Social Networking and Repositories: Engaging the user in the development of the Carrick Exchange

Rob Phillips, Educational Designer, Teaching and Learning Centre and Senior Consultant to the Carrick Exchange, Murdoch University, South St, Murdoch, Western Australia, 6150. Email: r.phillips@murdoch.edu.au

Abstract

The Carrick Institute was established by the Australian Government as the national focus for promoting learning and teaching in higher education. A key priority is to develop mechanisms for the identification, dissemination and embedding of good individual and institutional practices at a national and international level, and the Carrick Exchange will be the mechanism through which this is achieved.

The Carrick Exchange is intended to be more than just another repository. It will be a set of online services to provide social-networking and collaboration, resource contribution and sharing, search and discovery, and peer review and commentary across the Australian higher education sector. The Carrick Exchange will provide:

Access to quality resources that support teaching and learning by searching and browsing
Access to learning materials for sharing and repurposing
Information about new technologies that impact on teaching practice and student learning experiences
Ideas about learning and teaching practice
Opportunities to network with other academics with similar interests in group spaces
The ability to save resources and search results to a personalised MyExchange area
Opportunities to comment on and exchange ideas about the relevance and usefulness of particular teaching resources and to view the comments of others
Opportunities to participate in discussions, debates and dialogue about teaching in higher education

The Carrick Exchange services are being developed in consultation with the higher education sector, guided by the principles of co-production with user communities. The project team involves Carrick Institute staff, technical architects, individual experts and professional bodies. Development began through the use of scenarios and a static, web-based ‘demonstrator’. The scenarios were validated through a Think Tank held in September 2006. Feedback from this, and other, activities was used to inform the development of Use Cases, which were validated through expert review. This feedback is informing the development of the Carrick Exchange, which is currently well underway.

This presentation will demonstrate and discuss the concepts behind the Carrick Exchange, outline the development process, and seek feedback from the AusWeb community about its functionality and barriers facing its success, with a goal of inviting involvement in ongoing development.

For more information about the Carrick Exchange, contact info@carrickexchange.edu.au

Copyright

<Rob Phillips>, © 2007. The authors assign to Southern Cross University and other educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The authors also grant a non-exclusive licence to Southern Cross University to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM and in printed form with the conference papers and for the document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web.