Project Director
Nick Short, RVC

Project Manager
Sarah Sherman, Bloomsbury Colleges

Project Officer
Caroline Bell, RVC

Lead for Pedagogy
Tim Neumann, LKL

Lead for Research
Kim Whittlestone, RVC

Lead for Technology
David Flanders, Birkbeck

Partner Institutions

Project Details
2008-2009
Funder: JISC

Keywords
User & Innovation, Web 2.0, Technology adoption

bloomsbury.ac.uk/apt

APT STAIRS

The APT STAIRS project is an acronym for Appropriate and Practical Technologies for Students, Teachers, Administrators and Researchers.

The APT STAIRS project will support the identification, testing, refinement and implementation of new collaborative technologies to create a common space where users (students, teachers, administrators and researchers) with different skills can work online together. The project will, in particular, focus on the use of Google Docs and other online document creation tools as these are seen to be sufficiently appropriate and practical to ensure uptake and adoption across the six partners in the Bloomsbury Colleges consortium.

We will use JISC funding to run six demonstrator projects across the six Bloomsbury institutions. These demonstrator projects will examine how the latest online collaborative tools (Google Docs) can engage all users in supporting and developing learning, teaching, administration and research.

The overall aim of the project is to address how to bridge the technological gap between different user groups experience in the adoption of Web 2.0 tools.

Objectives

The following five objectives are planned to address the aim of this project:

• Research - Deriving a comprehensive overview of existing practice and the impact of new technologies across all the partner institutions

• Development - Adapting existing collaborative web technologies to ensure they meet the needs of key project stakeholders

• Implementation - Introducing and trialling the use of collaborative online tools in a range of different HE scenarios

• Evaluation - Using established JISC procedures to monitor the impact, benefits and lessons learnt during the project

• Dissemination - Making the results of the research and development available both internally and to the wider external audience.

The APT STAIRS core project team

Outputs

• Analysis and publication of data on the use of new web technologies
• Bloomsbury showcases demonstrating the technologies
• Open work shop to present outcomes to the wider education community

Outcomes

• Empowering users to work and support each other using appropriate and practical technologies to the bridge the "gap"
• Institutions moving beyond the PowerPoint and VLE model of e-learning to more progressive technologies, such as Google Apps, Wikis and blogs.
• To support rapid development of e-learning tools.