Horus e-learning management extension for tutors
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The project set out to create an online system that services the needs of a group of disparate healthcare professionals involved in the delivery of the undergraduate medical curriculum at Manchester.
Executive Summary
The challenge lay in creating a system that would allow these users to contribute to an ongoing review of the medical curriculum whilst offering the chance to network and build an online community of practice.
The aims of the project were broadly met, with the project team creating an online system called ellaborate which offers social networking capability in a closed community, combined with collaborative reviewing and editing of documents in discreet group spaces, linked to task-related forums, chat rooms and resources.
The project followed the UIDM approach to software development as required by the project funding, changing and adapting the elements of the model as required by the demands of the technology or the context. For example, the project went quickly into Stage 3 of UIDM, producing a basic prototype for users to test based on assumed need.
The project team found many Web 2.0, open-source products lacked the functionality or reliability for professional, academic use. Many of the applications available have been built for social or nonbusiness use and therefore lack the rigour or functionality required by our professional users. In the end the tool was created in Drupal.
The project encountered problems with sourcing and integrating appropriate collaborative editing tools, until in the end it took the route of developing a bespoke module for Drupal which allows sophisticated editing.
Creating a cohesive community of users also proved challenging and the project team changed its strategy mid-project to focus on community building activities outside of the online environment. These have been documented and built into the implementation plan for the tool as good practice.
The project has generated a number of outputs, including the e-llaborate tool itself, and achieved a number of outcomes, including the creation of a community of medical educators and initiation of an online review of the medical curriculum. The project has also provided a significant contribution to the JISC e-Framework.
The e-llaborate tool offers a working environment for any group or sub-group of a community and its potential use in the HE sector is enormous. The system is already being used for a number of uses beyond a review of the medical curriculum and is attracting interest from a number of national and international institutions and organisations, keen to use its unique set of features.
The University of Manchester are committed to offering e-llaborate as an open source system which can be used and adapted by any other Institution, and is already piloting the system in two other Universities. The collaborative editor module will also be made available as a Drupal module and the project team aim to further enhance e-llaborate if further funding can be secured.
Key recommendations
The project concludes by offering 9 key recommendations to future development projects:
- Manage user expectation
- Redesign UIDM to include risk assessment and configuration planning
- Manage user demands and conflict resolution
- Build online communities ‘offline’
- Know and define your community
- Build around a stable set of core functions
- Don’t be tempted by ‘sexy technology’
- More investment is required for interoperability standards of open-source material
- More investment is required to develop a sophisticated collaborative editor