The Northern Collaboration 2014 Conference – Report by Kath Black, Durham University
The Northern Collaboration Conference was hosted by Teesside University at its Darlington Campus, on 5thSeptember 2014.
Liz Jolly, the Director of Library Services at Teesside, offered us a warm welcome to the University and after a short introduction to the conference, the keynote address was given by Derfel Owen, Head of Academic Policy & Standards at Exeter University. In his address, ‘Great Expectations: Working in Partnership with Students’, he outlined the benefits in working in partnership with students. By using statistics Derfel demonstrated how the majority of students surveyed were satisfied with their contact time and felt that it was their responsibility to engage with their institution. Derfel then went on to discuss the process of engaging with students, through respect, understanding, trust and empowerment, exploring how we establish if students want to engage and how, through trust, a partnership with students can be developed.
The first breakout session,‘Is email dead? The future of student engagement and social media’ was led by Jessica Stephens from the University of York. Jessica explored how the use of social media could be used to develop a relationship with students through the conversational nature of social media, and can be an effective way to reach and engage with students. She discussed how using the right tools and being responsive to students is critical in engaging with them. Jessica argued that although email still has a central place in communicating with students social media should now also be seen as a core activity.
The second break out session that I attended was‘Roving student assistants at Edge Hill University’ by Michael Stores, an Academic Liaison and Skills Librarian at Edge Hill.He discussed his experiences of engaging with students by using roving assistants. Students were employed to engage with other students at the library and other sites such as the student hub, carrying information and iPads to meet and engage with students with a short interaction such as ‘can I help you?’ and to offer a small snippet of information to introduce library facilities and see if the students had any enquires. The roving student assistants had a base, the enquiries desk, where they could gain some support if required.To make them distinctive from the non-student staff in their navy uniform, the roving student assistants had a red uniform, so that they could be easily identified, as well as being given banners and other publicity materials to advertise their locations via social media.
Roving Student assistants had regular team meetings to review their work, receiving feedback and ideas to improve services and embed the partnership between the Student Assistants and the Library, which is further enforced by an exit interview, reviewing their experiences and the skills that they have developed working as Roving Assistants.
The final break out session, ‘Eureka, ice cream and Librarygame: student driven innovation and gamification at the University of Manchester Library’, was led by Nicholas Campbell, Academic Engagement Librarian & Ciaran Talbot, Library Systems Manager, both based at the University of Manchester. This session explored two ways in which the Manchester University Library has attempted to engage students. The Library had taken active steps to engaging with students by putting together an innovation group as a platform for ideas with a student focus. This lead to the development of a student focussed event. Eureka! Eureka! is a Dragon’s Den style event which allowed students to put forward ideas which they felt would improve library services. These ideas would be judged by a panel of students, library staff and other key members of the library and the finalists have an opportunity to put forward their ideas at an awards ceremony. The awards ceremony is a major event, which was hosted by comedian and poet Phill Jupitus. Ideas that reached the final included a sleep zone for users, an e reader library and a library app. The wining idea for 2013 was ‘book a space’, where students could book a space in the library so they were guaranteed a place to study. Other successful ideas from the Eureka project include ‘book bins’ in halls of residence, and ‘quick win’ ideas such as book trollies for students to carry books in while they are in the library, or text book rescue, where old textbooks are donated to the library, for a free ‘book sale’ for new students in the new academic year who can select text books that they need. Benefits from the Eureka project include developing students’ skills in producing a business case, highlighting the library’s profile, and the development of new partnerships with students, the University and the wider community. This was then followed by Manchester University Library’s other major innovation in student engagement, a library based ‘social media’. Students will be given a home page that they could develop and the ability to connect with other students. The page is designed to encourage the use of library facilities, with the development of subject ‘badges’ to collect, and a feature on the page called the lemon tree. The lemon tree grows and develops leaves and fruit when library services are used or the page is used. Students can also use the page to recommend books and review books to encourage other students to engage. The lemon tree game was due to be piloted in early October 2014.
The closing keynote addresswas delivered by Ann Rossiter, Executive Director, SCONUL. Ann explored the nature of collaboration and how that it is human nature to collaborate. She reflected that collaboration, rather than being a carefully constructed symphony, was in fact more like a jazz piece with individuals each producing a unique sound but creating a harmony. She discussed the dialectical approach to collaboration, leaving space for disagreement, using empathy to understand what is being said which allows an understanding of the complexity of the topic. Ann argued that this method could be difficult to apply in a work situation, and from this she explored the Dialogical method of communication, to acknowledge conflict at the start of discussions and reaching collaboration through understanding and the use of informal discussion.
The conference was excellent, very interesting and a great opportunity to gain ideas to help develop student engagement and services for students. I would like to thank the Northern Collaboration for the opportunity to attend.