• Libraries Week is coming soon to Catalyst!

    This year Libraries Week is taking place 7th-12th October 2019. The theme this year of Libraries Week is celebrating libraries in the digital world. This gives us the chance to celebrate our fantastic library housed in Catalyst and explore how digital technology is being used and what technology is available for you.

    • Libraries Week 7th-12th October. Celebrating libraries in a digital world. Image of student wearing VR headset.

    Throughout the week there will be a variety of sessions, exhibitions and online support available to both staff and students at Edge Hill. The aim is to improve digital literacy skills, create an excitement around using technology and use it to its advantages. 

    Take a look below at the sessions and exhibitions taking place and how to book on.

    Students

    Getting Started

    Join our Student Advisors and discover how to navigate your new student homepage (MyEHU) and get the most out of Learning Edge and your My Library tab.

    Weekdays 12pm-12:30pm – Book now via CareerHub.

    Finding Your Resources

    If you’re new to EHU, or just want a refresher after the summer break, join our Student Advisors for a virtual guided tour of your basic online resources, including Library Catalogue and Reading Lists.

    Weekdays 1pm-1:30pm – Book now via CareerHub.

    Staff

    Cultivating A Growth Mindset with Digital Technology

    Growth mindset, a learning theory developed by Carol Dweck, revolves around the belief that you can develop and improve your ability and performance as a result of establishing a positive mindset that encourages growth and positivity. In this session staff will explore how having a growth mindset can also empower digital transformation. This session will enable staff to try out new digital tools and find the benefits of using technology in different ways. 

    Monday 7th October 11am-12pm – Book now via MyView.

    Wiki: Updating and personalizing the Wiki

    This session aims to introduce staff to the Wiki and guide them through updating and personalizing it according to their specific department. This session will look at creating a clear structure on your Wiki pages, creating a main page, adding a colour scheme and sourcing high quality professional images and photographs. 

    Tuesday 8th October 2pm-3pm – Book now via MyView.

    Annotating the Web: Encouraging Collaboration

    This session will discuss different strategies and methods of making notes about online articles and webpages, considering ways in which technology can be used to make annotating the web more efficient and beneficial. Through the use of online pieces of software, we can now annotate the web, highlight key phrases and colour code our notes.

    Thursday 10th October 12pm-1pm – Book now via MyView.

    Students and Staff

    Virtual Reality

    Experience the Virtual Reality technologies that are being used extensively in the healthcare, sports, entertainment and engineering industries; during this exciting Libraries Week event you will have the opportunity to experience using a VIVE™ virtual reality headset and be immersed in a 3D gaming environment where physical space is irrelevant and the impossible can appear possible.

    Tuesday 8th October 12pm-2pm – Catalyst Events Space

    3D Printing

    Learn more about the 3D printing technologies used to rapidly produce prototypes within the aerospace, medical, automotive, fashion and construction industries; this hands-on makerspace event held during Libraries Week will include an opportunity to design and print your very own 3D bookmark to take away.

    Friday 11th October 12pm-2pm – Catalyst Events Space

    So, what are you waiting for? Come to Catalyst and get involved in Libraries Week.

    Don’t forget to use the hashtag #librariesweek

    Laura

  • What’s the word? Digital Workplace Technologies Feedback

    We believe that listening to staff feedback is vital! It helps us to shape our sessions, develop new and exciting initiatives and respond to your needs and interests.

    The Digital Workplace Technologies offer has now been active for over 6 months. During this time we have worked hard to develop a comprehensive and responsive offer, that has been adapted to suit staff’s digital needs and technological advancements. This year the current Digital Workplace Technologies offer has been restructured and refreshed in order to provide all staff with a clear pathway to increase and enhance their digital knowledge and capabilities. Learning Services aims to provide staff at Edge Hill University with a high-quality learning and development experience, enhancing staff digital capabilities through a variety of staff development sessions, online guides and resources.

    So, what’s the word? Since launching in early 2019, over 350 members of staff have attended sessions and 100% of staff in the online feedback evaluation form said that ‘Overall the session’s objectives were met’. This is great news to hear and we are glad that we are making an impact!

    Statistics about Digital Workplace Technologies,

    Feedback has been a vital way in order to gather ideas, collate data and further develop the offer.

    Staff have made the following comments about sessions that they have attended:

    Feedback - "Excellent and beneficial for supporting students in my role" "Great session and already booked for my next one"         "Excellent session. I will be able to take the skills I have learnt and apply to my job role"

    As a result of the feedback received, changes have been made to the structure of sessions, amount of participation and length of activities.

    Also, due to staff feedback even more sessions have now been added! Some of these include: ‘Digital Participation: Encouraging Student Involvement’; ‘Word: Mail Merge 2016’; ‘Visio: Learning the Basics’; ‘Cultivating a Growth Mindset with Digital Technology’ and ‘Annotating the Web: Encouraging Collaboration’.

    Alongside face-to-face sessions, there are also a range of online guides, videos and links to useful LinkedIn Learning courses on the Learning Services Wiki pages.

    Book your session on MyView here.

    Stay up-to-date with our latest developments on our blog and WIKI.

    Photograph of Laura

    Written by: Laura Riella,

    Digital Capabilities Coordinator

    Laura

  • Hello to Scopus!

    We’ve been evaluating our academic literature databases over the Summer and learned there has been a steady drop in the use Web of Science, a multidisciplinary citations database. To see whether an alternative may work better, we ran a trial of Scopus during July.

    With over 23,500 serial titles and 75 million items, Scopus has a broader reach than Web of Science, indexing more academic journals and also couples a clean interface with features such a suite of data visualisations for your search results. Additionally, it works better with Pure, the University’s research information repository.

    The Trial

    During July we set up a trial subscription to Scopus – this was a big success! We received lots of requests to subscribe and the platform earned favourable comparisons with popular tools like Google Scholar (you can see some comments here).

    The Decision

    Given that Scopus received such positive feedback from staff and students, and has improved scope and usability, we have taken a multidisciplinary approach and decided to move from Web of Science to Scopus. As such, access to WoS will cease at end of September and we will have Scopus live from 16 September.

    All students and staff will be able to access Scopus, and we are confident you find it a big improvement. We are arranging training for mid-November, and our ‘Literature Search for Research’ session is already available for booking via MyView. If you have any saved searches or alerts from Web of Science which you would like to transfer across to Scopus, please contact [email protected] for support with this.

Categories

Learning Edge latest post