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Faculty of Health and Social Care Students receive a first
Students studying on the April cohort of Pre-Reg Nursing and ODP (Operating Departmental Practice) are the first to have been offered both online part-registration and a dedicated new tab within Learning Edge.
Since acquiring Community as a bolt-on to Learning Edge, there has been much work done around how to best use it for the benefit of both staff and students.
We knew from student feedback that accessing library e-resources from within Learning Edge is helpful. Our priority development was the library resources tab, made available to all students in January … but we wanted to take it much further …
So a project commenced in January to bring a new area within the Learning Edge environment that allows the students to have direct access to the subject-specific library resources that they will use most often including reading lists, frequently used databases and journal titles and also a Twitter feed and subject resources. This tab has been called ‘Your FoHSC Resources‘.
Having ready access to subject resources in a tab managed by our Academic Liaison Librarians will, we hope, help students to locate and use key resources for their course. It is our intention to extend subject-specific library resources tabs to all by September and to work with Faculties and Departments on developing their own tab and panels.
If you are interested in finding out more, get in touch with the Learning Technology Development Team on [email protected]
Carol Chatten
Learning Technology Development Officer
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Create a Profile on Blackboard
Blackboard’s ‘Social Learning Tools’ form a small scale social networking style environment within Blackboard, which students can use outside of their course areas. They include the Profile tool, People tool, Messages tool, and Spaces tool.The Profile tool is the one you are most likely to be interested in. This allows you to add a photo of yourself which shows up in other places such as the Blackboard Discussion Board tool, which makes it easier to follow conversations and see who posted what.
When logged into Blackboard, your name can be seen near the top right of the page, as shown in this image. Click on your name and a drop down menu will appear. At the top of the menu is a grey head shaped icon by default, and if you click on this you will see your empty profile page.
Click on the ‘Edit My Blackboard Profile’ to get started adding photos and any information that you might want to share about yourself.
The Spaces tool is one of Blackboard’s Social Learning Tools, and is linked to using the icon that represents a network. We have written a guide to using the Spaces tool in case the tool is useful as a simple discussion space for anyone doing group work.
A recent update to the Social Learning Tools adds important features. The update ensures that you have agreed to Blackboard’s terms of service before you use them, and you will be reminded of the section of Edge Hill University’s IT Acceptable Use Policy that relates to social networking type activity. You will also have more control over your own information, as you will be able to completely delete your profile while you are a student with access to Blackboard. Even if you don’t get round to deleting your profile, inactive accounts will be removed after about a year, so they won’t be there forever.
If you find that your profile picture (and others’!) have disappeared, it may be you added your photo before the terms came in. To ‘reactivate’ all the profile pictures in your account, click back to your profile picture (as if you’re uploading your photo again) and ensure you click to accept the agreement. All the photos will automatically re-appear!
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Improvements for library loans…
We are currently exploring how we can improve our offer in terms of students/staff borrowing from the University Library. Our aim is to have a more flexible service, and to minimise charges.
The following are improvements under consideration:
- Only charging fines on overdue books that are in high demand (ie items that have been reserved by another student/staff member)
- Introducing an auto renewal service; the library would renew your books for you (apart from any with a reservation)
- To make the borrowing rules easy to understand; introducing one standard loan length for all books
We would appreciate your feedback on how these changes might enhance, or otherwise, your experience of borrowing from the library. If you have any feedback (positive or negative!) then we would love to hear it. Just drop an email to [email protected]
