1. BLA Conference Innovations In  the Virtual Learning Environment; supporting students from Cass Business School
Set up
Powerpoint
Cass Library Services Moodle Module – student view
MBA Course
Law Course
Redesign
Introduce selves
Samantha:
Today we’re going to give you…
- An overview of current module
Discuss our development plans
And recent best practice review
And leave you with our Top tips for running a VLE module introducing students to your library services.
Suzanne Griffiths
Electronic Resources Manager
Samantha Halford
Subject Librarian (Cass Ugs)*

2. Cass Library Services Moodle Module
Suzanne
Principles
1. Support for Cass students : PG (PhD, MBA, MSc) and UG
2. Supplements library training sessions
3. Content: Induction materials, Research Support, Finance Databases Zones, Special Database passwords, Employability, Certification, Training workshop recordings and News
4. Dip in Dip out, as needed
Layout
5. Typical of School modules,3 Columns,Help, Content, Quick-links
6. Access to Cass Library Services and Databases highly visible in every single Moodle module
7. Every student automatically enrolled after registration

3. Cass Library Services Module Statistics
4,968 people enrolled in module
200 PhDs, 1800 MScs, 2300 UGs, other 700
65% of students enrolled use module
Student and Library Staff Activity
55,173 activities in past year
Peak usage: November
Peak activities:
Library Postings – 8,619 Views
Passwords for databases - 2,061 Views
Database by Topic – 911 views
Suzanne
Our module supports 5,000 students. It is one of the largest Moodle Modules in Cass Business School.
Students are automatically enrolled in the course in September each year.
We were very pleased to discover that 65% of students use the course.
Moodle has excellent report and Statistics production which enable us to determine how much students engage with the module and what is popular and what is not.

4. Administration Challenges Library staff: 3 Weekly activity:
Postings, answering queries, uploading materials
Annual activity:
prep for new intake, development review, enrolment
Challenges
Designing a module that is not core curriculum (no credit)
Systems can crash when updating & downloading reports
Suzanne
Supporting the module requires weekly support through out the year from myself, the undergraduate librarian and the research librarian, although the research librarian is in the process of setting up a Moodle course for just PhDs.
Postings are scheduled and sent to all students every Tuesday and we try not to do more than 2 postings a week.
Postings cover a variety of topics : training, database of the month, services promotion, trials etc.
Every summer the content has to be reviewed and updated. The Learning Development team process the enrolments.
Challenges:
although students are automatically enrolled, there is no credits awarded for participation. It is a challenge to engage students with the material.
Running reports for 5000 students has caused crashes and special request have to be placed with our IT team to get the data we need.

5. New Features
Lecture capture recordings of Student Led Training sessions
Weekly postings on the ‘news’ forum (very popular)
Highlights section for specific resources
Library FAQ public forums (not popular at all)
Database trials
Overviews of Financial Resources Zones
Employability section
Revamped Cass Library Certification (surprisingly unpopular)
Samantha
Suzanne and I inherited a set-up module from colleagues you may remember, Carolyn Smith and Helen Rimmer, nee Westwood. We added some new features.
[talk from slide]
Extra:
Cass Library Certification
Online tutorial/tests with certificate on completion
Grew out of well-attended face-to-face sessions
Takes a lot of time to check/update
Not much use by students – only 18 students used last year

6. Development Plans Low use areas identified Feedback Gathered Students
Library Staff
Learning and Development (Ed Tech)
Best Practice Review
Captured in a Development Plan
Suzanne
Although innovations have been undertaken in the last two years, these have done informally to reflect changes in the library services and resources.
We wanted to step back and assess the module for a more structured and longer term development.
We began with a review of activities ……
The plan is being written up and then will be approved for implementation over the next academic year.

7. Best Practice Review MBA Module: Dr Sionade Robinson
Valuation and Management of Customer Relationships
Rules of engagement with module clearly laid out
Flipped Learning – pre work essential, class time discussion
Clean design/latest news
Variety of content
Pre recorded Lectures with Slides
Videos/Case studies/reports
Images/websites
Guest lectures
Suzanne
Samantha to open MBA Module.
Demonstrate above points in Module review

8. Best Practice Review Law: Dr Stephen Truxal (featuring Emily Allbon)
Distance course, Foundations of Law
Intro videos touring you around the module and library resources
Plenty of videos, filmed outside around London locations
Calendar to highlight events
Samantha
Samantha to open LAW Module.
Demonstrate above points in Module review

9. Module Redesign Suzanne Samantha to switch to this module
Development Plans
Cass Library Redesign
1.Early stages
2. Change from 3 column to 2 column layout
3. Sign posting -Drop down headings so easier to navigate and core content kept to 2 pages

10. Finally… Top Tips Make it visible Get support from library managers
Ours is linked from side-bar for every Cass module
Get support from library managers
Takes a lot of time to set up and do well day to day
Get support from your Moodle admins
Help & advice from them saves huge amounts of time
Get feedback from your users
They can always spot an improvement you can’t
Research and Experiment
Best practice
Most successful part of ours is our messages – we had no idea how much students would like it
Samantha
Talk quickly through the slide, and then –
Any questions?