IWMW 2011 blog » Plenaries http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011 Supporting UKOLN's IWMW 2011 event Fri, 20 Apr 2012 08:43:04 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.4 IWMW11 Conclusions and Reflections http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/08/09/iwmw11-conclusions-and-reflections/ http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/08/09/iwmw11-conclusions-and-reflections/#comments Tue, 09 Aug 2011 14:42:35 +0000 kirsty-pitkin http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/?p=671 Continue reading ]]> In bringing IWMW11 to a close, Brian Kelly invited a number of web managers to share their experiences and reflect on what the event and the community had contributed to their professional practices…

Milly Shaw from the University of Sunderland described their recent experiments with student bloggers, who were encouraged to blog about university life as a way of demonstrating authentic university life to prospective students in their Lives Online project.

Claire Gibbon from the University of Bradford described her department’s efforts to make themselves known within the institution and the local community as expert advisors on social media, which has involved running social media surgeries for staff and local community groups to help bring them onto campus.

Duncan Ireland from the University of Strathclyde described the activities of the Scottish Regional Group, which has been meeting informally every 3-4 months as a result of bonds forged at previous IWMW events. They often meet to discuss specific topical issues and collect together just prior to or immediately after IWMW each year to help extend the conversations associated with the event.

Miles Banbery from the University of Kent described work at this year’s event which has led to the establishment of an ongoing collaborative document designed to pull together ideas about how to maximise institutional webmaster impact. The hope is that this will prove to be a valuable resource to the community going forward, and to which they can all contribute.

And finally, Christopher Gutteridge demonstrated what his team has been doing with cookie data for the catering department at the University of Southampton, showing what can be done with linked data. Their exploits are all documented at their department blog, which was inspired by previous IWMW events. Chris emphasised the need to encourage each other to blog more, especially by commenting.

Picture 007

Brian drew attention to the new UK HE Web Professionals LinkedIn group that was started as a result of discussions at this year’s event, and the launch of the Institutional Web Team blog aggregator. Both of these things are designed to help support the community throughout the year so that the energy and ideas generated at IWMW11 are not lost when everyone returns to their day jobs.

With the event Twitter stream was a-buzz with discussion about the formation of further regional groups and collaborations, Brian and Marieke formally brought IWMW11 to a close.

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Plenary 8: The Strategic Developer http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/08/08/plenary-8-the-strategic-developer/ http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/08/08/plenary-8-the-strategic-developer/#comments Mon, 08 Aug 2011 15:42:05 +0000 kirsty-pitkin http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/?p=658 Continue reading ]]> Paul Walk from UKOLN introduced us to the idea of the strategic developer and the work of the DevCSI project to foster innovation through local developers in order to create an environment in which strategic developers can emerge to benefit the sector.

Walk: “Successful companies innovate in a down market” #iwmw11 #p8
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

The Cost of Innovation

Paul began his presentation by questioning the costs of the current trend towards outsourcing development and IT expertise in HE institutions, highlighting the lost capacity of innovate that can result from the practice…

Walk: Discussing the temptation for universities to cut away the ability to innovate #iwmw11 #p8
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Walk: Asks whether local IT expertise a sunk cost? Outsourcing IT capacity has a cost, including loss of tacit knowledge #iwmw11 #p8
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Walk: Innovation happens in a local context – it needs to be driven by user demands and needs #iwmw11 #p8
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

DevCSI

Within this context, Paul introduced the work of the JISC-funded DevCSI project, which seeks to foster innovation by supporting local developer.

He outlined the results of their research into the general standing of local developers within the institution, and described the training and community building opportunities that the project has facilitated, particularly through their Dev8D event.

Walk: The #devcsi stakeholder survey showed widespread agreement that local developers understand local context better #iwmw11 #p8
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Walk: 70% of those surveyed by #devcsi felt that local developers were undervalued #iwmw11 #p8
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Walk: #dev8d saw the building of an interactive whiteboard out of a nintendo wii and a sheet of tracing paper #iwmw11 #p8
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Walk: We think we delivered £85k worth of training at one 2-day event using peer-to-peer training #iwmw11 #p8
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Walk: A well connected community of developers is greater than the sum of its parts. You haven’t just got one or two guys #iwmw11 #p8
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

Strategic Roles

Paul concluded by describing the lack of career progression for local developers and the clear need for strategic leads as technology becomes increasingly important to universities.

Walk: The strategic role is missing – the technical guide #iwmw11 #p8
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Walk: Good management of URLs is going to become very important – this is the new currency for institutions #iwmw11 #p8
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Walk: Key information sets will become a big deal over the next few years, whether we like it or not #iwmw11 #p8
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

Reactions

The web managers had the following comments to make about Paul’s presentation…

RT @iwmwlive Can web managers and developers work well together? #iwmw11 #p8 <– Definitely especially if they can talk the same language
webpackets
July 27, 2011
Can highly recommend #dev8d! #iwmw11 #p8
MikeNolan
July 27, 2011
@iwmwlive Don’t be afraid to enter the testosterone den of the developers’ office! #iwmw11 #p8
KateLLin
July 27, 2011

Further Information

Paul’s slides from this presentation are available in PDF form at the IWMW webpage for his talk.

More information about the work of the DevCSI project in this area, including the case studies Paul cited during his talk, can be found at the DevCSI Local Dev Impact page.

You can view Paul’s talk in full on Vimeo.

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Plenary 7: Online Privacy http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/08/05/plenary-7-online-privacy/ http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/08/05/plenary-7-online-privacy/#comments Fri, 05 Aug 2011 14:55:36 +0000 kirsty-pitkin http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/?p=655 Continue reading ]]> Dave Raggett from the University of the West of England used his plenary talk to discuss the issue of online privacy, particularly in view of recent EU legislation regarding the use of cookies.

iwmw11

Raggett: You become the product the websites are selling #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

Setting the Scene

Dave began by providing an overview of the current situation relating to cookies and online privacy, including where these issues rank in relation to other global concerns.

Raggett: 80% of browsers could be identified without using any cookies according to Electronic Fronteir Foundation #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Raggett: There is a proliferation of ways to store data in the browser, including HTML 5 local storage and flash cookies #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Raggett: Advertising is now using a profiling model using 3rd party cookies to provide detailed tracking of users across the web #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Raggett: Quoting Russell Glass: “nobody cares about online privacy because they’re worried about the economy & terrorism” #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

Aiding Privacy

Dave discussed the work of the EU PrimeLife project and outlined some of the tools and initiatives that have emerged to help users manage their online privacy.

Raggett: We have seen the emergence of browser extensions for privacy that block ads and inhibit cookies #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Raggett: Describing the Privacy Dashboard, which helps you to see how websites are tracking you & adjust your settings as you go #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Raggett: Privacy Dashboard gives you a diagnosis of a webpage telling you what cookies and third parties are tracking you #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Raggett: W3C’s has organised workshops relating to privacy and technical working groups to support privacy by design #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

Regulation

Dave highlighted some of the issues associated with regulation in this area, including the lack of clarity surrounding the wording of new legislation and the agendas of advertisers, who push for self-regulation.

Raggett: The advertising industry would like us to believe that self-regulation is the way. But is it? #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Raggett: There is a better need for regulation and better tools #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Raggett: The definition of “do not track” is not 100% clear – people push the definition depending on their interests #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Raggett: Self-regulatory efforts are like a patchwork, which is a real problem in itself, and covering cookies is not enough #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Raggett: The E-Privacy Directive appears to only apply to cookies – but its not clear. #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

Users

Dave was keen to put these issues into context by considering them from the users’ perspective, noting that many of the suggested solutions so far do not support the average user in a realistic manner.

Raggett: Most users do not want to touch the browser settings, but do not track is opt in by default #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Raggett: You shouldn’t arm-twist users into an agreement that is to their detriment #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

Technical Issues

To conclude, Dave outlined some of the technical issues that have yet to be resolved if cookies are to be used practically to add value, without infringing privacy.

Raggett: There is no good machine-readable way to identify what a cookie is being used for. Its impossible to identify good ones #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Raggett: Privacy friendly strong authentication: ways to prove the user’s trusted credentials without revealing identity #iwmw11 #p7
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

Reactions

Privacy and the new cookie legislation are issues of great concern to the IWMW audience.  Here are just some of their reactions to Dave Raggett’s talk…

#iwmw11 #p7 cookies are useful to eg online purchasing would be impossible without them
rssidhu
July 27, 2011
It’s easy to forget that the #Facebook like button tracks your browsing @draggett #iwmw11 #p7
SocialCommsUK
July 27, 2011
#iwmw11 #p7 – presumably a key issue is what a 3rd party does with the information it gathers, and can this be regulated internationally?
ash_28
July 27, 2011
“Privacy is not dead, but it is deeply misunderstood”. Abso-blooming-lutely! #iwmw11 #p7
sharonsteeples
July 27, 2011

Further Information

Dave’s slides are available in PDF format at the IWMW webpage for his talk.

You can also view Dave’s presentation in full on Vimeo.

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Plenary 6: Embedding Web 2.0 http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/08/04/plenary-6-embedding-web-2-0/ http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/08/04/plenary-6-embedding-web-2-0/#comments Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:11:37 +0000 kirsty-pitkin http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/?p=651 Continue reading ]]> Martin Hamilton walked the audience through key lessons derived from his experience leading the Google Apps implementation at Loughborough University and the Google Apps for Education UK User Group, and subsequently co-authoring an institutional Web 2.0 good practice guide.

DSC_3833 by Guy Berresford Photography (aka Berrega)

Hamilton: Web 2.0 changes the relationship between the university, its academics and its users #iwmw11 #p6
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

Experiences of Embedding Web 2.0

Martin began his presentation with a walk through of his own experiences of embedding Web 2.0 technologies in various contexts at Loughborough University, including his own work with Google Apps and work using Facebook to create a community around a new course. He also discussed the various policy development issues he has encountered within the institution as a result of this work, and the supporting evidence they have been collecting to inform policy decisions.

Hamilton: Loughborough has been playing with a wired, hired and fired traffic light system to judge what tools to look at #iwmw11 #p6
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Hamilton: Their institutional web 2.0 guidelines are available as a shared Google doc to crowdsource ideas #iwmw11 #p6
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Hamilton: Aiming to build up a portfolio of practical case studies to help pass on lessons about using these tools #iwmw11 #p6
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Hamilton: Demonstrating the my.Lboro student portal – which helps to slip messages in that we might not otherwise get to promote #iwmw11 #p6
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

Tools

Martin went on to discuss web 2.0 tools in the context of institutional use and investment. He advocated that web managers should know about and have opinions about these tools, so they can play a role in guiding institutional use and policy making.

Hamilton: There is a tendency to assume that all web 2.0 things will be free. Ning’s £20 per year fee was seen as too high! #iwmw11 #p6
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Hamilton: It’s easy to forget the people we’re talking to don’t necessarily know about online tools we use i.e. Google Forms #iwmw11 #p6
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Hamilton: Nod to @psychemedia & his work with Google spreadsheets -should web managers be expected to know how to do this stuff? #iwmw11 #p6
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

Beware of Speed

Martin concluded with a warning designed to keep us on our toes and make us consider the speed at which Web 2.0 tools evolve:

Hamilton: Internet years are very strange things. #iwmw11 #p6
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

Reactions

The web managers in the audience shared the following range opinions and perspectives about Martin’s talk…

Nice to have a insight into Loughborough’s student portal. #iwmw11 #p6
sharonsteeples
July 27, 2011
Haven’t noticed digital literacy increasing as tools get easier – but easier for ppl to do things badly. :-( #iwmw11 #p6
j4
July 27, 2011
We need to have an opinion about Google + as people will ask US about it. #iwmw11 #P6
PlanetClaire
July 27, 2011
#iwmw11 #p6 key takeaway from Martin Hamilton’s talk – have a play with Google+
psm0726
July 27, 2011
Web 2.0 policy? Sigh. Do we also have a paper policy, whiteboard policy, biro policy…? #iwmw11 #p6
j4
July 27, 2011
Embedding 3rd Party services we need to consider reputation, message and dependability #iwmw11 #p6
Ruth_Q
July 27, 2011

Further Information

Martin’s slides are available in HTML5 from the IWMW webpage about his talk. Martin has also described his thinking on this topic in more detail in his recent blog post, which also describes his take aways from the event.

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Plenary 5: UK University Website Visibility http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/08/03/plenary-5-uk-university-website-visibility/ http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/08/03/plenary-5-uk-university-website-visibility/#comments Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:03:54 +0000 kirsty-pitkin http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/?p=644 Continue reading ]]> Following on the theme of search, Professor Melius Weideman from Cape Peninsula University presented his findings following a study of UK HEI websites from the perspective of a search engine crawler.

Weideman: Usability and visibility are the two motivating factors when judging the success of a website design #iwmw11 #p5
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

Methodology

To begin, Weideman described the methodology for his study, including some of the assumptions and omissions he made, and the evidence which informed the focus of his study, such as established user behaviours.

Weideman: I couldn’t find out how many universities the UK has! Studied a sample of 38, assuming total population is circa 150 #iwmw11 #p5
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Weideman: Most users seem to prefer natural search engine results, rather than paid results, which are seen as ads #iwmw11 #p5
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Weideman: 2/3rd of users will click on the first two positions on the search results #iwmw11 #p5
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Weideman: There was no method within the available tools to analyse anchor text links, so this was omitted #iwmw11 #p5
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

Tips

In outlining the criteria he used to assess his sample group of websites, Weideman described best practices for optimising websites for search engines, which provided the audience with the following practical tips to help improve their sites…

Tips for description metatags:

Weideman: Reminding us of the importance of the description metatag. You need a copywriting expert to do this well #iwmw11 #p5
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Weideman: A good description metatag will be multiple sentence, keyword rich, well written, and strong uni related #iwmw11 #p5
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

Tips for title tags:

Weideman: Title tags are important: they appear top left on most browsers. The top left is the most read part of the screen #iwmw11 #p5
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Weideman: How many people search for the word “home page” to find your university? Don’t use non-sensical words at the start! #iwmw11 #p5
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Weideman: The title tag is prime real estate, so don’t waste characters #iwmw11 #p5
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Weideman: A good title tag starts with the full uni name, plus other important key words about the content #iwmw11 #p5
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

Tips for header tags:

Weideman: Best practice for header tags: one H1 per page, very descriptive, followed by some H2 and H3 #iwmw11 #p5
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

The Results

Weideman highlighted the universities that came out on top in his analysis of specific criteria, and those which ranked highest overall for visibility across all criteria.

Weideman: University of Warwick came top of the rankings for inlinks #iwmw11 #p5
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Weideman: University of Birmingham came top of the results for the quality of their description metatags #iwmw11 #p5
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011
Weideman: University of Liverpool and came top overall for their website visibility, followed by University of Cambridge #iwmw11 #p5
iwmwlive
July 27, 2011

Reactions

Melius’ presentation was very popular given it’s practical, evidence-based tips that informed immediate changes to improve the search visibility of institutional websites.

Here are just some of the things the audience had to say about the talk…

loving th eback to basics metatag analysis of Weiderman – a reminder to keep the key crawlable texts complete and well selected #p5 #iwmw11
suchprettyeyes
July 27, 2011
Good stuff about microcopy and #contentstrategy RT @iwmwliveWeideman: You need a copywriting expert to do this well #iwmw11 #p5
annindk
July 27, 2011
We put page specific info before org name to get more relevant words first – also helps with #a11y says Shaw Trust #iwmw11 #p5
KateLLin
July 27, 2011
Are we optimising our website with the words that people are looking for? #iwmw11 #P5
PlanetClaire
July 27, 2011
Looks like @SalfordUni has a lot of work to do to topple top 10 uni search engine rankings. Drat. #iwmw11 #p5
mancypino
July 27, 2011
#iwmw11 #p5 Excellent talk. Good reminder to go back to the basics for Search Engine Optimisation.
sharonsteeples
July 27, 2011

Further Information

For full details of his research and the top 10 rankings against each of his criteria, Melius’ slides are available in PDF format at the IWMW webpage for his talk.

You can view Melius’ presentation in full on Vimeo.

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Plenary 4: Search Engines in the fight against Institutional Impecuniousness http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/08/02/plenary-4-search-engines-in-the-fight-against-institutional-impecuniousness/ http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/08/02/plenary-4-search-engines-in-the-fight-against-institutional-impecuniousness/#comments Tue, 02 Aug 2011 14:18:12 +0000 kirsty-pitkin http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/?p=636 Continue reading ]]> In his plenary presentation, David Hawking, Chief Scientist at Funnelback, discussed the importance of search for HE websites and how to improve the search experience for visitors.

View this presentation on Slideshare.

Hawking: HEI are businesses. Everyone who runs a business needs to maintain and increase revenue, & increase productivity #iwmw11 #p4
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

Hawking began his presentation by describing some of the ways a poor search interface can cause frustration, loss of productivity and event loss of revenue for businesses and institutions.

To illustrate how this can be avoided, he demonstrated some of the tools Funnelback have created to improve the search experience, including query completion, structured completions and regional adaptation…

Hawking: Demonstrating the importance of query completion and how structured completions can help guide visitors #iwmw11 #p4
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Hawking: Structured completions do not require the suggestions to start with the same letter #iwmw11 #p4
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Hawking: There is an opportunity in running a search interface to help adapt your results to the visitor’s region #iwmw11 #p4
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

Hawking went on to outline why search is important to specifically to universities, given the typical nature of their web presence…

Hawking: Search can help in image & marketing. Websites are vital to university marketing. Search is essential to web experience #iwmw11 #p4
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Hawking: Search helps to integrate a disparate presence. Its not always preferable for research outputs to be in corporate style #iwmw11 #p4
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Hawking: Search can help improve staff efficiency by helping them to locate policies, procedures and contacts more effectively #iwmw11 #p4
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Picture 041

David Hawking presenting at IWMW11

Hawking introduced us to the term “searchmaster” and advocated that any institutions that is serious about maximising the value of its web presence and improving user experience should have someone specifically responsible for their search interface.

Hawking: Every organisation has a webmaster. Do you have a search master? #iwmw11 #p4
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Hawking: You need to monitor how well the search is working on your site and tune it #iwmw11 #p4
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

He suggested strategies and tools for searchmasters, including the new “Emmottiser” and “Accessoriser” tools.

Hawking: Tools for a search master: autocompletion, did you mean, query blending and ” best bets” linking to external services #iwmw11 #p4
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Hawking: Test popular searches and business critical searches to find optimal settings #iwmw11 #p4
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Hawking: Search effectiveness is a two-way street. Search and Publishing are in a symbiotic relationship #iwmw11 #p4
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Hawking: Demonstrating the “Emmottiser” to explain why a certain page appeared at a certain ranking and help improve content #iwmw11 #p4
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Hawking: Demonstrating the “accessoriser” to automatically check a page for compliance with accessibility standards #iwmw11 #p4
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

Hawking concluded by emphasising the importance of search for HE institutions:

Hawking: Effective search can help make a HE institutions more attractive, successful and productive #iwmw11 #p4
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

Picture 040

Reactions

Hawking’s presentation elicited the following reaction from the audience….

Targetted search e.g presenting different results dependent on visitor profile sounds interesting #iwmw11 #p4
alison_smyth
July 26, 2011
I have also spent time with Prof of Inconsequential Studies explaining why their site doesn’t score for terms they don’t use. #iwmw11 #p4
mikeywil
July 26, 2011
Need a search engine with integrated PayPal button allowing departments to pay me for listings. #iwmw11 #P4
MikeNolan
July 26, 2011
Good idea – appoint a Searchmaster for the institution – #iwmw11 #p4
mecb
July 26, 2011
People don’t use ‘wrong’ search terms, invariably uni websites use jargon and unhelpful language #iwmw11 #p4
millyshaw
July 26, 2011
You can view Hawking’s presentation in full on Vimeo

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My #iwmw11 Takeaway http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/08/01/my-iwmw11-takeaway/ http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/08/01/my-iwmw11-takeaway/#comments Mon, 01 Aug 2011 21:53:32 +0000 Martin Hamilton http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/?p=309 Continue reading ]]>

I thought it would be interesting and fun to make my plenary session at IWMW11 a bit more interactive than simply me standing up and waffling in front of a bunch of slides. Here’s a few words about what I did and how I did it, plus some feedback from the interactive parts of the talk, and a few observations about this year’s IWMW event.

What’s with those slides?

In the interest of open standards and interoperability I’ll also just take the opportunity to note that my slides are an HTML5 document. This works very nicely in Chrome, Safari and Firefox but has problems with Internet Explorer. In fact, on the lectern PC at IWMW (running IE7) it rendered as a blank screen… I would have expected IE9 to work OK, and this leads me to suspect that my HTML is a bit, well, suspect.

I’ve found that my presentation style has increasingly been shifting from tools like PowerPoint (and Prezi) to showcasing web material. The upshot of this has been that a typical presentation from me has often consisted of me running through a series of browser tabs to illustrate some general point or demonstrate some new facility. Like many of you reading this I came across the html5rocks.com site, and thought “hey, this could be quite a nice way of adding a bit of structure”. It also has the added attraction of packaging up my collection of hyperlinks into a vaguely coherent whole.

If the idea of writing your presentation in HTML makes you think back to the likes of LaTeX (or even SliTeX), then don’t despair – it’s not that hard. For example, here is some HTML:

And here is the end result:

I have to apologise in advance for my choice of styles etc – deep down inside I’m a Web 1.0 kind of guy. It’s actually over 18 years since I put up my first web server, which is in some ways quite an alarming thought.

Interaction via Twitter

When you are speaking in front of a group of 168 people as at IWMW, it’s difficult to have a dialogue. This is something I do occasionally when speaking at conferences and workshops, and I have a great deal of sympathy for University lecturers trying to work with groups of as many as 250 students on a routine basis.

Like many people, at Loughborough we have been experimenting with technology like the excellent voting handsets from Turning Point. Whilst the voting handsets are pretty neat, I suspect that the most tractable approach to engaging with large groups is through the technology that everyone already carries around with them, smartphones in particular.

In the IWMW context it was clear that the vast majority of delegates were using Twitter already. Delegates typically had one or two Internet capable devices on their persons – in some cases significantly more! So, I thought it would be interesting to experiment with a polling approach with results embedded live on my slides, and using Twitter to share the URL of the poll site. Several such services exist, and TwtPoll seemed particularly well suited for my purposes.

To ensure that there would be something for people to see when I initially ran through my slides (and to avoid the embarrassment of a poll with no responses) I publicised the polls before the day of the talk. As Twitter aficionados will know, a carefully chosen hash tag can be helpful to stimulate a dialgue both before and after an event, and this was invaluable for the “amplified” event I organized earlier this year, the Google Apps for Education UK User Group (guug11).

So here’s the result of my first TwtPoll. This asked people whether their organization had a Web 2.0 policy:

In the IWMW context it was particularly interesting to me that some attendees didn’t know the answer to this question, and some were “rigorously enforcing” theirs. I followed this up, only to discover that rigorous enforcement in practice meant sitting down for a cup of tea with the person who had transgressed – not quite the Spanish Inquisition that I had pictured.

Should I be disappointed that only 28 out of 168 delegates (17%) bothered to vote? I don’t think so – that’s a whole lot more engagement than we would have had otherwise, and the nuanced results would be difficult to gauge from a simple show of hands. More importantly, it also stimulated some discussion and broke up what might otherwise have been a much duller presentation!

I also asked people who curated their institutional presence on Twitter, Facebook etc – and in particular what would happen if someone replied to an institutional Tweet. Here are the results from that poll:

Again I was particularly interested in the outlying cases, although it was notable that all the respondents indicated that they had some form of institutional presence on Twitter. In the current climate of “downsizing” and in some cases redundancies, I wondered how many institutions had a single person in the invidious position of having to handle any queries that might come in from parents, prospective students, and so on. It’s easy to see how this could cause problems (holidays, sick leave etc), and that “me” could quickly turn into “nobody”.

Leading by Example

In my IWMW talk I presented some examples of areas where we have working to gather examples of good/best practice of Web 2.0 at Loughborough. This will include a range of services, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. My aim is that this work will also take in institutional use, use by departments and research groups, and personal use – e.g. by academics to promote their research and teaching activities.

We are hoping to capture both examples of tricks and techniques that have worked for people, and the lessons that they have learned from the experience. I expect that there will be a mixture of positive and negative feedback. Here are a few indicative examples, some more prosaic than others:

  • Don’t make “friends” with all your students on Facebook!
  • Remember that Twitter replies are public!
  • Decide whether you are using the service in a personal capacity (e.g. my blog at martinh.net) or an institutional capacity – very relevant now that we have institutional Live@edu and Google Apps accounts
  • Know where you stand regarding Intellectual Property rights to any material that you would like to share openly on the Internet
  • Be sure to check the provenance of any Internet sourced material that you would like to use in your teaching – e.g. Creative Commons licensed content and Open Educational Resources from JorumOpen and Xpert are of particular interest here
  • Budget for “freemium” type services, and anticipate future expenditure – e.g. Ning subscription model
  • Have an exit strategy in the event that the site or service you plan to use ceases to trade, e.g. downloading SCORM objects from myUdutu

As we trial Google Apps for staff at Loughborough, the distinction between personal use of the service and an institutionally supported version of the service is very interesting to me. Picking up the earlier example, our staff users are now able to use all 60-odd “consumer” Google services including Blogger and Picasa with their institutional identities. This is exceedingly convenient, however an individual (say) blogging in a personal capacity might well prefer to use a service that wasn’t too closely tied to any one institution.

This is a topic that I’ll return to as we gather feedback from staff on their use of Google Apps – check out the Google Apps section of my blog, or come to my talk at ALT-C 2011 to hear more.

my.Lboro

I’m also pleased that our student portal site, my.Lboro, has been well received by students, with some 600 users since we soft launched earlier this Summer. my.Lboro aims to pull together a range of information relevant to students in their everyday existence at Loughborough that was previously hard to find or even inaccessible online.

We are starting from something of a “green field” because Loughborough’s previous portal work has been quite limited in scale and quite domain focused. As a byproduct, we have been able to take advantage of the best of Web 2.0 technologies. Here’s what the my.Lboro site looks like, for anyone who’s interested (click to enlarge):

A lot of what we are doing with this site is actually driven by RSS – as we progress in our implementation of the Terminal Four Site Manager CMS, each of the University’s departments, research groups, support services etc has the opportunity to curate its own RSS feeds. A few of the existing feeds (including general student notices, Students Union News and Events, Library and IT Services news) are gathered together on the my.Lboro site to form a default set of newsfeeds for students:

I expect that over time we will end up with a range of widgets that display individual RSS feeds in slightly different ways, so that there is some opportunity for differentiation. Here is an early example of another RSS powered widget that we have developed to highlight Professional Development training courses. This one will be particularly relevant as we come to trial my.Lboro with staff later this year:

We have also developed widgets using the APIs provided by third party services including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Google – you may have noticed the Google Docs widget on the full size screen dump above. Here’s a sample of the sort of output you will see via our Twitter widget:

If this interests you, keep an eye on my blog for further updates on my.Lboro.

“The Takeaway”

So far, so good – but what did I personally take away from IWMW11?

I have a particular interest in digital literacy (and would note in passing that JISC are starting up a major new activity in this area), and I find it interesting to consider the extent to which technologies that technologists take for granted have permeated into institutional culture. As I said at the start of my talk, my intuition is that most institutions are still feeling their way with “Web 2.0″, and that this is par for the course for any technology that is only a few years old.

I’m also fascinated to see the extent to which the neophiles and early adopters amongst us take up a new technology. In my talk I quote Bill Gross, one of the Twitterati, noting that in a month he has acquired as many Google+ followers as he did in four years on Twitter. Are these people all early adopters? Would they have jumped onto any new bandwagon?

In the context I asked IWMW delegates about their use of Google+, with the results shown below. As Sid quickly spotted, this emphasis also helped to make my talk seem bang up to date! This poll had the best response rate, with 38 votes out of 168 (23%), and people clearly valued the ability to share in a granular way. Interestingly, when I repeated this poll on Google+ there was a tie between question E (apprecation of sharing granularity) and F (“but I mostly post public stuff anyway”), so we may be deceiving ourselves to an extent.

Where Google+ is concerned, neophytes might not have been aware that “Circles” are for personal use only – i.e. you can’t create an “IWMW” Circle which other people are then able to use. I hope that Google’s new found emphasis on social features means that they are able to provide enough glue to link Google Groups with Google+ as a sharing destination. We’ll see what happens about that…

Alarmingly, my prediction that Google+ Hangouts would turn into ChatRoulette has already been validated by PlusRoulette.

Outside of my own immediate interests I was very taken by Brian Kelly’s demonstration of Bambuser as a way of very cheaply amplifying an event by live streaming using ordinary consumer grade mobile phone technology. See below for a demo produced using Brian’s Android phone, which we passed around the room as he talked. I particularly liked the way that the Bambuser video was live streamed, but also available to view after the event. Very nice!

At Loughborough we have a full strength lecture capture system (“ReVIEW”, based on Echo360), and have also been active participants in the Steeple community, which is working with the Opencast Matterhorn project to develop an open source lecture capture system. I’ve often thought that it would be interesting to complement this by encouraging students to record their own take on lectures, and Bambuser makes this sort of thing laughably simple. Caveat emptor, though, and do be sure to check out the sound quality on this recording…

If I had to pick one other highlight from a very exciting and diverse programme, it would be the contributions from Chris Gutteridge and Dave Challis on open data. This is of particular interest to me because of our JISC Kit-Catalogue project, which is developing a system that institutions can use to catalogue and provide an open data feed of their equipment and facilities.

Kit-Catalogue is part of the JISC Greening ICT initiative, although something of an unusual project – the more typical activities are around data centre power and cooling, power management in PC labs, and suchlike. There has been quite a bit of interest both nationally and internationally in Kit-Catalogue, and from some of our strategic partners – who we already share facilities and equipment with. It will be very exciting to see the new possibilities that emerge as a byproduct of this awareness raising, and whether we are able to save money by sharing facilities on (say) a local or regional basis.

I have to leave the last word to Chris, though, and his excellent exposition on finding cookies at the University of Southampton via the Grinder software – and note that I’m not talking about the EU Directive on Cookies here!

PS You’ll need to skip 35 minutes into the video

 

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Plenary 3: Using activity data to support your users http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/07/29/plenary-3-using-activity-data-to-support-your-users/ http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/07/29/plenary-3-using-activity-data-to-support-your-users/#comments Fri, 29 Jul 2011 13:26:58 +0000 kirsty-pitkin http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/?p=569 Continue reading ]]> Picture 034

 

Tom Franklin from the University of Manchester and Franklin Consulting discussed some of the issues that need to be addressed if you want to use activity data to inform your work.

 

Tom began by discussing the uses of activity data, some of which are good, and some of which are bad…

 

Franklin: Credit card companies use activity data to detect fraud, so it’s not all bad #iwmw11 #p3
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

 

He went on to discuss the practical ways in which universities could make use of activity data relating to their sites…

 

Franklin: Discussing how activity data can help with student recruitment. What are prospective students doing on your site? #iwmw11 #p3
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Franklin: We can use activity data to enhance student retention and improve success by looking how successful students behave #iwmw11 #p3
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Franklin: Spotting patterns in student activity helps to provide feedback and encourage those to undertake activities to improve #iwmw11 #p3
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Franklin: Activity data can be used to create an Amazon-style recommendation system to increase discovery of research papers #iwmw11 #p3
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

 

To put this into context, he cited work by the University of Huddersfield to map library borrowing activity to final degree grade…

 

Franklin: University of Huddersfield show correlation between the number of books borrowed from the library and degree grade #iwmw11 #p3
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Franklin: Students want to know how to move from one grade to another, so analysis of this activity data could really help them #iwmw11 #p3
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

Picture 036

 

He also discussed the issues associated with collecting this data, which generated considerable debate on the Twitter backchannel…

 

Franklin: Some of the things that get in the way include getting consent, data sharing, anonymisation & collection purposes #iwmw11 #p3
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
“@the_web_guru: Privacy concerns with collecting /using activity data? #iwmw11 #p3″ <<< was just thinking this!
MikeNolan
July 26, 2011
Data analysis good, however… you need permission to collect, mechanisms to collect, storage and retrieval #iwmw11 #p3
mecb
July 26, 2011

View this video on YouTube.
Contentious stuff around data mining in #iwmw11 #p3. Valid concerns raised from audience. To what extent should education mimic commercial?
lisapr1ce
July 26, 2011

 

Tom concluded by emphasising the positive reasons to collect activity data…

 

Franklin: Costs of collecting the data are low, & there are some real benefits, so determine those benefits & argue for funding #iwmw11 #p3
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

Reactions

Besides the concerns about privacy and changes to the law regarding cookies, here are some of the responses the audience had to Tom Franklin’s presentation…

 

Big theme of data today. Very much an issue for us and one that a lot of institutions are, no doubt, currently grappling with. #iwmw11 #P3
PlanetClaire
July 26, 2011
#iwmw11 In Catalonia we have some (nonpublic) data on consulting Ph.D. Theses and repository. #iwmw11 #p3 Sometimes analysis provided
q5x
July 26, 2011
Library usage correlates to student success/retention? Hmmm…too simplistic? #iwmw11 #p3
mancypino
July 26, 2011
Wow – Huddersfield Uni book borrowing mapped against degree result. Frightening! #iwmw11 #p3
mecb
July 26, 2011

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Plenary 2: Marketing and Other Dirty Words http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/07/26/plenary-2-marketing-and-other-dirty-words/ http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/07/26/plenary-2-marketing-and-other-dirty-words/#comments Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:22:42 +0000 kirsty-pitkin http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/?p=504 Continue reading ]]> Amber Thomas from JISC discussed how institutional repositories, open educational resources, podcasts, digitised library resources, and academic blogs can be used to maximise impact, aid in marketing and recruitment, and increase engagement with the world outside the university.

View Amber’s slides on Slideshare.

Amber blogged before her talk to outline some of the ideas she would be exploring. Here’s a snippet of that post, which has attracted some interesting comments so far…

Marketing and other dirty words : Information Environment Team

I have been thinking a lot recently about how to move beyond the rhetoric of “open equals good” towards identifying where open approaches help us meet key business cases. A notable quote from the Power of Open book launch was that “open isn’t a business model, its a part of a business model”. [Read More]

 

Amber provided a context to her presentation by describing the values of the sector, comparing these to the often despised values of markets, highlighting the openness agenda on one side and the “dirty words” associated with measurement and monetization on the other….

 

Thomas: How relevant are open access, open educational resources, open practice, open data and open innovation to your day jobs? #iwmw11 #p2
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Thomas: A lot of people pursuing open ways of working – we need to connect those activities to the university web services #iwmw11 #p2
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Thomas: We need some kind of bridging between the language of value and the language of the markets (the dirty words) #iwmw11 #p2
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

Picture 026

Amber went on to discuss the role that web teams could play in bridging this gap…

Thomas: Departments will start becoming more demanding of web teams to help them collect information for the REF #iwmw11 #p2
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Thomas: It’s not just about getting people registered, it’s about avoiding drop outs so it will be important to target marketing #iwmw11 #p2
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Thomas: How many universities have a blogroll of blogging academics? Or links to their Slideshare accounts etc? #iwmw11 #p2
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Thomas: There is an appetite to enhance research publications and help academics to make a big splash #iwmw11 #p2
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Thomas: We can link the world of values & the world of the market by making the most of the web through linking, APIs, feeds etc #iwmw11 #p2
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011
Thomas: We need to support the institution around the key things that it needs to do. Become the teddy bear in the suit #iwmw11 #p2
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

Picture 024

Reactions

Here are some of the comments that Amber elicited from the audience via Twitter…

#iwmw11 #p2 Lots of things covered there, harder to take onboard all the detail
ash_28
July 26, 2011
Should really work with the Library team to harness the data they have to support work of the web team (& vice versa). #p2 #iwmw11
mancypino
July 26, 2011
I really like the idea of enhanced research publications by @ambrouk #iwmw11 #p2 Academics should embrace this!
q5x
July 26, 2011
I want to be a fuzzy kitten in a suit, not a teddy bear ;) #iwmw11 #p2
sharonsteeples
July 26, 2011

Further responses to this presentation, including video footage and a session summary will be available shortly.

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Plenary 1: OK, we know what you do, so how much is it worth? http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/07/26/plenary-1-ok-we-know-what-you-do-so-how-much-is-it-worth/ http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/07/26/plenary-1-ok-we-know-what-you-do-so-how-much-is-it-worth/#comments Tue, 26 Jul 2011 15:31:32 +0000 kirsty-pitkin http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/?p=482 Continue reading ]]> Ranjit Sidhu from SiD presented some of the combined data and analysis that he has been doing with universities, which include sector values in pounds…

Ranjit began by making the case for collecting and presenting data, and the power that presenting this data well can have for the institution and the sector as a whole.

Here are some of the key comments he made…

Sidhu: It is important to put a value on what we do in the current environment #iwmw11 #p1
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

Sidhu: “What if the data shows us in a bad light?” Answer: the data is out there, so if you don’t do it, someone else will #iwmw11 #p1
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

Sidhu: We should be ahead of the curve. Get the information out there so you’re not a sitting target #iwmw11 #p1
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

 

He went on to discuss the ways in which you communicate your data…

 

Sidhu: If you are automatically emailing reports to people, you are spamming them. You are creating a negative feel #iwmw11 #p1
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

Sidhu: We have so much information coming in that we want to automate, but if it’s not processed, it’s just garbage #iwmw11 #p1
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

Sidhu: For online information to be meaningful, it needs to be combines with offline information, for which we need new models #iwmw11 #p1
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

Sidhu: The problems with online data: the language, it’s automated, it’s dislocated from business and it’s badly designed #iwmw11 #p1
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

He moved on to discuss some of the ways you can present information more usefully, including a demonstration of the types of dashboards he has been creating for universities…

 

Sidhu: Provide the information people actually want & make sure you don’t try to do too much in 1 summary. Ask what’s relevant? #iwmw11 #p1
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

Sidhu: It is important to project additional revenue using the data you have to justify your value #iwmw11 #p1
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

Sidhu: It’s important to calculate the potential worth of a website visit from a country & compare to offline recruitment cost #iwmw11 #p1
iwmwlive
July 26, 2011

Reactions

The talk really fired up the audience, and there were lots of tweets commenting, critiquing and praising Ranjit’s remarks.  Here are just a few of them…

#iwmw11 #p1 key takeaway from Sid’s talk: not stats but interpretation of stats; keep ahead of the curb, playing catchup dangerous.
psm0726
July 26, 2011

#iwmw11 #p1 Excellent starting session to get people thinking!
ash_28
July 26, 2011

Lovely infographic interpretation of uni of Strathclyde’s international student web stats #iwmw11 #p1
sharonsteeples
July 26, 2011

Looking at statistics defines what kind of university you are. @rssidhu #iwmw11 #p1
q5x
July 26, 2011

Pretty impressed by the web stats panel @rssidhu is demonstrating at#iwmw11 #p1. So… how do you make one of these things? Anyone? Anyone?
kammer
July 26, 2011

I question the useful offline equivalent costs since online is main channel for many unis #iwmw11 #p1
suchprettyeyes
July 26, 2011

Excellent opening talk #iwmw11 #p1. Thanks Sid :)
sharonsteeples
July 26, 2011

Further responses to this presentation, including video footage and a session summary will be available shortly.

 

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