The London School of Economics developed a training portal using RSS technology to provide a single access point for information on training opportunities for staff and students. The portal aggregates information from different training providers and displays it chronologically on the institutional portal, virtual learning environment, and plasma screens. An evaluation found the portal raised the profile of training and was successful at communicating opportunities, with 47% of students and 51% of staff reporting they learned of training through the portal. Organizers aim to expand participation of training providers and further coordinate approaches to professional development.

1. The LSE Training Portal: a
really simple solution?
Jane Secker, Jeni Brown & Chris Fryer
London School of Economics and Political Science
17th
March 2008
LILAC 2008, Liverpool John Moores University

2. Overview and summary
 Overview of training portal project
 Use of RSS technology to enhance access
to training information for staff and
students at LSE
 Development of a portal or ‘one-stop shop’
 Development of a re-usable RSS feed for
inclusion in the institutional portal and the VLE
 Consider information literacy implications
of RSS technology

3. Training Portal project goals
 To improve access to training information
for staff and students by providing a single
information point.
 To improve communication and cooperation
between training providers throughout the
university.
 To improve the visibility of training events
and to foster the development of LSE as a
learning community.
 To establish an easy to use and flexible
system which could be re-used throughout
the university’s existing systems.
 To explore the use of RSS technology as a
means of providing timely and relevant
information to users.

4. Project partners

5. Project initiation and background
 Awareness of problem – but no
obvious solution
 Endnote training caused confusion
 Potential overlap in course content
between IT training and CLT
 New members of staff – new skills

6. Training at LSE before the project

7. The Training Portal

8. How it works
PerlPHPASPASP
Events booking databases
RSS-generating scripts
RSS aggregator sorts all
events chronologically and
outputs to other formats
PHP Script
HTML
Page
RSS Plasma
Screen
Re use the same
material in multiple
contexts, with each
event linked to the
relevant provider’s
booking system.
RSSRSSRSSRSS

9. Staff training in the institutional portal

10. Student training in the VLE

11. The plasma screen display

12. Project launch and follow up
 Soft launch – April 2007
 In Moodle, student portal and on plasma
screens
 Formal Launch in October 2007
 Credit card pocket fliers and limited supply of
promotional bags
 Publicity in online staff newsletter
 Additional publicity in January 2008 (leaflets)
 Awarded funding by School for eco-friendly
bag – joint project with Library to promote
learning

13. Evaluation and feedback
 Gathering feedback using the following
methods:
• Monitoring of feedback through evaluation forms;
• Monitoring of attendance at all training events as
compared to previous years;
• Feedback and data will be collected as part of
annual user surveys and focus groups;
• Page hit data will be collected on the training portal
and the provider sites
• Feedback from staff administering the programmes.

14. Impact to date
How did trainees hear of IT Training
Courses?
From 8/10/2007 to 03/03/2008
Students
Training portal 47%
Global Email 17%
Login Box 14%
Word of Mouth 8%
Flyers 8%
Other 4%
Plasma Screens 2%
Facebook 1%
Staff
Training portal 51%
Monthly Flyer 26%
Word of Mouth 9%
Other 8%
Login Box 3%
Plasma Screen 1%
Posters 1%
Facebook 1%

15. Key successes
 Project was a finalist for the Institute of IT
Training ‘Internal Project of the Year’ Award
 Feedback suggests it has raised profile of
training
 We think this system is unique in HE
 Demonstrates the importance of collaboration
and cooperation between training providers
 Delivered with a minimal investment of resources
 Requires no additional user training
 Highly flexible: use in VLE, portal, plasma screens
 Innovative and highly practical use of Web 2.0
technology

16. Information literacy implications
 Portal makes things easier for students
and makes training more visible
 True value of the portal relies on
understanding how to use RSS as a
personal information management tool
 Now run a class for staff and researchers
on Keeping up to Date – using Google
Reader – extend to students?
 Most attendees see the benefit but are
unfamiliar with using RSS in this way

17. The future
 Aim to get all training providers on board
 Evaluation
 measuring the impact on attendance at classes
across the School
 measuring impact on awareness of training
 Assumes that non-attendance is due to poor
visibility which may not be the case
 Training providers are continuing to meet with
other ideas in the pipeline such as:
 A single booking system?
 More coordinated approach to training – JISC i-skills
framework?
 E-portfolios for training records

18. Thanks for listening
Any questions?
References
Secker, Jane and Fryer Christopher. Information Literacy and
RSS feeds at LSE in Godwin, P. and Parker, J. (eds) (2008)
Information Literacy meets Library 2.0. London: Facet. ISBN
978-1-85604-637-4
Training Portal documentation available at:
http://training.lse.ac.uk/docs
Contact details
Jeni Brown j.l.brown@lse.ac.uk
Jane Secker j.secker@lse.ac.uk
Chris Fryer c.j.fryer@lse.ac.uk (Technical queries)