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We Are Getting Ready to Welcome You Back
Hello everyone! How are we all doing?
It’s been a while since we shared any news about Catalyst and we’d like to thank you for your patience over the last few months. We have all missed our beautiful building and campus – these lovely flowers have greeted us this week.
We wanted to share with you the updates to the building we are making to ensure that when we do reopen in mid August, everything is safe for you and our staff.
Throughout the building we are installing hand sanitising stations and rearranging furniture to support social distancing. We are installing screens at our help-desk and are reviewing our working practices across Library and Learning Services, Student Services and Careers to ensure our students and staff are safe when we reopen.
We are excited to announce that we will be launching our new Click and Collect service in August which will allow you to reserve books online and then pop over to Catalyst and collect them. We’ll share more details on this with you soon.
If you have any books that you would like to return, we ask that you keep hold of these until we reopen and you come back onto campus. If you have graduated and still have some books, you should have received an email from us on how to send these back.
We are very much looking forward to welcoming you all back to Catalyst, and meeting our new students too, we really have missed you!
Catalyst Team
Be Patient. Be Kind. Be Responsible
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Dawson Era ebook platform to close soon
A major ebook platform is due to close at the end of this month. If you use it, here’s what to do…
Dawson Era, one of our ebook suppliers, has recently gone into administration and as such, the platform will close after 31st July 2020.
The good news
There will be no loss of access to the electronic titles we have with Dawson Era. We have already arranged alternative access through other suppliers without exception, so you can continue to find the ebooks on Discover More and access will continue.
What you (may) need to do
What will be lost is any notes or annotations you may have made on the Dawson Era platform. If you have any such notes and you wish to keep them, please transfer these to other locations before 31 July. For example, if you use referencing software like RefWorks or EndNote you can add notes from Dawson Era there, attaching them to the record for the relevant book or chapter.
This view of the Dawson Era platform shows where notes can be made or kept. Any such notes will be unavailable after 31 July 2020. We apologise for not being able to give you more notice and hope this does not cause significant inconvenience.
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Assistive Technology: how can it help your studies?
If you’ve never heard of Assistive Technology (AT) and wonder what it is and how it can help your studies then you’ve come to the right place. Assistive Technology software, for example, mind mapping and text-to-speech software, can help you to develop skills and strategies for studying. Whilst it is particularly helpful for those who have a Specific Learning Difficulty (SpLD) such as Dyslexia, they are really useful tools for anyone to use. Even better it’s available at the university for all students and staff and much of it can be used off campus too.
Read and Write Gold – is text-to-speech software that is a useful proofreading tool as we can hear the errors in our writing more effectively than by sight alone. This software can also be useful for a blended reading approach enabling you to access content in different ways. Read and Write also has useful study tools such a spellchecker, with a phonetic base, screen tinting and a homophone checker to recognise similar sounding words.
TIP: Read and Write is providing a temporary license which is available to all Edge Hill students and staff whilst social distancing measures remain in place.
Get in touch with the Catalyst Helpdesk virtually via email or live chat and they will be able to provide an instructional video and product key so you can download the software at home.
ClaroRead – is another text-to-speech software that is useful when proofreading your assignments and can be helpful when taking a blended approach to reading. ClaroRead has lots of useful study skills tools such as screen rulers, tinting and phonetic spellcheckers. ClaroRead anywhere is available to students and staff on our Assistive Technology webpages.
Inspiration 9 – is mind mapping software that can assist you when planning your essay writing and offers a visual way of organising ideas on to a mind map. This approach can be helpful in processing information and you can arrange your content in different ways to support your understanding. You can add images, text and web links to your mind map in order to capture all your great planning in one place. Students and staff can download a copy of the software on their own device using the link on our Assistive Technology webpages.
If you would like any further information around these technologies, please feel free to contact the team on [email protected]
