JISC

Overview

The SkillClouds project will address the issue of making skills more visible to students through an exploration of the use of social bookmarking software and tagging, and in particular through the tag-cloud data visualisation technique that has become a distinctive feature of web 2.0 sites. Our hypothesis is that the skill cloud will be an engaging way of visualising this information for students. For this pilot project, the main motivation will be to explore the suitability of this approach with a number of student groups, and develop some tools for building skill clouds and integrating them into our institutional systems.

Aims and objectives

The project aims to:

• investigate the use of social bookmarking tools to support the administrative process of recording and refining the university's data on skills
• explore and evaluate the idea of presenting information on skills to students in the form of a skill cloud

The objectives of the project are to:

• design and pilot an approach to collecting skills data through the use of social bookmarking tools such as del.icio.us
• build a service that: utilises the social bookmarking tool's API to harvest the skills data, merges/mashes-up skills data with student generated data,  outputs a skill cloud
• test the value and scope of these skill clouds

Project methodology

Paper models and prototypes will be tested with:

• students to elicit reactions to the proposed skill clouds and effective ways of presenting data relating to skills acquired
• administrative and academic staff to explore how social bookmarking might be deployed to support data collection for metadata such as skills outcomes.

This will be achieved by taking a user-centred design approach with groups of staff and students.

Full working prototypes will be then be developed and deployed in a real learning context. We will evaluate the effectiveness of the tool through student learning diaries and semi-structured interviews.

Anticipated outputs and outcomes

Outputs could include:

• UML analysis and design documentation as appropriate
• Package to manage interaction with social bookmarking service
• Package to manage development of skill clouds
• Documentation on deployment with other systems

Outcomes include:

•  providing data on the use of social bookmarking interfaces and tagging methodologies as an approach to the collection of institutional metadata 
•  providing valuable evidence on the use of tag clouds in an HE context for supporting students in engaging with material
• creating a mechanism for more effective and efficient delivery of skills information
• contributing to JISC's understanding of how emergent technologies such as social bookmarking and tagging can be adapted and applied in an effective way

Technology / Standards used

The guidelines outlined in the JISC document Project planning: Technical development will be followed as appropriate

Lead Institution

• University of Sussex