Jo Myhill from University of Bedfordshire will be speaking at our London Open day
University of Bedfordshire rolled out their Reading Lists service using Talis Aspire Reading Lists in 2013. A year on, they have already made some significant progress towards their objective to support a high quality student experience.
Jo Myhill will be joining us to talk about their journey, at our London Open Day on 27th November. Ahead of that, I had asked Jo to share a little about herself and University of Bedfordshire. Here are some responses from Jo, in her own words:
Please introduce yourself and tell us about your role at the University of Bedfordshire.
Hello, I’m Jo Myhill and I’m the Head of Academic Liaison at the University of Bedfordshire. That means I manage, guide and support the team of Academic Liaison Librarians who support information literacy, collection development, resource management and research support. I was also the project manager for introducing Talis Aspire and now oversee the continued maintenance and development of Talis Aspire.
What do you see is the main role of library in supporting teaching and learning at the University of Bedfordshire?
For us, it’s about ensuring we have the right resources the students are expected to read, that we have the right services to enable them to access the resources and that we can encourage them through information literacy teaching and guidance to go beyond that recommended reading and find out what else is out there. To do that we need to really proactive and positive relationships with our academic teams and professional services like our teaching and learning team, Quality Assurance and faculty admin.
What are the key benefits for the University of Bedfordshire, realised, so far, from using Talis Aspire Reading Lists and Digitised content.
Where to start? I think for us it’s the possibilities that the software can offer us to really enhance reading lists and make them a learning tool and not just a shopping list of citations. Students should be able to now easily and quickly find what they need to read, for academics it allows them to explain how that particular reading will expand their knowledge and how they can use specific readings in seminars and discussion.
What are your key objectives for the library in the next 12 months?
To continue selling to academics, adding lists, modifying our backroom activity to streamline process, gather statistics on use of resources and embed and encourage reading in the curriculum, so that student’s can continue developing really strong academic skills in evaluation, critical analysis, argument construction etc.
Briefly, what can people expect to hear from you on the 27th November, at the Talis Open day?
Our work on reading lists has been driven by the University Academic Resource and Reading Strategy; the strategy is part of the University response to improving the National Student Survey results. The Strategy has shaped our approach to using Talis Aspire as more than just a tool to create and disseminate reading lists.
You can hear more from Jo and about how they are using Reading Lists at University of Bedfordshire at our London Open Day. If you have not signed up yet, you can still register here.
If you would like to hear from Jo about anything more specific or have questions for her, please use the comments section below.
