University of Auckland and Academic Engagement

Libraries and Learning Services

Happy engagement or risky business?

Academic engagement at the University of Auckland

5 February 2016


University of Auckland established 1883

Describes itself as

“…New Zealand’s flagship, research-led

university, know for the excellence of its

teaching, its research and its service to

local, national and international

communities.”

https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/the-university/vc-message.html

The University of Auckland

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https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/the-university/vc-message.html


Provides services on 5 campuses

• Libraries

• Information Commons

Library users (Dec 2014)

Electronic (Dec 2014)

• 1,100+ bibliographic database

• 115,000+ electronic journals

Libraries & Learning Services

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• Learning Services

• Bindery

• Off Campus Store

• 4,420 Associate Members and

Continuing Education members

• 740,000+ electronic books.

• 15,000+ electronic course

readings

• 41,953 individual students

• 7,652 academic and professional

staff


• Requirement to provide e-reporting on use of the CLL licence in NZ

universities

• Requirement to increase awareness of copyright risk and liability

when copying and sharing teaching materials

• Fragmented approach to providing students with readings

• Significant investment in providing access to print materials, when

demand is falling in favour of e-access

• UoA restructure of faculty support for teaching requires

academics to do more for themselves.

Why implement Talis

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Libraries and Learning Services5


1 Set up and familiarise (Semester One, 2015)

• Technical set up with Talis and UoA teams, eg, ITS

• Internal training and prep for pilot

• Collaborate with CLL and Talis on CLL rule set for digitisation module

2 Pilot (Semester Two)

• Pilot with early adopters – at least one per faculty – to gauge likely

issues for larger rollout

• Explore integration with Learning Management Systems

3 Staggered rollout (Summer School 2016 onwards)

• Rollout with select faculties (eg, 1 easy, 1 complex) each Semester

• Learn about local issues in depth

• Revise service as we learn

Proposed Rollout

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Prepare to engage…


University requirement

• Mandated that all online access to readings be delivered via Talis lists

• Highlighted risk of personal liability if teaching staff do not comply

Teaching staff in control of process

• Create and invite others to collaborate on lists

• Publish when they wish (triggers acquisitions & lending processes)

• Request List Review if they wish

Library provides strong support

• Subject librarians provide training and advice

• Reading Lists team manage issues and backend processes

Course Reading Lists approach

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University selected Canvas as its new

LMS later in 2015

Decided to

• Pilot at the same time as us

(Semester 2)

• Require all UoA to switch to

Canvas for Semester One, 2016

See

https://www.canvaslms.com/

And along came Canvas…

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https://www.canvaslms.com/


If academics were introduced to Canvas before Talis, the risk would be:

• They don’t see the point of Talis

• They miss the benefits of saving time and being ‘copyright confident’

We adapted our plan:

• Canvas and Talis pilot and rollout time tables align (mostly)

• Extended pilot so that every subject librarian was required to line up

a pilot course

Amended rollout

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Big bang + Academic ownership = unique approach


Getting engagement


• Right people on the project Steering Committee

• Presentations and demos to all relevant high level committees

• Key messages University-wide via Vice Chancellor

• Messages in University-wide Canvas communications

Top down

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Senior staff “got it” once they saw a demonstration of how easy and useful Talis can be


• Team managers required to liaise with local Canvas

implementation to understand opportunities

• Opportunities vary widely between faculties, eg,

• One faculty required staff to attend Talis training, followed by Canvas

• Others took up Talis group sessions at a time that fitted their workload

• One-to-one Talis training particularly necessary where faculty are not always on campus

• Subject Librarians and team managers leverage their

relationships to get messages out, provide advice and support, and

get feedback

• Progress monitored via Talis Subject Librarian reps group

Bottom up

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Promotion and training

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Small team prepares materials to be used by all Subject Librarians

• Subject Librarians, Learning Support Librarian, Project support

person and chaired by Creative Arts team manager

Develop

• Key messages for communications

• Guides for self–teaching + and training plan and materials

• Teaching staff support website including FAQs

http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/talis/

Subject Librarians offer training according to the nature of the

faculty, sometimes integrated with Canvas training

http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/talis/


Easy

Simple to create, manage and update lists; request digitisation of

readings and monitor student engagement via analytics.

Copyright Compliant

Automatically checks copyright and meets new Copyright Licensing Ltd

survey reporting requirements, protecting both staff and the University.

Flexible

List structure and content can be customised to suit various teaching

styles. Resources can include library material, websites and a range of

multimedia.

Integrated

Lists can be embedded into Canvas ensuring resources are available in a

single location for students to easily access.

Key messages

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Risks to engagement


“Big bang” means fighting fires on many fronts at once

• Each faculty has its own organisational issues

• Every discipline has unique content requirements, eg Law materials,

Arts images, Business cases,

• Miss opportunities to tackle root cause of some problems

Project scope extended

• In Semester 2, teaching staff to use Talis to check CLL compliance in

other teaching materials, eg,

Teaching slides/PowerPoints

Course books

• Decision later reversed for more investigation

Risk: Project approach

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Managing early adopters on large scale

Positive:

• The lecturer who used our self help guide to make his course list sitting in the airport

Negative:

• The lecturer who chose to self-teach and whose unhappy experience was shared with colleagues on University Yammer

Skills of teaching staff

Difficulties with

• Finding information

• Technology basics

Risks: Teaching Staff

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Organisational change

• University librarian retiring

• Restructuring how we deliver Short Loan service

• Responsibilities shifting and changing

Risk: Other Library changes

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Benefits of Big bang approach to Canvas LMS

• Get change over with

• Everyone’s talking about content and copyright

• Leveraging off their communications and training opportunities

• Good will between key project people

Risks of simultaneous Talis + Canvas implementations

• Academics overwhelmed with workload and change overload

• Mixed messages about content and copyright

• Decisions sometimes did not consider impact on Talis

• LTI integration

• Cross-listing of course codes

Risk: Canvas LMS

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Strong University relationships – top to bottom

Right people on Steering Committee

Strong Commitment from Rollout Group

• Associate University Librarian (Access Services)

• Associate University Librarian (Collections)

• Reading Lists Transition Manager

• Subject Librarian managers

– One chairing Subject Librarian reps group

– One chairing Promo and training group

Reading Lists team formed to co-ordinating “backroom” and field

support calls

Strong commitment from Subject Librarians to do what it takes

Managing risk

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Feedback: 2 months into pilot


Student feedback

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Accessing readings


Staff feedback

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Confidence around list making


Staff feedback

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Staff feedback

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Staff comments

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Positive

• Looks professional

• A good system (“intuitive and pleasing”)

• Digitisation system worked well

• Great support from Subject Librarian

• Straightforward and useful

Not so positive…

• Time consuming (to create list from scratch)

• Slow page loading (early Canvas issue)

• Inability to display resources in desired referencing style

• Metadata needed cleaning up


Results to date


Arts, 160, 24%

Business & Economics, 85,

13%

Education & Social Work,

196, 29%

Engineering, 26, 4%

Law, 7, 1%

Medical & Health

Sciences, 59, 9%

NICAI, 24, 4%

Science, 107, 16%

Published lists:2016 Summer School, Q1, Semester 1


160

85

196

26 759

24

107

293

89

105

99

52

128147

206

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

500

Arts Business &Economics

Education &Social Work

Engineering Law Medical &Health

Sciences

NICAI Science

Comparison of Canvas courses with /without Lists for early 2016

Courses with lists

No list


0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

1/4/2016 1/11/2016 1/18/2016 1/25/2016 2/1/2016

2016 Pageviews to date


0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800

1/4/2016 1/11/2016 1/18/2016 1/25/2016 2/1/2016

2016 Sessions to date


Questions?

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Contact:

Eileen Tollan

Projects Librarian

[email protected]

5 February 2016