Graduate Virtual Research Environment
The GVRE enables all University of Hull postgraduate students, postdoctoral researchers and also early career lecturers to develop and enhance their research skills, and to complete their research activities.
Barbara Allan - project leader, and initialiser.
Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlin - initial development within the Business School.
Chris Thomson (me) - expanded the scope to the whole university and enhanced functionality.
Students, Faculty and the Graduate School - featured in videos and offered advice.
The Graduate Virtual Research Environment (GVRE) is an element of the delivery of the doctoral programme at the University of Hull. Unlike a traditional course it is not independently assessed, as is an entirely optional part of the programme. This has posed particular challenges in encouraging student participation that mirrors optional doctoral skills training provision across the higher education sectorin the UK.
The GVRE was proposed to meet a particular need. At the university there is a compulsory skills training programme which results in an additional academic award, however students find it difficult to select appropriate modules/courses from those available and often only recognized their training needs late in their studies - when they had already completed the requirements of the programme. The GVRE was established to help guide the selection of modules and to give advice to students late in their programmes. Our aim was to achieve this by transferring knowledge from experienced researchers (staff and students) to those with less experience.
EBridge, our local implementation of Sakai, was instrumental in implementing GVRE. We established early on that the GVRE would need to be self sustained in the long term so we wanted to use a technology that the institution supported. We also needed a technology that could be easily maintained by non-specialists and preferably the students' themselves. Furthermore there are over 600 doctoral students studying in Hull at any one time so the technology would need to scale, and help us to manage the student numbers. Sakai was the tool that met our requirements.
Once we developed the initial site we identified two key issues. Firstly we found that researchers were keen to contribute to the site when facilitated but less keen when encouraged to contribute directly. Our initial response to this was to improve the ease in which submissions could be added by providing in depth onsite help, access to equipment, and a step by step scripted process. However the problem persisted as students remain concerned that their work was not of good enough quality.Secondly we found that students liked the resources but found them hard to navigate. We addressed this by organizing them around the Research Councils' Joint Skills statement (http://www.vitae.ac.uk/policy-practice/1690/Joint-Skills-Statement.html).Whilst this helped students did not see how this fitted together as a package so we are developing a more integrated approach which includes self assessment, explorations and the building of a training plan.
On the positive side the GVRE has been well received by students using the resources. In summary of all registered students, 50% visited the GVRE within 6 months of the launch and 15% watched one or more videos.
As the GVRE is continuously used, we continuously evaluate its effectiveness. The stats provided by Sakai give a useful insight into use, but also allow us to identify specific students to contact to gain feedback. This feedback is helping us to evolve the GVRE to better fit the expectations of students.
The GVRE isdelivered as an online only component of the overall doctoral programme. The focus was to provide a learning environment was available when the students felt they needed it.
The basisfor the GVRE was the communities of practice model (Lave, Jean; Wenger, Etienne(1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press). Unlike a taught programme the primary goal of these students is to research, so they are real practitioners of research. We anticipated that over time an exchange of advice would happen both through the Sakai forum tool and with the students' supervisors and colleagues. To enable this discussion we decided to use video reflections of staff and students who reported on their own research practice.
We envisaged that researchers would be able to contribute reflections about their research process via the site. We enabled this by the Sakai blog tool, however in the standard presentation is not attractive and lacks tools to link between posts. It also does not make it easy to post video, the medium we choose to be the primary communication tool. Our institution has a policy of not altering the standard Sakai distribution beyond required changes so we were not able to alter source code of the tools.
We overcame this by using Javascript to enhance the posting mechanism. The standard formsare hidden in a HTML frame, and scripted. Additionally this also enabled deep linking between specific posts. By storing information on the Web DAV servicewe were also able to automatically maintain a catalogue of related posts andadd these links to the bottom of pages. To enable communities to recognize themselves outside of physical meetings we allowed a simple mechanism for students to tag a resource with their contact details if they we interested intalking more about this topic.
Video recordings are presented in the blog tool with questions to encourage student's reflections, links to resources and activities, and links to related postings.To structure the presentation of the posts (currently a total of 109) they are structured around the UK Research Councils' Joint Skills statement. To explore this categorization of skills students are asked to sort the skills using a card sorting game according to their personal priorities, referring to resources inthe blog for more information on a topic if required. Once high priority skills are found students can look at further blog entries to identify modules/courses that they can take to gain these skills or identify self study resources such as text books.
The Sakai blog tool is particularly crucial to this method, as it is the only tool thatis installed on our implementation that supports user contribution, flash videos, and search functionality.
To excel on the doctoral degree programme students have to collaborate, the GVRE provides the online forum to do so through the blog and forum tools. Those students who have participated have said that is useful.
The resources on the GVRE are structured according to the UK Research Councils' Joint Skills Statement, a national descriptor of the skills that doctoral students are expected to learn during their studies. The resources help the students to explore the skills they have and those that they may need. Students are encouraged through a card sort activity to plan their own personal goals and record them through a private evaluation that they may share with their supervisor or colleagues.
Students have reported that they prefer not touse the forums as they have ample discussion with colleagues, so only a small number of posts have been made to the in site forums. However the video posts on the blog, and other resources, do appear to have initiated conversations outside of the site. We are working with students to try and find appropriate ways to facilitate online communication, particularly with part time students who are off campus.
The learning material within the GVRE is a subset of that within the whole programme. It focuses on the use of video reflections to explore the subject area. The expectations of the student within the GVRE are communicated by the visual design (where themes within the skills training presented are color coded). This ties in with material that is provided throughout the programme, and in particular a printed handbook that each student is supplied with.
Given that students are expected to make useof the material over a 3-7 year period there is no universal sequencing of material that would apply to all. However the students have expressed theopinion that such a guide is desirable. To address this we classified the material by skill, however this offered little guidance on how to select what was important to a particular student. We are therefore revising the way thatwe guide students through the material to offer a direct link between their research, the skills that the GVRE explores, and the blog posts that present those skills.
The GVRE touches on the each of the 7principles as explored below:
1. Both students and faculty have contributed resources, primarily in the form of video recordings with notes, to the site based on their own experiences. Their contributions are not on entirely equally footings as both groups expressed the need to be able to assess the authority of the contributions, so biographical information about the contributor is included.
Furthermore all videos with students have required facilitation from a faculty member to arrange. So these students havehad particular benefit from the scheme in having time to reflect with guidance on their own work.
2. When the students are reassured about the quality of their own work, they are very willing to share experiences with a wider audience. As knowledge of the GVRE spreads around the university so is student interest in being involved.
Students are also encouraged to leave their contact details after viewing a resource so other students contact them and form communities of practice.
3. Students are encouraged to explore their skills through a card sorting metaphor. The student is encouraged to sort cards with named skills by their personal priority. They can explore these skills in depth by looking at other indexed resources on the site. Students can then use their analysis to build a personal development plan.
4. Feedback is delivered primarily through supervision sessions, we are encouraging supervisors to see the GVRE as way that students can prepare questions about skills training. Of course the action of reflection allows self feedback as the student recognizes ways to describe skills that they have already demonstrated.
5. Doctoral students in the UK typically manage their own time, with a focus on research time, so setting aside time for training is hard. By being informal our aim was to allow students to study when they had time, make a note of their progress, and return in the future.
6. The focus of the GVRE is sharing good practice that is directly related to research. This description of quality research encourages students to perform.
7. The GVRE focuses on one specific learning style, but sits in a programme that is multi facetted. This includes access totext books, personal supervision, shared workspaces, and face to face modules. Therefore within the wider context the GVRE appeals to a subsection of population, the rest being catered for in other initiatives.
Whilst use of the GVRE within the wider programme is not assessed it helps students to prepare for the assessment activities. In the UK doctoral candidates are assessed summarily by a viva and thesis and often a ‘upgrade' after the first year where a report and viva are assessed to recommend if the student should study for a PhD or MPhil. Other publications and presentations are treated as formative feedback. Resources in the GVRE provide guidance about all of these aspects.
In order to ensure that the look and feel of the site was consistent we created a Javascript tool to maintain the blogs, to ensure that the format was consistent. The design was based around the institutional theme (blue and orange). On posting to the blog the information is ordered in the same way, the summary, the video, discussion topics and further information, links to other relevant posts, and links to external sites.
Video is the primary media used on the GVRE, but this is set in the context of links to material elsewhere, including the internet, library, programme information and modules/courses within the programme.
Accessibility was considered throughout thedesign the site. All content is arranged in the standard Sakai tools with minimal formatting, additional formatting is provided by Javascript but is not essential to view the material. The videos are transcribed so those who find watching and listing to a video difficult have an alternative means of taking part.
The doctoral programme in general is supported by a wide range of information, in printed handbooks and online. The GVRE itself therefore focuses on the training requirements of the students. Students are supplied with video recordings that explore how to use the site, but also on why they are undertaking these activities. These also link through to resources at other institutions and national bodies.
Details of all contributors are made available so that students can follow up queries directly but they are encouraged to do so via the worksite so that responses are available to other students as well.
Occasionally we get requests from students for material on particular topics which we then attempt to source, often asking the student to review the draft version of the resource.
Typically in the UK doctorial skills training is delivered to students as taught modules/courses within their programme of study. However students typically select modules/courses at the start of the program of study and therefore don't always choose those which will benefit them later. Our innovation was to use online training to helps us address this by providing access to specific guidance at any time and by helping students to make more informed choices. We used Sakai to reach the entire programme.
We particularly wanted to allow students to transfer knowledge from more experienced students and researchers to inexperienced students. To enable this we used the Sakai blog tool as a way to share video reflections. Unlike other tools it has the benefit of allowing students as well as instructors to post material, whilst ensuring a level of security.
We found that students were unwilling tocreate and post videos themselves, often because they felt they did not have sufficient authority (in terms of subject knowledge) to do so. However when reassured in facilitated sessions (where we did the recording and editing) they were keen to take part and saw the benefits for fellow students.
We formed focus groups of students to investigate how they used and perceived the GVRE. They broadly praised the site for the information it provided (See quotes below), but in particular they noted its important role at transitions during their studies. They identified that they found the resources most useful when they could access them whenever they wanted. For example when they finished of field work or prepared for their viva they were able to access key advice about how to proceed, even if they were away from the university campus, or were working at night.
We use the Sakai statistics to help us evaluate the usage of the site, including looking in depth at how certain users have used the site and identifying popular topics to develop further.
A PhD student who has almost finished commented: "The GVRE is fantastic, it would have made the whole process a lot easier".
Others commented:
"it [the site] is very good for helping when you are not sure. Late at night when you can't get hold of a friend, you can go online"
"It is an interesting idea, we have a lot of[separate] social communities, but we don't have shared programmes where we get together [across the university]".
"This is really a great step and impressive as a whole, we would not have dreamt of such a thing three or four years ago, the videos are so beneficial..."
"I just returned from my field work and I became quite anxious about it, and how I was going to write my thesis. I wanted to know more."
"I think that it will be very good when I am unsure of what to do"
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