The document outlines a project aimed at creating customizable personal homepages for University of Sussex students using a social software portal. Key findings highlight the importance of staff engagement, the need for student guidance, and the challenges in maintaining site resources and communication within a collegiate environment. Issues encountered include site speed affecting user experience and the necessity for thorough user consultation and planning from the outset.

1. SPLASH Amy Waldron - Project Manager Hesan Yousif - Client Manager University of Sussex

2. Aims Create student personal homepages in a social software portal Use portal/mash-up technology Make homepages customisable Get students and lecturers using the system for teaching, learning and social purposes

3. Audience University students Freshers Undergraduates (18-21) Postgraduates Distance Learners Placements Mature students Subject groups Interest groups Student Union groups Staff Lecturers and other teaching and learning staff Support staff – internal communications All staff – social and communication “ University Communities”

4. Approach User consultation and requirements definition Technical analysis Mock-up site Feedback and Usability Testing Beta Launch Further development Launch revised site The future…….

5. Findings & Issues Findings Staff are surprisingly keen! Students need guidance from academic champions to use social software for learning Issues You need a lot of resources to keep a site ‘alive’ Speed of the site caused damaging disillusionment at a key point Developing in an environment we hadn’t used before

6. Think about all your users! Involvement of staff and other University units was key to the take up of the software product but we didn’t fully realise this in our planning at the beginning The collegiate environment can be problematic for communication The big SPLASH lesson: