JISC

Start date: 1 October 2004

End date: 30 September 2006

Funding programme: Support for e-Research programme

Project website: http://aria.dmu.ac.uk/

JISC theme(s): e-Research

Support for Arts and Humanities Researchers  

The project will review existing training and awareness provision and JISC funded collections, in parallel with a survey of perceived training needs, to identify potential sources of useful content, to define required new subject specific content and to exploit the cross disciplinary potential of content. The project team will collaborate closely with AHDS, RDN and the AHRB ICT Methods Network to ensure that synergies are obtained wherever possible. We aim to build on AHRB surveys of user needs for ICT in the arts and humanities and on existing ICT provision such as the RDN Virtual Training Suite and Netskills. We propose a team of 8 subject specialists with ICT expertise, mapped to the subjects covered by the AHRB , to advise on subject-specific ICT skills requirements and content availability, to assist with new content creation and to build relationships with the user community. 

An interactive road map will be developed providing access to a suite of nationally available on-line resources comprising existing training resources and new content. New content will be developed in consultation with AHDS to provide a mix of case studies, shorter examples, and pointers to in-house and third party training materials. In-house content will be encoded in XML format for presentation to users in a form customised for relevance to AHRB subject groupings in terms of the examples, illustrations and applications used. Subject specialists will provide examples and case study material relevant to their subject groups and will critically read draft materials to ensure subject relevance is paramount. 

Material will be a blend of self-study and tutor mediated options as appropriate. Study routes through material will not be prescribed but guidance will be offered and self-diagnostic tests will be provided to help users to make informed choices about their study requirements. Materials will be presented as text and image HTML pages conforming to W3C accessibility standards as far as possible, but allowing for elements such as animation, audio and video where necessary. All material will comply with UK e-GIF requirements with respect to metadata, participant information, runtime rules, assessment and accessibility. All content developed for the project will be subjected to user trials and the resulting service will be formatively assessed in the final year, resulting in an evaluation report and recommendations. In the final month the project assets will be migrated, by prior agreement, to AHDS.