EDNER Project - Project Structure

EDNER : Formative Evaluation of the DNER

a JISC funded project

Project Structure

The EDNER project is operating through two phases and four strands:

Phase 1 ran from August 2000 to December 2001
Phase 2 ran from January 2002 to July 2003

Strand A: Evaluation of the JISC Information Environment as an enabling environment

Strand B: Evaluation of the JISC Subject Portals

Strand C: The impact of the JISC Information Environment on learning & teaching

Strand X: Cross-project activity, including project management and dissemination

Phase 1: Summary of Findings

The following is a summary of the key issues raised through the first phase of EDNER's work. More detailed information is available from specific EDNER Reports:

Strand A

Ambiguities over the nature, elements and boundaries of the DNER and implications for stakeholder consultation
The use of varied terminology relating to types of DNER entities and the need for semantic interoperability across JISC elements of the DNER
Students' use of search engines in preference to subject gateways
The surfacing of DNER resources in the teaching community in an inconsistent, and often inaccurate, manner

Strand B

the coherence of the developing DNER subject portals
the applicability of JISC/DNER definition of 'portal' in the context of broader national and international and commercial developments
the potential growth in HE and FE institutional portals
the asynchronous mapping of subject portals to the organisation of courses in HE and FE
the behaviour of users in locating resources,
the lack of a single DNER portal
the feasibility of cross searching large numbers of heterogeneous databases
the definition and perception of 'quality' and quality assurance mechanisms
the long-term sustainability of the DNER subject portals currently under development.

Strand C

the majority of the 5/99 L&T projects being relatively silent about pedagogy
an identified need at both programme and project level to address take up, use and improvement of learning.
an identified need to clarify relationships between technological innovation and educational design, which may help in improving the management and dissemination of DNER activity across the programme

Strand X

A complete list of EDNER reports, publications and other dissemination activity is available on the Dissemination page.

Phase 2: Summary of findings

Strand A

The architectural design which underpins the JISC IE needs to be driven by the tasks and activities which users perform or wish to perform, rather than by content and services
There is no one pattern of information usage. Behaviour varies across different subject disciplines and according to academic status
Gaps in provision of information resources for particular subject areas need to be addressed
The information needs of teachers, learners and researchers in individual disciplines need to be assessed before appropriate resources can be provided

Strand B

A proliferation of portal features has led to cluttered and congested interfaces. Thus users may need different portals for different purposes rather than the one-stop-shop

Strand C

Awareness and use of digital resources is low among teachers and learners, but higher among librarians and support professionals
Involving intended users is critical to the success of information resources development
Simple access to resources does not necessarily remove barriers to their acceptance

Key Issues Papers

During its work, the EDNER team has identified a considerable number of key issues which need to be addressed by members of the community. Where these are issues of general concern to practitioners (such as tutors or researchers) and local developers (such as those building local portals or gateways) the team has written very short Issues Papers. These are freely available for downloading from the Key Issues Papers page of this site.

Information about EDNER+, the one-year extension to the EDNER project can be found at http://www.cerlim.ac.uk/projects/iee/