Final 12 months Professor Liz James (Artwork Historical past) acquired a Digital Observe Award. The aim of the funding was to present employees the chance to develop or experiment with new instruments, assets or educating approaches with the potential to tell apply of their Faculty or disciplinary space.
Not too long ago I interviewed Liz to learn the way her challenge went.
What was the training or educating subject that prompted this innovation?
The challenge was a response to a difficulty raised by a scholar on the Artwork and the Metropolis module which covers the entire historical past of Rome. Lectures are chronological, however as Liz factors out, ‘one thing just like the Discussion board may need significance throughout totally different durations’ so preserving the totally different parts from the lectures ‘so as’ and understanding the way it all fitted collectively may be troublesome. The scholar requested: ‘Might now we have a timeline?’
The Discussion board (picture by Liz James)
Liz was eager:
‘It made an unlimited quantity of sense to have a timeline nevertheless it appeared silly to do a paper timeline and it appeared silly to do a timeline as a phrase doc or something like that. It appeared to make extra sense to see if it was potential to do that electronically and create a timeline that might then sit on the Research Direct website and may very well be added to on a year-by-year foundation.’
What did you do?
Together with the funding, got here centered assist from members of the Expertise Enhanced Studying crew who investigated commercially accessible timeline instruments. After some dialogue with college students Sutori (previously HSTRY) was chosen for the challenge as a result of:
‘It was one thing that appeared quite simple and simple that may very well be rolled-over year-on-year and may very well be added to very straightforwardly by the scholars.’
extract from the Rome timeline
You may learn extra about Sutori in our publish ‘Inform a narrative with Sutori’.
How did the challenge go?
The innovation went fairly nicely. There was a technical subject with Sutori when attempting to register all the scholars to make use of the timeline, however it appears that evidently could now have been resolved. This 12 months we’ll strive signing up all the scholars in a workshop to allow any points to be rapidly recognized. As soon as they acquired began, although:
‘the thought of an digital timeline was profitable and the scholars appreciated it and the additions that they made to it have been superb and really useful …. Suggestions from college students was that it was helpful.’
Class go to to Rome 2017
What subsequent?
We questioned the place Liz and her college students want to take their timeline for the long run.
‘By way of what it delivers the Sutori timeline is fairly respectable, however what we’d ideally love to do is to generate linked timelines. What we’ve acquired is a timeline of the historical past of Rome from Romulus and Remus (or not) to the current. What may additionally be fascinating to do is generate a timeline that’s the historical past of The Discussion board working via, or a selected artist and the way that intersects.’
This isn’t one thing that may be carried out with Sutori in fairly the way in which that Liz envisages it, however it’s potential so as to add all kinds of net hyperlinks to a Sutori story, so a ‘Discussion board’ timeline may very well be included within the ‘Rome’ timeline providing some extent at which the story may department out.
In the meantime, Liz might be utilizing Sutori timelines with different programs she teaches, and colleagues in Artwork Historical past are taken with utilizing it themselves.
This was a quite simple and simple challenge, however ‘it’s a kind of easy concepts that truly could make an important distinction to the scholar studying expertise’.
All through, the emphasis was on college students utilizing the timeline, ‘placing issues on the timeline that they suppose are essential or are price noting … not in regards to the lecturers and tutors placing all of the issues on the timeline that they suppose ought to be there.’
The timeline will develop over the following few years, and can then turn out to be ‘a file of scholar pursuits and locations that college students go to – and that’s not all the time the identical 12 months on 12 months’ so Liz is anticipating its growth to be enjoyable.
