Section 4: Final evaluation results
4.1 Project achievements
4.2 Organizational issues
4.3 Learning and teaching
4.4 Cultural change and impact on behaviourFeedback from our user community was solicited on four main aspects of the Project's activity:
- Web site and resources
- nls-forum mini-conferences
- institution-based awareness-raising and stimulation activities
- online course design and delivery
The 1st and 2nd Annual Reports include evaluation reports on activities carried out up to August 1997. Appendix 5 of this report presents longer-term feedback on the Project from Phase 1 co-ordinators, and participant feedback on the on-line course is presented in Appendix 2 of this report.
In the sections below, we draw attention to key evaluation issues for the Project.
4.1 Project achievements
We believe the main successes of the Project are as follows:
- Creation of a valuable Web-based resource.
- Organization and facilitation of a highly-regarded series of on-line professional development "conferences."
- Design and delivery of a highly regarded, innovative, on-line professional development course; the overall pedagogic model of the course has subsequently been adopted by an EU-funded project, DEDICATE , and project staff are involved in that programme.
- Awareness-raising through publications and conference presentations.
Through these activities, the Project has reached a wide national and international audience, and has stimulated a range of concrete NLS initiatives in UK institutions of higher education. Of more limited success, however, were the Project's efforts to provide the impetus for institutional change through the creation and support of a network of local NLS co-ordinators. Our hope, too, that the on-line community of interest for NLS might be self-sustaining, in terms of willingness and capacity to take forward further development of on-line professional development activities and resources, has also proved (perhaps not surprisingly, given the lack of resource to stimulate such involvement) over-optimistic. The "network animation" role, which was taken on by the Project and which was crucial to the success of the e-mail-based conferences and the use of the Web-based conferencing facilities - as well as to the development of a learning community within the formal course framework and to the creation and maintenance of the Web site - has not been taken on by members of the Project's user group. Use of nls-forum without facilitation of discussion via mini-conferences is limited to sporadic information dissemination by members, and it became clear that active support for users of the COW conferencing system was also required.
4.2 Organizational issues
The NetLinkS Research Report (http://netways.shef.ac.uk/rbase/reports/ section5.html#reso) outlines organizational issues reported by staff involved in developing NLS and networked learning in 1995-6, and to a large extent, despite progress at institutional level in terms of strategic planning and stimulation of innovation, these issues would appear to be current still in many institutions.
The key issues continue to be:
- Senior managers' involvement: for innovations in practice that have such major implications for cultural change as those of training and awareness Projects such as NetLinkS, a greater degree of involvement in the overall programme (i.e., at the eLib level) is clearly desirable. This is desirable at the library and information support services level and, most importantly, at the institutional level. Motivation for such involvement can only be brought about where senior managers perceive some direct benefit to the institution and exhortation on the basis of a vaguely defined "good" is unlikely to succeed.
- Diversity of institutions: the diversity of organizational types, administrative structures, convergence and non-convergence of services, etc., is such as to preclude the possibility of one approach and one programme being able to satisfy all. A greater degree of keying interventions and services to local requirements is necessary.
- Strategic planning: if cultural change is to be achieved, it can only be within a strategic move within institutions towards networked-based learning in general. Strategic teaching and learning plans, must embody networked learner support, if those plans are to be effectively realised and to succeed.
- Cross-disciplinary collaboration: networked learner support demands collaborative activity between IT services, information support staff and academic staff. No one of these groups can independently deliver the range of support needed. One of the major advantages of the NetLinkS Project was the availability of a multi-disciplinary team in support the networked learners on its on-line course.
4.3 Learning and teaching
NetLinkS has, from its inception, focused on awareness-raising about new learner support roles and practices for the networked learning environment. Amongst a number of activities and resources which the Project developed to support this awareness-raising, an innovative model for on-line professional development in LIS was designed and tested which itself focuses on learning and teaching issues in the networked environment. Participants on the course emphasised the importance to them of gaining practical understanding of new processes of learning and teaching, in order that they are able to participate fully in the development of appropriate learner support for the new environment. The experiential nature of the course was valued for this reason, and we are optimistic that the model will prove appropriate for further initiatives in networked continuing professional development in our field: indeed, as noted above in relation to the DEDICATE project, it already is having such an impact.
4.4 Cultural change and impact on behaviour
The impact of a Project of this kind is very difficult to ascertain without a large amount of resource devoted to follow-up research, and, indeed two other eLib projects, TAPin and IMPEL have been specifically concerned with identifying the factors associated with cultural change. However, there is considerable evidence, in the literature and on international mailing lists, including nls-forum, that the concept of 'networked learner support' (a term coined by the managers of the NetLinkS project) has attained the status of a commonly discussed and generally understood concept. This has been largely due to the high international profile of the Project and the extensive dissemination activities carried out by Project staff.
Feedback from our user community also suggests that, where certain conditions exist (such as a higher level of institutional and/or senior management support) the concept and the practice are entering into the everyday life of the library and the institution. We have also made serendipitous discoveries of evidence of the impact of NetLinkS in internal developments within some institutions, e.g., in documentation prepared by information services staff for internal and external bids for funding to implement NLS-related activity reference is made to the concept, the Project and/or to individuals' involvement in the on-line course.
[Contents] [Section 1] [Section 2] [Section 3] [Section 4] [Section 5] [Appendices]
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last updated 12th December 1998