UKOLN Institutional Web Management Workshop

Metadata - Has The Time Arrived?


This document gives a draft proposal for the half-day session on "Metadata - Has The Time Arrived?".

The session is expected to attract 15-20 participants.

Abstract: An important role of the institutional web site is to attract new students. Political changes together with the growth of the Internet is resulting in increasing competition for students - we can no longer rely on 18 year-olds automatically attending a UK University. The UK HE Mall aims to provide an entry point to UK Universities for potential students. It will help students choose not just the right university but also help in choosing the right course.

The HE Mall will require more than a simple HTML page with links to UK University web sites. It is likely that the Mall will make use of metadata to provide rich and effective browsing and searching capabilities.

Institutions will also gain benefits from the provision of metadata on their web sites, as this will enable more effective local searching, browsing and management services to be provided.

This session will provide an opportunity to find out more about the HE Mall and to discuss the implications for institutional web managers.

Workshop Session Aims: The aims of the session are:

Participants involved in organising the session are Brian Kelly, Chris Harris and Alan Robiette. In addition the following may also contribute: Paula Shutkever (editor of StudentUK), Ed Zedlewski (NISS), and Charlotte Jenkins.

Proposed Timetable

Time Session Comments Who
2.00-2.15 Introduction Discussion of aims of session:
Slides [HTML] - [Powerpoint]		 BK
2.15-2.35 Group exercises A - Discovering Your Web Site:
Exercise		 All
2.35-2.40 Report back Report back from groups Rapporteurs
2.40-2.55 The UK HE Mall Talk Alan Robiette (TBC)
2.55-3.25 Challenges Facing The UK HE Mall B - Group exercises in MS Word format:
Management Challenges - Implementing Solutions - Technical Solutions		 All
3.25-3.30 Report Back Report back from groups Rapporteurs
3.30-3.45 Tea - -
3.45-4.15 Solutions to the challenges C - Group exercises in MS Word format
24 Hour Museum - Business Models - Automated Feeds - Portal Management Systems - LinkBank - Open Source versus Licensed Solutions - Automated Classification (not available) - Metadata Generation		 All
4.15-4.30 Report Back Report back on group work. Rapporteurs
4.30-5.00 30 mins not yet allocated -  
5.00-5.30 "Where To From Here?" Group Discussion  

Draft Programme

The following Draft programme for the individual sessions is proposed. Comments welcome.

Introduction - BK
Speaker introduces himself. Explains aims of the half-day session.
Getting To Know Each Other
People introduce themselves and state what they want from the day.
Discovering Your Web Site - Group Exercise
Split into groups (of about 4). Work on the paper / hands-on exercise concerned with the ways in which potential students find out more about universities using.
Exercise: A - How Users Find Out About Your University discovery.doc not available
Report Back
Report Back on group exercises.
The UK HE Mall Alan Robiette (TBC)
Speaker to talk for 15 minutes on the UK HE Mall.
Challenges Facing Corporate University Web Sites and The HE Mall - Group Exercises
Group exercises to identify the challenges facing corporate University web sites and the HE Mall.
Exercises:
(B1) Management Challenges Within Institutions [Word format]
(B2) Implementing Solutions [Word format]
(B3) Technical Solutions [Word format]
Issues Facing University Management (led by Chris Harris, Newcastle)
Review of the exercises led by Chris Harris
Coffee Break
Natural break for coffee?
Group Work All
Group exercises to try and solve some of the challenges. Groups choose one from several exercises:
Report Back
Report back on the exercises.
"Where To From Here?"
Discussions on next steps for individuals, for institutions and for national bodies.

Workshop Venue

The workshop session will require a PC cluster and a networked PC with Powerpoint and a web browser with a projection device and an OHP for use by the speakers. Flipcharts will be needed for the discussion groups. The workshop session should be based in a PC cluster for the hands-on session.

Note that it is not possible to install additional software in the cluster.

Workshop Participants

The following should be approached:

Workshop Topics

It is suggested that the following topics are covered.

Personalised Services
e.g. MyYahoo, My Netscape, My AltaVista
Metadata Tools
e.g. Charlotte Jenkin's Automatic RDF Metadata Generator
Related Services
e.g. UCAS, Student World, HESA, The Higher Education Web, StudentUK, Times Good University Guide, NISS, NAMSS, UK Map, JANET's list of Universities, etc., SOSIG's list of Social Science departments
Searching Across Universities
AltaVista search for "prospectus in .uk domain, ACDC, Search across Scottish Universities, UKIndex, SearchUK - e.g. see this, UK including this GEM,
Other Relevant Organisations
e.g. National Grid for Learning Becta, British Council, University for Industry
Automated Feeds
WHSmith's Portal

Useful Resources

See the hemall-discussion Mailbase list.

Scoping Study and Steering Group pages.

Other issues:

Maintained by Brian Kelly, UKOLN
Last updated on 21-Sep-1999

Email comments to B.Kelly@ukoln.ac.uk