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What's New in SkillCity?Communication Skills in University Education conference 2004 POSTED 14.6.03The CSUE 2004 conference is to be held from the 8th to 10th July 2004 at the International Dateline Hotel in Tonga. For more information please contact Emmanuel Manalo: e.manalo@auckland.ac.nz Information about the CSUE 2002 conference, hosted by the CUTSD team at the University of New South Wales in October is available here, and on the csue bulletin board on this site.Comm Skills Newsletter, POSTED August 2003 Dear Team Members and SkillCity Contributors,Well, it has been a long time since the last newsletter was sent out to you all, so we have quite a few bits and pieces of news to catch up on. I am back keeping the project ticking over from here in the UK, just as Emma has disappeared off to a remote Cambodian village on a stint of voluntary work. Since the CSUE conference in early October 2002, when there was a large peak of activity (to include the relaunch of the new-look SkillCity and the addition of many new materials and reviews), things have obviously quietened down, although there is still lots going on behind the scenes. In this newsletter we report on the following:
Number of Hits on SkillCity
Well done to the team at IAAF, UWA who have made the usage stats for SkillCity available to all those who are interested. There was a massive peak of hits in September 2002, around the time of the CSUE Open Space conference. Since then, things have cooled off somewhat, as expected, although the site gets well over 100 hits most months. To access the SkillCity Stats report, click on the following link: http://skillcity.iaaf.uwa.edu.au/stats/
Evaluation of the Comm Skills Project
Catherine McLoughlin is currently working on writing an evaluation of the Comm Skills Project - the outputs of the project and lessons learnt - for the Australian Universities Teaching Committee of DEST - and she is aiming to have this review completed in the next few weeks. So, please respond to her survey on how useful you find SkillCity. She will be presenting a paper outlining her findings at the ODLAA (Online and Distance Learning Assoc of Australia) conference to be held in Canberra, 1-4th October.
SkillCity and Mac users
Will and Emma have been working on getting SkillCity to work consistently when Mac users endeavour to submit material, as there have been a few problems in the past. It has now been decided that the web team at IAAF will buy and implement a software package, which should help to iron out these problems completely. Many thanks to Guy and Nguyen for pursuing this problem and finding a potential resolution.
More publicity for SkillCity
1) SkillCity Poster Will and I are currently working on the design of a poster promoting SkillCity, which we can use to advertise at relevant conferences. One goal for the coming few months is to launch SkillCity in the northern hemisphere, the UK and US in particular. The poster may end up being not only for conferences but for posting in academic staff development units, disciplinary departments, etc. We will have to look at costs of production and distribution. You can help in this effort.
2) Launch of SkillCity in US and UK Now that there are plenty of materials and reviews on SkillCity, we plan to promote SkillCity outside of Australia, starting in the US and UK (as noted above). We hope to do this by sending out short announcements in newsletters and e-mailouts through listservs relevant to the communication skills, generic skills, and graduate attributes areas. In addition, we intend to publicise via listservs for those in specific disciplines who are interested in teaching. For example, academics in public health have long been sharing teaching materials via e-mail. We suspect that science academics in the UK and US also have active listservs on teaching.
New Materials
Several new materials have been added to SkillCity recently. In particular, you will see activities and other useful teaching resources by Judy Maxwell, research articles by Barbara de la Harpe and John Wyber, as well as some useful Internet resource websites submitted by Roger Hadgraft and Sue Starfield, amongst others. To view the materials page - click on the following link: http://skillcity.iaaf.uwa.edu.au/materials_list.aspx
Please feel free to comment on any of the materials on SkillCity as we are always looking for 'reviewers'. The review process may feel daunting before you start, but once you open up the review page for material mounted on SkillCity, your writing juices will flow, and a very respectable review can be produced in no time!
We hope to keep you up-to-date on the Comm Skills Project developments over the next few months. If you have any comments or suggestions, or you can help in any way, please get in touch with Will willrifkin@unsw.edu.au or myself. Many thanks, Pippa Shuff Communication Skills Project E-mail: outreach@unsw.edu.au |