Jill Foster brings us up to date with how one of the projects from the Training and Awareness section of the elib programme is progressing. This article appears in both the Web and the print, version of Ariadne.
The Netskills [1] project started on October 1st 1995 and was tasked with bringing network training and awareness to 10,000 higher education staff over 3 years. Could the Netskills team rise to this challenge or were they on an impossible mission? Half way through the project's lifetime they have developed a range of course materials and delivered 180 courses and seminars to 5,500 people giving a total to date of 16,000 person hours of training. A further 14,400 staff and students have undertaken self-paced training using the interactive web-based tutorial, TONIC [2]. Netskills courses are run all over the country. Given this "mass training" extensive but practical quality assurance procedures have been defined in order to maintain high quality in all aspects of the Netskills programme. Use of external experts to provide "friendly fire" has proved invaluable, and is something other projects might consider doing.
In spite of the need for mass training, Netskills workshops try to provide individuals with a
quality learning experience during which they are encouraged to reflect on what they are
learning and how they will put that into practice. Strong emphasis is given to hands-on
experience, discussion sessions, help for individuals and on evaluation and feedback. The
involvement of educationalists will help us to improve further the learning experience we
offer, as will the new purpose built training suite developed at the University of Newcastle
for use by Netskills and others.
Feedback from course participants is captured online and analysed automatically. Immediate feedback has been extremely positive, but Netskills want to ensure that the training it provides is resulting in much more than a better skilled community by looking at the impact of their training on working practices. A full range of evaluation activities covering performance, impact and synthesis is in progress. This includes the work being carried out as part of another eLib project, IMPEL2 [3], which is carrying out an in depth evaluation of both Netskills and Edulib [4].
Netskills is very keen to help other trainers take part in the Netskills challenge! Staff with an Internet training role can make use of the Netskills Training Kits to run their own Internet training courses. There are currently five kits, which are proving to be very popular, ranging from introductory, through searching to authoring and publishing. Other resources for trainers include several subject tailored kits and fact sheets on topics such as different browsers, search engines and choosing a projector. Netskills has launched its own mini information gateway especially for network trainers - NETEG [5] and as with other eLib subject gateways, it is based on the ROADS [6] software.
The original TONIC web-based interactive tutorial for self-study has also proved extremely popular and work has now begun on the next generation of TONIC tutorials, TONIC NG, in collaboration with Newcastle-based staff of the European 4th Framework DESIRE [7] project. The aim is to produce a modular, extensible, easily maintained interactive tutorial system which could support different contents and which will be mountable at other sites.
So what challenges and opportunities lie ahead for Netskills? The changing network environment and the continuing need to help the HE community exploit it to the full is in itself an ongoing and exciting challenge. In recognition of the community's continuing requirements for network training the Netskills Steering Group has recommended that Netskills does continue after its initial funded period, and with this in mind a draft business plan is under discussion. Meanwhile, with the blessing of its Steering Group, Netskills is getting experience of the potential markets in advance of the end of the initial project by putting in place a pilot licensing scheme for their Training Materials. All those wishing to download materials must now complete a registration form and agree to the terms of the licence agreement. During the pilot period, HE Institutions will receive a discount of 100% on the licence fee for not-for-profit training. This next phase promises new challenges and opportunities for the Netskills team to rise to.
[1] Netskills Web Site,
http://www.netskills.ac.uk/
[2] TONIC: The Online Netskills
Interactive Course,
http://www.netskills.ac.uk/TONIC/
[3] Impel2 Web Site,
http://www.unn.ac.uk/~liy8/impel2/impel2.htm
[4] Edulib (Educational Development
for Higher Education Library Staff) Web Site,
http://www.hull.ac.uk/edulib/
[5] NETEG (Netskills Network
Education and Training Electronic Gateway),
http://www.netskills.ac.uk/NETEG/
[6] ROADS (Resource Organisation
And Discovery in Subject-based services) eLib project,
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/roads/
[7] DESIRE: Development of a
European Service for Information on Research and Education,
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue5/desire/
Material on this page is copyright Ariadne/original authors. This article last updated/links checked on 11-July-1997