EDNER : Formative Evaluation of the DNER

a JISC funded project

STRAND A

Workpackage A1

Aim: To evaluate the 'fit' of JISC services and collections in the institutional Information Environment.

Description: Detailed case studies of MMU and Lancaster will be undertaken to determine the critical path between the roll-out of JISC resources and services and their use by teachers and learners in HE. This will involve:
· analysis of the emergence of resources in course materials, (including VLEs), reading lists and libraries
·interviews with teaching staff, librarians, students and learning technology advisers to determine facilitators and barriers to use of JISC resources, and to determine extent and types of use
·scenario testing by examining process of finding information to support model student assignments

This activity links to WP-C-1 in which the emphasis is on user impact.

Workpackage A2

Aim: To provide an independent assessment of the developing JISC Information Architecture (IA)

Description: The evaluation of the Information Architecture (IA) will be undertaken at both strategic and operational levels.

At a strategic level, the IA will be reviewed to determine the fit with JISC's long term strategy.

At the operational level, EDNER will focus on the IA's guiding principle, that the Architecture supports the development of single points of contact to multiple sources of information. Formative evaluation of the Information Architecture will be undertaken by identifying alternative DNER Usage Scenarios to test:

·DNER Functional Model (Enter - Survey - Discover - Detail - UseRecord - Request - UseResource)
·Baseline Portal Functional Specification
·DNER Institutional Profiling
·DNER Authentication and Authorisation Requirements
·Relationship between the Grids architecture and the DNER architecture
·Relationships between Virtual Learning Environment architectures and the DNER architecture

This activity links to WP-B-1 (Portal Technology Watch) and (B-2) (Portal integration and interoperability)

Workpackage A3

Aim: To analyse and monitor the JISC Information Environment as an enabling environment for the delivery of appropriate heterogeneous content from a stakeholder perspective.

Description: Different stakeholder perspectives will be analysed:

Information Environment Development Team, JISC committee members
·Document analysis
·Interviews
·Questionnaires

Institutional representatives - Lecturers, Librarians, Researchers, Learning & Teaching Units
·Document analysis
·Interviews
·Questionnaire

Information Environment developers
·Document analysis
·Interviews/Focus groups
·Suppliers, Service providers