Zero to Hero: Engaging Academics and Enhancing the student experience with

readinglists@LeicesterJoanne Dunham

Head of Collections & Information Systems

The Leicester Experience

From Zero….Where we started from

Implementing readinglists@Leicester

Case Study: Department of Geography

…. To Hero and beyond

Work in progress

From Zero …..

• No longer saw Reading Lists unless new course, module, lecturer

• Module Requirement Forms• Word Documents, Web pages, printed lists• No consistency on VLE (Blackboard)

Talis Aspire Reading Lists

• Why Talis Aspire?• Implementation

Kick OffMarch 2012

Rollout to academicsNov 2012

First Lists being Used

Semester 2 Feb 2013

Training, marketing & promotion more lists

Review process, Rollover

Academic Session 2013/14

Blackboard Integration

• Blackboard Integration– Upgrade – Guidelines & template– Training

Champions

• Champions– Seed Lists– Training– Targets

Case Study: GeographyGeography (Human Geography)Then – initial discussion with Liaison Librarian• Using Word documents to construct reading lists, putting links but not with prefixes to enable off-site

access, indicating where items are available via Leicester eLink (journals A-Z) or as eBooks• Uses a mixture of books, articles, Blackboard scans (digitised chapters/articles) and weblinks on reading

lists• Creating a reading list per lecture currently• Struggles to keep reading lists up-to-date: has ordered items, but not always recently• Feedback from students suggests that they have trouble locating the range of sources recommended• Feels that it’s more important for students to quickly access and read reading list items than to spend time

finding them• Feels finding materials is part of the dissertation process, rather than day-to-day modules• Noticed students have been asking for reading lists earlier and earlier (e.g. in December last year for

February module) and feels greater access would be a benefit• Interested in open access, so comfortable with lists being openly available• Liked the layout of demonstration reading lists, particularly interested in seeing the back end of the system

(sending video as follow up)• Only major concern was amount of time creating and maintaining lists would require

Case Study: Geography

http://readinglists.le.ac.uk/lists/37C7D3FD-7612-D210-2494-260C1947CAA9.html

Case StudyNOW – having created reading list for Semester 2 2012/13“As it happens we had a long debate in the Human Geography research group meeting last week about whether we would wholly embrace the system or not. There were some concerns about it, but after we had discussed it at length we have agreed to all adopt it.”

So I would say: 'We have been trialling the Readinglists@Leicester for a year now and have recently decided that all human geography teaching will use them. There were concerns as to whether we might be 'dumbing down' students by giving them 'too easy' click-through reading lists, and that that would discourage them from developing their own research skills. Some staff were also worried about the time it takes to initially establish the list. However, the feedback from students is that they love the lists for easy access to readings. We have also found that there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of emails from students struggling to find readings, we can monitor what they are reading, the library knows what is in demand, and staff are confident that students have no excuses. It is considerably easier than Blackboard. From what we can tell in their assessments students appear to be reading more. In terms of workload the lists have been relatively easy to set up (lots of is it automated via Amazon etc.), and are easy to edit (easier than finding dated word documents to update). We will be using them on all our courses for next year.'

……To Hero• Departmental Uptake – some examples

– Geology– Physics– Interdisciplinary Sciences

• Journal clubs• Supporting supervision

– History of Art– Criminology– Education

• Students Union Education Officer• Careers Service• Pre-Sessional Information

Statistics

October 2012• Visits: 687• Unique Visitors: 417• Page Views: 6,047

1st – 17th October 2013• Visits: 7,176• Unique visitors: 3,493• Page Views: 35,362

Trained 261 academic staff

Growth in Reading lists31 July 2013: 14530 August 2013: 17616 September 2013: 21124 October 2013: 310

Statistics 1/8/13 to 17/10/13

21% of visits over 10 minutes; 7.7% of visits over 30 minutes

Statistics: Mon 14th October 2013

New Processes

• New Processes– Reviews and Acquisitions Workflow• Purchasing formula• Oasis EDI

– Link Checking and Metadata

Reviews & Acquisitions

Reading List Sent for ReviewList

Reviewed Decision to purchaseView in Oasis

ORDERED

LMS‘quote’

Ordered via EDIReceived

& Invoiced

Linked to Library catalogueReading List

Purchasing Formula

Fund, loan status added

Shelf readyEbooks added; link report run

Digitised content

Non Oasis orders

The Future

• TADC• Devolved Constraints• New Blackboard Building Block• Hit our target!