetings/groupwork
tools, with managed lists to communicate with
(eg my cohort, my module tutorial group)
• Provide a range of academic software
applications on students’ own devices

7. What would we like to achieve?
For staff
• Provide a familiar and convenient, Outlook-
centred, managed messaging environment that
allows communications to individuals and to
groups of students (eg Module, Cohort,
Programme)
• Provide a collaborative learning environment
with online storage – personal and shareable
(dropbox) – and online meetings/groupwork tools

8. What would we like to achieve?
For the University
• Need to ensure essential messages are
delivered to the relevant recipients and are
not lost in blanket coverage
• Enable targeted messages to specific groups
• Need to broadcast messages/news, with
indication of priority
• Analytical tools to assess effectiveness of
communications

9. How do we propose to deliver this?
• As part of the solution we intend to implement
the Microsoft Office 365 suite of applications –
see next slide for details
• We will provide integrations with the Student and
HR systems to provide target groups for
communications
• We will develop a mechanism to send and deliver
messages from sender preferred channels to
recipient preferred channels (eg staff send from
Outlook, student receives instant message)

10. What is Microsoft Office 365?
A suite of tools that delivers:
• Cloud storage for staff and students, which can be
private or shared with others (similar to Dropbox),
accessible anywhere, on any device (see OneDrive)
• Ability to collaborate on the production of Office
documents with others (see Office and SharePoint)
• Online communications tools for instant messaging,
voice and video, and a social media interface (see Lync
and Yammer)
• An online profile, with the ability to view who is
present and available to communicate with
• Integration with Outlook for desktop use

11. Staff - We need your feedback…
Please consider the following and email your comments to Greg
Bowie, OLE Review Project Manager g.bowie@herts.ac.uk by Friday
29th August
• What sort of communications do you send out, to whom, and why?
Do you expect a response?
• How would you like students to contact you online – email or via
instant message/virtual office at set times?
• How do you make yourself available to students now? Do you have
open office hours? If students could see when you were available
online, would you be happy for them to contact you directly?
• How would you like to receive messages? If you had to choose a
particular channel, what would it be?
• If some alerts to students could be automated, would this be useful
and save you time (eg hand-in deadline reminders)?
• Any other comments?

12. Students - We need your feedback…
Please consider the following and email your comments to
Greg Bowie, OLE Review Project Manager
g.bowie@herts.ac.uk by Friday 29th August
• What types of messaging services do you use? How would
you like to receive messages from the University? If you
had to choose one channel, what would it be?
• What are the high priority messages you want to receive
immediately and what would you prefer to find at your
convenience.
• How would you like to communicate with your lecturers
online? Do you prefer to send them emails, or would you
prefer instant messaging?
• What notifications or alerts of changes or new information
in StudyNet would be useful?
• Any other comments?