Core area 1: Operational issues

By late 2015/early 2016 our main authoring tool was Wimba: a Word plugin that turned specially formatted Word documents into SCORM packages compatible with our VLE (Virtual Learning Environment). It was easy to install and relatively straightforward to use - ideal for time-poor academics, or producing small pieces of low-complexity material.

(CP2) Wimba had reached its End of Life in 2014, our licenses were lapsing, and its output was very old fashioned in style - reminiscent of the very early 00s. I decided these factors meant it would be too limited to help us realise our ambition to turn our predominantly PowerPoint-based material into elearning content on the scale we required.

I needed an authoring tool that:

was within its life and support cycle.
could produce modern, responsive material.
could be quickly taught to my team, who had their own responsibilities outside of elearning creation.

Captivate 9 (early 2016 - early 2019)

(CP2) I investigated a range of modern (at the time) products available - some were standalone software, some were subscription packages. I had a list of requirements in mind, effectively 'I need the opposite of Wimba', such as:

It can create complex material, potentially incorporating decision points or branching scenarios.
It needs to be within its life cycle so we can engage with customer support and receive updates.
I wanted a standalone software; not a plug-in dependent on, or vulnerable to, another program to stay operational.

I decided on Captivate 9 for a few reasons:

It had a modern (compared to Wimba) user interface, hopefully affording flexibility in the design of elearning material.
It was very similar in appearance to PowerPoint - providing my colleagues a shallower learning curve, making it easier to engage and train them.
You could create 'demo' videos and 'practice' click - through exercises at the same time, increasing our teaching materials' sophistication.
Captivate let you create material sized for a computer screen and smaller screens such as portable devices and smartphones - increasingly important for reaching students more effectively.

Reflections

Captivate turned out to be almost too complex for our needs - you can see how my Guidance document expanded to 35 pages in section 1C.

I realised I would need a much simpler authoring tool. As the sole elearning creator I don't need a program of Captivate's complexity, I need to be able to draft, create, and then publish material as quickly as possible, making as few decisions around the visual complexity as possible.

We eventually deprioritised the 'click through' exercises to focus on producing the demo videos - we ended up abandoning a major reason I had chosen Captivate in the first place.

Resourcing issues meant that creating two types of elearning became an unattainable ambition, so this capability was no longer required in an elearning tool.

The process of producing material to suit different devices was convoluted and involved much more time and effort that I had anticipated, meaning we didn't utilise this capability of Captivate's.

I realised I would need a tool that was automatically responsive, saving me time I could focus on writing and publishing material.

Thirst.io (early 2019 to present)

(CP2) I encountered Thirst.io at a Learning Technologies conference in the first part of 2019. I had attended with the idea of looking for interesting new technologies, a new elearning authoring tool among them.

I chose Thirst.io as it satisfied many of the requirements identified above, and seemed to help deal with my frustrations in using Captivate:

It's a simple, easy to use, and clean interface where you drag and drop elements onto an expandable blank screen, meaning I can create a large amount of visually high-quality material very quickly.
It looks modern, and is a step away from the Powerpoint-like slide system we had been using.
It creates automatically responsive material.
It was easy to create graphically distinct themes without needing to spend large amounts of time understanding consequences of each formatting option.
It's browser based; no local installation or file storage needed, meaning I can work on the elearning across different computers.

Reflections

Thirst has met my requirements handily, enabling me to redevelop the KLaSS (King's Learning and Skills Service) elearning suite in the Summer of 2020, but it's not without drawbacks:

It's still within the development cycle, and doesn't have an easily accessible development roadmap.
Thirst does not currently support Alt text for images - a screen reader would simply ignore them. This has a significant impact on the elearning's design, especially where we use images to impart meaning.

The Alt Text issue has been resolved by the developer stating that every image is treated as decorative - there is no alt text to add. Given how much of our teaching is focused on academic database interfaces (as much as we wish it weren't), images are a key part of our teaching. I have developed workarounds such as allowing image captions to be downloaded as a separate, properly formatted Word document.

I think that, when I asked at the Learning Technologies '19 trade show, if Thirst.io was Accessible I could have delved more deeply when they simply said "yes". I'll know in future to ask for demonstrations of how a tool meets accessibility requirements before I advocate purchasing a subscription.

As of Spring/Summer 2022 we will start to adopt the King's Online design system as the next step in our elearning journey for a few reasons:

It's developed in-house, so no subscription required
Support is also available in-house from the King's Online team
It's designed especially for use in KEATS and uses King's fonts and style system
It uses HTML5 to embed objects into a page - vastly reduced reliance on [revision] clunky [/revision] SCORM files
The content produced will be accessible and responsive.

[Revision] Lessons learned when adopting new learning technologies

Appraising and adopting new technologies or tools is a process of balancing many factors, like:

the cost: e.g. what are the short and medium term implications of this cost, is it up front, or a subscription? How long do we think we'll use this software/tool, and is the price therefore justified over that time period? How many 'seats' or logins does this give us, and is requesting more licenses an option? How important is this software to us/our overall toolbox, and can/should this justify the cost?
the tool/software's sophistication: e.g. is it accessed through a browser/local install? Will the user need a powerful desktop PC (more powerful/less portable) or will it work with their work-issued laptop (less powerful/more portability)? How would this impact on our ability to use the tool while teaching on-campus, or online?
ease of use: e.g. do I need lots of training/support to use this tool, and will colleagues need training/support? Sometimes this is justifiable, but it depends on what we're trying to achieve.
output format: e.g. does the tool produce files usable with Office365 programs, or that can be embedded into a Moodle course? Or is it some kind of proprietary format?
output sophistication: e.g. does an elearning authoring tool (for example) let us produce complex scenarios with checkpoints, dependencies, and variables? (The current Design System I'm using doesn't!).

Just as you can't use a hammer in every situation, it's also true that every problem isn't a nail. The answers to all of the above are really 'It depends' - on what I need, and what my team needs, in the short and long term.

My only 'golden rule' is to remember every tool has strengths and weaknesses, as well as its overall purpose, and I think the key to successfully deploying learning technologies over the long-term is about understanding each one's place in your 'tool box'. Thinking of tools and technologies in terms of their overall purpose also makes it much easier to appraise and evaluate new tools/technologies, keeping your tool box 'fresh' over time.

Another, probably 'silver' rule would be: when appraising a new technology/tool, endeavour to find critical opinions of the tool, rather than relying solely on a demonstration from a colleague! I definitely rushed into adopting Adobe Captivate based on a really positive demo from some colleagues, and could/should have tried harder to find more balanced experiences of using that piece of software. [/Revision]

1B: Technical knowledge and ability in the use of Learning Technology

[Revision] In this portfolio I talk about applying a range of tools and learning technologies to my work, such as:

Wimba
Adobe Captivate
Thirst.io
Vyond
Moodle
H5P
Microsoft Teams
MS Word
MS PowerPoint
Audacity
Library Guides

For section 1B I'll focus on three examples: Moodle, H5P, and Vyond.

Example 1: [/Revision]The science of the meta-link, the art of the bulk-enrolment.

I designed KLaSS to have a 'parent and children' format, where enrolment is completed through a 'home' module and automatically cascaded to multiple dependent 'sub-modules' through Moodle's meta-link capability. This gives the maximum availability of content for the minimum level of administrative burden on either the student or the technologist.

Earlier incarnations of KLaSS featured a self-enrol system where students would enrol onto the module they were interested in, but many students found this a confusing barrier to access, particularly when at a distance from support from the Library. Purely anecdotally, this seemed to be the case where the individual possessed a low level of confidence in their IT proficiency.

(CP1) The barrier had no pedagogical benefit so I introduced the meta-linking system so students could self-enrol just once, through the Home module, to gain access to the entire KLaSS suite.

One of the main drawbacks of the system described above is that KEATS is difficult to navigate effectively, so we developed Library Guides (a set of specialised webpages) that acted as a kind of 'skin' over the KLaSS modules. These Library Guides feature direct links to KLaSS modules to help learners more easily find their way to the parts of KLaSS relevant to their needs (see The student's view below for an example).

A weakness of this system is that it pre-supposes the learner is already enrolled on KLaSS. KLaSS is not an Academic module, so no student is enrolled by default. If an unenrolled student clicks a link to a KLaSS module they encounter a blunt and unhelpful rebuff from Moodle - stopping the student in their tracks, and acting as a strong demotivator. We don't have an effective way to redirect students to the KLaSS home module, or explain how the system works. The student simply stops at a brick wall, effectively acting as a filter to anyone but the most motivated to continue.

(CP1) To overcome the weakness described above I started a system of bulk enrolment, whereby students and staff at King's are manually enrolled onto KLaSS en masse by uploading CSV files. Student profiles are taken from a PowerBI report and fed into KEATS periodically (as student intake at King's happens throughout the year) to help ensure as many students have barrier-free access to KLaSS as soon as possible, reducing the likelihood they encounter problems accessing tutorials.

This pre-enrolment means the students' access into and journey through the KLaSS material is uninterrupted, and as barrier free as possible, even though the learner might be 'entering' the closed system of KEATS from another domain such as an email or a webpage like the Library Guides. This will also help us work with academics to integrate tailored, subject-specific teaching material into their Academic modules, safe in the knowledge that every student will have the same level of access.

Reflections [Revision] on example 1[/Revision]

Overall I'm pleased that I've been able to figure out a way to remove barriers to access to our learning materials this way. One of those projects where, if you do it right, nobody notices! The downside is that it still requires some finicky admin - exporting huge lists of staff and students several times a year, formatting the data properly and feeding it into KEATS in blocks of roughly 4,000 profiles at a time, lest KEATS time out and drop the operation.

Recent upgrades and developments in our Moodle platform have led to our testing a new method of access that relies on category-specific permissions to allow individuals to access modules without needing to be enrolled. This is a kind of guest access, but only available once someone logs into KEATS. This could (if we can roll it out more widely) remove the entire bulk enrolment process described above, while keeping the ease of access it affords - a huge step forward for us, and a major win for our users.

My view

The student's view

[Revision] Example 2: Using H5P and Moodle activities to develop active learning opportunities in an asychronous Library module for Law students

Summer 2020

The Library's Searching for Legal Information module was very 'static' or passive - exercises comprised lots of text, with some basic 'interaction' in the guise of expandable sections and dropdowns. Progress was measured by reaching the end of a tutorial, which although this fed into the module's progress tracker, it could still only be seen as surface level learning. Any deeper active learning, or even reflective practice, would happen out of view of instructors, if at all.

I had designed a Word document Workbook containing open questions so the learner could apply the tutorials' principles to their own context. Their being separate files meant the responses were not captured in the module. Without a link between learner and instructor, we can't easily track/record progress and provide feedback, two keys components of active learning.

Spring 2023

During the module's redevelopment the SME (subject matter expert) colleague worked to identify opportunities for active learning, where learners could directly practice the tutorial's principles in a responsive, formative environment - i.e. directly in the Moodle module. Placing the exercises in the module also connects the learner with the instructor via the learners' responses to the envrionments. The next step was to discern the right tool for the job:

My SME colleague wanted to build:

Reflective questions asking the learners to consider why they were searching for information in the first place.

So I used:

Moodle's feedback activity.

Because:

It will retain the learner's answer, allowing reflective learning. It allows for open questions to be responded to without needing a 'grade' or 'correct response', unlike a quiz. It provides a smoother journey back into the tutorial than the questionnaire activity, improving the learner's experience.

Reflective questions asking the learners to consider why they were searching for information in the first place.

H5P's 'Mark the words' exercise.

Allows the learner to select and highlight specific words from a phrase - a crucial skill in effectively breaking down a search topic into useful search terms. No other activity type matches the required format so closely.

A formative version of Statsky's cartwheel method of exploring alternative search words and phrases from a single search topic.

H5P's 'Drag and drop' exercise.

It allows an authentic, formative, opportunity for the learner to practice using a Cartwheel in a way that closely resembles the worked example.

A blank Cartwheel template for the learner to use with their own, specific context.

Downloadable Word document.

Moodle and H5P activities do not allow the learner to define their own terms, but an editable Word document will allow formative practice, meaningfully, with their own words. All KCL students have access to Office365, so a Word document should be widely, if not universally accessible. It's part 1 of a later assignment where learners upload their completed Cartwheels to be used as OER resources.

Moodle screenshot of the new Law module (as of 22/05/2023), with Editing mode On, showing the different activities listed below Tutorials 1 (described above) and 2.

Moodle screenshot of Tutorial 2's first exercise 'Where do you look for information when completing assignments?' built from moodle's Feedback activity. The 'Show responses' tab is only visible to instructors, and will list all learner responses. Learners will only see their own.

Reflections on Example 2

This has really scratched a long-term itch, where I've wanted to develop my ability to build and embed active learning principles more robustly into my online learning work. As a team we've worked hard to develop active learning for our in-person teaching practice, and looking back, the online arena has lagged. I've enjoyed exploring the options available to us through the H5P system to meet the current challenges, but also thinking ahead to future possibilities we aren't engaging with, like multimedia assignments, and feedback options involving recorded audio or video.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the responses we get to the reflective questions, especially where we work with and report on specific cohorts of students, and using them to better inform future developments. My next challenge is to add the above to my big set of documentation to ensure designing active learning exercises becomes standard practice, and to teach my colleagues how to retrieve useful information from the activities.

One challenging aspect of using H5P is the 'content bank' system, whereby files created in H5P are saved to your personal profile in Moodle, rather than a central, or category-spanning respository. This will make collaboration more difficult, as colleagues cannot easily share and edit each others' H5P content - a strategic problem where colleagues change roles over time. I'll work with colleagues to draft a SharePoint space (along with naming conventions) where H5P content can be saved and design a workflow to teach future colleagues how to upload their content, how to take and edit others' content, and why having a robust system is so important.

Example 3: Developing animated videos as a novel (at least to us) teaching tool, and equipping the Librarians to voice them

This section has parallels with example 2 above - this is another way I have worked to adopt systems that enable me to develop more polished and engaging teaching material than pages and pages of text. In 2020 I successfully filmed colleagues performing live introductions to different sections of the LIB262 online course (described in Core Area 2a), intended to help build the Social/Instructor presences necessary for success in an online environment. This was unexpectedly demanding in terms of the person-hours required, and I wasn't confident that this kind of 'live action' video was a sustainable idea as we planned to expand the range of elearning we made available, and therefore require more video content.

I wanted a 'half-way' house that would require less work from the contributor, but still enable the creation of high-quality video content, and therefore be 'sustainable' in terms of the work required. I spotted Vyond - a browser based animated video creation tool - at a Learning Technologies exhibition and had a real 'aha' moment - this would seem to slot neatly into 'halfway gap' described above. If my colleagues just need to record audio, they can do this at home/in a location of their choice, surely an easier ask than to be in a studio for hours on end. It's also relatively easier to update an animated video than a live action recording, e.g. perhaps a screenshot or piece of text needs to be edited - using animated videos makes this much more realistic.

The next challenge is to equip my colleagues with the right tools to produce high-quality audio. Poor quality audio is a real turn-off, I know from experience of listening to podcasts for a number of years. Standard headsets used for Teams meetings weren't suitable - the audio ranges in quality too broadly for me to be confident of consistently high quality, and the only 'solution' to poor audio is to record again! A difficult ask for a team of busy colleagues - we need to get it broadly 'right' first time, so we need the right tools.

As part of a budgetary surplus opportunity in 2021, I identified and requested my colleagues each be sent the following:

Equipment

Blue yeti podcast microphone

Mini-muff pop shield

Audacity software (Free)

Because

A beginner-friendly microphone famous for easily capturing high quality audio. I wanted a microphone that was quick to set up - it just needs a USB connection to a computer - giving them flexibility and confidence in its use. It's also very easy to adjust and switch the different modes, ideal for beginners or busy non-specialists.
A pop shield helps improve the quality of recorded audio by absorbing the pressure waves from plosive sounds (Bs and Ps), minimising distortion. They're low maintenance, easily fitting over the microphone and staying in place, ideal for beginners.
Audacity is a freeware audio recording software that I had experience in using to record, edit and export audio content in a format I can use in the videos. It's available through my institution's software catalogue and I supported my colleagues in adopting its use.

The first opportunity to record narrated videos came in 2022, while developing a Library module aimed at the Natural, Mathematical, and Engineering Sciences (NMES) Faculty with my colleague Mia. I outlined that videos would need to be a maximum of 3 minutes long - to maintain their effectiveness as a teaching tool they would need to be focused and to the point, and to ensure they wouldn't become unwieldy pieces of content to manage in the long term. I provided feedback and guidance on the audio files Mia created, sometimes asking for re-records if a piece of audio was not of high enough quality, or sounded noticably poorer than the others.

When we were both satisfied with the audio, I drafted the animated videos, incorporating Mia's ideas and feedback. The videos were exported from Vyond in 780p MP4 files, to ensure that viewers are not downloading enormous files, but also ensuring the video is compatible with Kaltura, the University's video hosting platform. Once uploaded it's embedded into the relevant tutorial in the NMES module using the Kaltura embedding tool built into our Moodle environment, in line with University policies around video content.

Vyond screenshot showing the video NMES 3.2 - Truncation, phrase searching, and the Wildcard, with Mia's narrator character in the corner.

A finished article! The video is designed to be engaging and professional, utilising advanced transitions and animations to illustrate and explain abstract concepts. This is the NMES video on truncation shown being built and embedded above.

Moodle screenshot of the live NMES module, with the NMES 3.2 video embedded in the tutorial. You can see the switch to more reflective questions in our tutorials, though we're still using workbooks. It's fascinating to see your work developing over time.

Reflections on example 3

Vyond has been a real 'win' over the last two years, in terms of successfully adopting and integrating an interesting and effective piece of learning technology. It's unlocked an entirely new (to the Library, at least) avenue of creative expression at a point where I was trying to find more sophisticated and engaging ways to generate and present content. I was careful to make sure it could output the videos to an internet-standard, non-proprietary format that could properly integrate into the ecosystem at King's - this sounds fairly elementary but I haven't always been so careful.

A huge plus for using Vyond is that it's browser based, meaning I have a great deal of flexibility as to when and where I can work on the content. If it was complex, standalone software I would probably be restricted to using my high-spec personal PC at home, a frustration I have experienced by in the past. I (and colleagues) are able to work on Vyond content whenever we need and want to, increasing our productivity and effectiveness.

We only have a single 'seat' license, meaning we have to be careful to check if colleagues are 'using' that seat - a login at location A boots off the colleague still logged in at location B, and so on. The licenses are relatively expensive, so any request to increase their number would have to be carefully considered.

Developing our use of Vyond

As colleagues and I get better at using Vyond, producing better and more sophisticated videos, we should consider how we can make the videos more interactive, to bring them into the 'active learning' stable alongside H5P and quizzes. For example: the Kaltura video hosting platform embraced by King's allows you to set quiz questions at different points of a video. I haven't utilised this aspect of Kaltura before and don't have a good grasp of the details:

how many different types of questions are there?
can they be reflective, or must they be correct/incorrect, as in a quiz?
do the questions report into the Moodle Gradebook?
can the videos accurately report 'completion' alongside H5P exercises and quizzes?

By exploring and using Kaltura in a more sophisticated way, we can then also use Vyond to create more sophisticated learning content in future.

[/Revision]

1C: Supporting the deployment of learning technologies

From curiosity to the mundane - supporting an anxious team in their adopting MS Teams at the start of the first lockdown.

MS Teams was adopted by the Library as part of the University-wide response to the COVID-19 pandemic forcing us all home in March 2020. Video calls were then still a novelty to the Library, and I could see that for many colleagues MS Teams' (very, very sudden) appearance was generating a good deal of anxiety - especially as there had been little formal training announced centrally.

I had become aware of MS Teams in late 2019, listening to colleagues in King's Foundations (KF) describe how it had transformed their ways of working and communicating, both as a team and with their students. I found the idea of a Whatsapp-style chat system intriguing - this existed in Skype for Business, but it wasn't connected to Office 365, and so couldn't offer any kind of collaboration with Office365 systems like Excel, or integration with OneDrive.

(CP3) In early 2020 I reached out to my KF colleagues to get a more personal testimony of how they adopted MS Teams and how it worked on a more day to day basis, and we met in January 2020, when it was still fairly unknown to the Library. My notes from the meeting are below - a mix of colleagues' testimony, my observations, and points to consider in the context of introducing MS Teams to my wider Department. At this point I was still trying to work out how I could advocate for the Library adopting Teams, i.e., what arguments to bring, how to demonstrate its worth, and how to overcome the inertia you see in large, disparate departments. See points d, k, m, and p in particular, and also note the reflection that the University of East London (UEL) had needed a directive from their Senior Management team to drive Teams' adoption.

(CP4) At the onset of enforced working from home, I was perhaps a few steps ahead of many of my colleagues in terms of my familiarity and confidence with using MS Teams in a professional capacity, and I felt best-placed to demonstrate its features in a safe and friendly way to help allay my colleagues' anxieties.

Synchronous support

(CP4) I scheduled some drop-in meetings and invited my immediate team of Librarians and Library Assistants along so I could demonstrate and de-mystify the features of MS Teams we'd probably be using the most, like setting up chats, using channels, and screen-sharing to broadcast content. I offered many short sessions over the first two weeks of the lockdown, giving colleagues flexibility in which they attended, but also the chance to attend more than one should they need to. These sessions weren't recorded but the chat logs are available, you can see the talk of seeing each others' screens, being muted, colleagues not having microphones just yet, and even looking ahead to what would end up becoming our standard practice of providing workshops entirely online!

Asynchronous support

(CP4) I also wrote some introductory guidance on a Wiki page to be shared with colleagues across the Library in a way that was persistent, accessible and not dependant on their being able to attend a drop in meeting. I think at this point of the year there was very little documentation and support available centrally - the digital skills hub might still have been in an early phase (although my memory of this part of 2020 is not that reliable).

I made sure to structure the page with:

headings (to allow easier navigation by screen readers and accessibility tools).
columns (to make it easily viewed on tablets or smartphones).
clear images with alt text (to model the accessibility first approach we should be taking).

Evidence

Notes from my meeting with King's Foundation colleague in January 2020 regarding their impressions of adopting and using MS Teams with their peers and their students. I left the meeting in an optimistic mood!

Amended personal Outlook schedule for 16-20 March 2020 showing the 'Tips and QoL (quality of life)' sessions I set up for colleagues to familiarise themselves with using MS Teams

Synchronous support: chat logs for the 'Teams: Tips and QoL' drop-in meetings I scheduled for members of my team where I demonstrated various parts of MS Teams like the chat function, setting up notifications, changing how channels and chats are displayed, and the different ways to share screens.

Asynchronous support: I designed and published a brief Getting Started wiki on the Library's SharePoint pages to help colleagues learn some of the most introductory aspects of setting up and becoming more comfortable with using Teams. Much of the currently existing asynchronous support material from the IT dept. was only made available some time after March 2020.

Reflection [Revision] on this particular experience [/Revision]

I think it's clear from the chat logs that the drop in sessions were appreciated by colleagues - and it's nice to look over the names of those who have since moved to other teams, parts of KCL, or out of King's entirely - but I don't have an answer to some rather obvious follow up questions: Why didn't I do this for every colleague in the Library? We all needed help to adopt MS Teams, why did I focus on my immediate team?

This could have been a reflection on the size of the team (at the time, over 25 people) needing close support meaning my focus needed to be much narrower; it could have been a case of having too little mental capacity to support an entire department in the midst of the lockdown tumult, I'm not sure. At the time I was the only Learning Technologist with anything near a teaching remit, something we are thankfully rectifying soon. If I were in a similar situation again I would work much harder to offer support more widely across the Library. Since March 2020 I've worked with more teams outside of my own, building stronger links and relationships, which would make offering this kind of support more straightforward in future.

I'm unsure of how successful the FAQ wiki page was - as a static webpage there is little useful information we can glean. The Digital Skills hub was a step up in terms of having comprehensive information available, and I was grateful for its appearance. It meant I didn't need to keep creating and updating our own webpages, something the Library is notorious for doing. Perhaps in future this could be used as an example for why we shouldn't reflexively create our own materials.

[Revision] Reflection on deploying technologies among non-technologists

My more general experience of deploying technologies to the wider Library parallels with the experience of rolling out the new authoring tools described in section 1a. Success comes from:

working to understand colleagues' contexts and needs before you start.
eliciting where the benefits could be gained.
properly articulating those benefits to the rest of the project group or its stakeholders.

You can't approach a situation with the mindset of 'here's a product, now off you go', as introducing the new 'thing' is only step 2 or 3 of a longer process of whats is essentially change management, although in my experience it's rarely ever described this way.

I've benefitted from being at my current place of work for longer than 10 years, able to use that bank of experience to inform my understanding of many of the available job roles, and to, with luck, articulate more easily the benefits seen by introducing new or different technologies. I have to be mindful of the fact this will always be an imperfect approach, and there are entire teams and departments with job roles I would need to explore more proactively.

This exploration usually happens in a focused meeting early in the stages of a new project, discussing among other things:

the 'target' audience - some teams work with the student body as a whole, some only with Researchers (usually late-stage Postgraduates).
details of the kinds of work they perform for that audience, e.g.: group-based workshops, 1:1 support, is support primarily via webpages, or perhaps communication is via email.
this will inform the methods we'll use to engage with that audience, such as connecting new materials to existing forms of support, e.g. 'This [new] tutorial will be built on in the corresponding workshop'.
the tone with which we will communicate with the audience, and create new materials. Online envronments don't generally require formality, but I've had success when approaching mature students and late-stage students in a straightforward, adult tone in other environments.

Success also comes from an openness - I need to be positive, enthusiastic, and open to questions. I see success coming from offering support rather than purely providing direction ('leading' colleagues rather than 'driving' them), but it's also important to acknowledge any frustrations, or limits of a new piece of technology e.g. an unintuitive interface, or where a specific process is cumbersome. Colleagues can spot where they're being 'sold to' I think, and I personally find it highly disempowering to feel like I'm being ignored, or that my (usually well thought out, I hope) views are wrong or invalid, so I don't want to make colleagues feel this way about the new tools we're adopting.

Bringing a multi-modal approach (1:1s, written guidance, videos, group meetings) is particularly constructive, as I feel it gives colleagues a sense of agency, and different kinds of questions or queries can be answered in different ways to suit the context rather than a 'one size fits all' approach.

[/Revision]

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