Info skills was created through an evolutionary process of collaboration between UEL Library and Learning Services and UELconnect. It began with existing materials from the library and was inspired by other universities' resources. A project team contributed ideas and expertise to develop prototypes and refine the resource based on user feedback. Over iterative cycles, they incorporated new ideas and specialized input. The final product was a flexible online tool to support students' information skills, created using a custom content management system allowing for ongoing updates.

1. Info skills: How it came to be
Erica Plowman
Learning Designer
UELconnect
Friday 13th January 2012

2. Info skills is designed to
support Level 1 students to
develop the key skills they
need to find information for
their assignments and use it
appropriately.
It was created in partnership
between members of UEL’s
Library and Learning
Services and the Distance
and E-learning team
(UELconnect)
WWW.UEL.AC.UK/INFOSKILLS

3. Questions we’ve been asked
How did you pull everything together?
How did you make it look so good?
Where did all the materials come from?
Why make it ‘open-access’?
Why not include other study skills?
Who did it?
Why does it

4. One way to describe how we did it
Maintenance and Analysis
update
Specification
Promotion A typical
‘development’
cycle
Design and
Testing Development
Content
Coding
Writing

5. But this description ..
• Appears too mechanistic to include
creativity and spontaneity.
• Doesn’t capture the relationships, empathy
and communication at the heart of the
process.
• Is often retrofitted onto the messier way
things really happen!

6. Maybe it’s more helpful ..
To talk about how things develop rather than
how they ‘are developed’
Which reminds me of ..

7. ‘Evolution’
So let’s talk about Info skills in terms of:
• Species: What kind of creature is it?
• Origins: Where did it come from?
• Evolutionary process: How was it created?
• New forms: What next?

8. What kind of learning tool is
it?
What context and audience
is it intended for?
What is the underlying
design and thinking behind
it?
How does this meet the
needs identified?
SPECIES
Photo used under Creative Commons from Peter Harris

9. Species
• Static content – complementing F2F sessions, helpdesk/email
support, specialist Subject Librarian appts and online chat tool
• Independent/self-directed use – ‘designed’ content, explicit,
consistent, cross-referenced
• Informal learning – learner free to browse around, must attract
them, not compulsory
• Hybrid resource – reference, information and learning material
• Multimedia – information presented in different formats
• ‘Just-in-time’ or ‘strategic’ – to allow learners to use it in
different ways, last minute help, answer a specific question,
refresh knowledge or broader overview of new concepts
• Open access – easiest access and widest reach for all learners
(distance, part-time, international, pre-entry, partner colleges)
also advertises support we offer to potential new students

10. Genetic (design) blueprint
• Transparent navigation, flexible entry points – supports different points of
need (starting off / refresher / lastminute.com), maximise learner control
• Browsable, bite-size resources, variety of formats – flexible paths through
content, caters to different learner preferences (eg straight to a practice
quiz, or follow step-by-step guide), engage learners with multimedia
• Conversational, motivational narratives – address learner
directly, encourage independent learners to engage with the material
• Tutor and peer support built-in – videos reflect genuine student experience
and make it more relevant for them, supportive advice for new students in
particular
• Assignment context – emphasis on‘why’ you need these skills not just ‘what’
they are, home page slideshow sets the scene
• High quality graphic design/images – to engage and attract learners
• Usability and accessibility – video subtitles and transcripts, not too text-
heavy, only 3 levels of navigation, does contain Flash objects however.

11. Where did it come from?
What existing materials
did we start with?
What pre-cursors were
there?
ORIGINS
Photo used under Creative Commons from APS Museum

12. Origins – our main starting points
• Existing materials – handouts, leaflets from
Library, help docs on website, librarians
support material
• External websites and OERs – lots of
inspiration from other universities
• ‘Get that job’ – we had created an in-house
resource with Employability colleagues to
support students with skills needed to apply
for jobs. It looked like this …

13. The original ‘Get that job’

14. Origins
Also:
New Employability brand
At the same time we
started planning Info
skills, our Employability
and Enterprise team
wanted to update ‘Get
that job’ to match the new
brand of printed materials
they had commissioned
from Wire Design.

15. How was it created?
Who contributed to its
creation and what did
they do?
What were the key
things that made it
happen?
EVOLUTION
Photo used under Creative Commons from Mary Margret

16. The process of evolution
In very basic terms, the theory of evolution goes
something like:
• Existing forms come under pressure from changes
in the environment
new conditions, lack of resources
• There is a degree of variety in gene pool
spontaneous mutations, newcomers to the population
• Genes mix through cross-fertilisation, producing
slightly different forms
natural selection favours the better adapted forms
• Over long periods, this should produce new forms
that are more successful

17. Info skills evolution
Let’s consider each aspect in terms of this project:
• Existing forms
• Changes in the environment
 new conditions, lack of resources
• Variety in gene pool
 spontaneous mutations, newcomers to the population
• Cross-fertilisation
 natural selection, better adapted
• New forms

18. Existing forms gave us ideas:
As mentioned in Origins, some of them were:
• UEL Library website guidance docs
• Librarians’ VLE material
• OER and external websites
 Staffordshire Assignment Survival Kit
 Cardiff Information Literacy Resource Bank
 Leeds Skills@Library
 OU Safari
• Original ‘Get that job’ design
• New employability brand

19. Changes in the environment
New conditions:
 Widening participation, more students with info skills gaps
 Student expectations - access to 24/7 info/help
 Expectation that online tools for learning as media rich and easy-to-
use as wider internet (Youtube, Google, Amazon etc)
 Information (overload) age – the need to find information. NOW!
Lack of resources:
 Demands on teaching and support staff for F2F and 1:1 support
 Doing ‘more for less’ agenda – maybe needs to be interpreted as
‘more of some things and less of others’
 High quality online resources may need a greater investment ‘up
front’ but if they meet important needs, reach all students, and have
a good shelf life, they may be more value-added than doing other
cheaper, quicker things. Needs thinking about.

20. Variety in gene pool
Diversity of ideas, experiences, expertise, roles, responsibilities:
Project team: Head of Library and Learning Services, Academic Services Manager,
Subject Librarian, Learning Designer, Learning Technology Adviser, Learning Materials
Developer
Subject Matter Experts: Subject Librarians provided ideas advice, content and
volunteered for videos*. Wider Library staff took part in testing.
Specialist input: from Academic Integrity and Psychology (APA referencing), Skills
Modules Leaders also appeared in videos*
Student Voice: volunteers for focus groups, videos and testing, Student Liaison Officers
provided useful perspective
‘Newcomers’ to the population
External web developers
A professional cameraman helped us improve quality of in-house videos
Colleagues and students helped with photos*
Cardiff Information Literacy Resource Bank – permission to re-purpose 3 quizzes
‘Spontaneous mutations’ – things we didn’t know about when we started
Employability branding
CMS tool
* Get full written consent for use of anyone’s image

21. Cross-fertilisation/Natural selection
Continuous collaboration and consultation within our project team, taking ideas back and forth between Subject
Librarians, web developers and others.
Processes:
Inputs:
• Initial focus groups with students and Subject Librarians
• Requirements discussions with project team, consulting benchmarks
 Output: Project outline documentation, planned structure and milestone plan
• Review of internal and external online and print material
• Subject Librarians completed content ‘proformas’ on key areas
 Output: Prototyped ‘proof of concept’ design with small group staff and students
Inputs:
Prototype feedback, specialist consultations, iterations of draft text followed up with individuals, filming and
editing videos, sourcing photos, creating images, screencaptures, pdfs, quizzes, iterations of web design and
functionality
 Output: Finished resources and a CMS tool allowing us to build 80% of the site for a wider evaluation
Inputs:
Feedback collated, amends agreed, text edited and proofread, resources completed, tagging and debugging.
Publicity material and campaign planned. Google analytics set up. FAQ, Glossary, help info compiled.
Output: Info skills completed and launched after final review by Library colleagues in March 2011
The Appendix of examples illustrates some of these developments

22. Adaptation
• Collaboration and testing of ideas makes it more likely the
final result will be ‘well-adapted’ to your population and your
conditions.
• I prefer ‘well-adapted’ as it sounds like a higher expectation
and less clinical than ‘fit for purpose’.
• The end result is achieved through a balance of decisions
based on discussion, evaluation, feedback and testing, and
sometimes compromises with the technology.
• It happens over iterative cycles: formal ones with set
evaluation points and continuous informal, small-scale ones.
• It’s an ongoing process – LLS have just completed a 6-month
evaluation and are planning further updates to Info skills.

23. New Forms
We are now developing a new
resource to support academic
writing skills at Level 1.
Planned changes are:
• improved access via mobile
devices
• more practice exercises
• the option of sequences of
linked guidance and practice
resources
And probably others we don’t
know about yet 

24. Lessons learned from nature?
• Organic process
 not quite as slow as evolution
 Info skills took about 6 months actual development
 you do need a clear milestone plan but it has to allow for some spontaneity and trying out new
ideas
 without this our final look and feel and the flexible CMS tool would not have happened
• Collaborate to create
 diversity of experience/expertise from different disciplines – about 35 people probably contributed to
this project in total
 collaboration can be slow but often produces the best ideas and helps solve problems
 think of it as having access to a wider talent pool
• Build in opportunities for growth
 think about how to allow easy updating/adding of new resources (and who by!)
 is there room to expand on the structure you’ve designed?
 this is true for a resource library, VLE site or other type of online tool
• Testing and evaluation
 more likely the final result will be well-adapted
 keeps it learner-centred
 happening all the time not just at the end
As shown by this view of the development process…

25. ADDIE: Less like this …
Analyse
Evaluate Design
Implement Develop

26. And more like this
Analyse
Implement Evaluate Design
Develop

27. Appendix of examples
Site structure version 1 Site structure version 8!

28. Requirements discussions

29. Focus group - students

30. Focus group - staff

31. Content proformas
Give a structure, useful to ask
experts to identify their key
messages

32. Content proformas
But let people do it as
they prefer, it’s getting
the raw content that
counts, not fitting pre-
determined structures.
They always change
anyway.

33. Final Guides templates

34. Prototype feedback – students

35. Prototype feedback - staff

36. The CMS tool
In the process of meetings with Wire Design…
 we discovered that as well as doing the visual
design for the new resources, they could also
give us a simple-t-use CMS tool which would
actually allow us to build the site flexibly
ourselves.
We worked in partnership with them …
 to agree the design and functionality of the
system and were then able to upload the content
and resources we’d prepared very easily.
This made everything much more flexible …
 as we could edit and refine the content as much
as necessary during development and meant the
sites would be easy and cheap to expand and
update in the future.
Anyone could use it …
 But we have trained 2 individuals who take
responsibility for it to streamline updates
For example ►
 This is where you would add a new page or a
sub-page to the Referencing Section.

37. CMS: Front and back
The Harvard Referencing The Harvard Referencing
page on the site page in the CMS

38. EG Promotion

39. Info skills: Not the end 
Erica Plowman
e.plowman@uel.ac.uk