Learning Lab

General improvements

The Learning Lab in July saw some focused uplift following discoveries, investigations and consultation from earlier in the year. These include broad architectural improvements.

• Migration of videos, currently ongoing, from the Learning Lab to playlists in YouTube
• Updated footer, responsive design with links to key content pages and logo assertion of RMIT library as owner
• Added public Latest updates page with this information
• Addition of “Ask the Library” support as a replacement to other support offerings
• The Library Digital Learning team facilitated library user archetype workshops with team members and leaders to investigate better pathways for navigation and taxonomy
• Some further development on law resources following feedback from teachers in College of Business and Law
• Taxonomy implementation and design uplift.

Maths resources uplift

The ongoing improvement of the maths pages in the Learning Lab continues with learning modules being converted from PDF to accessible HTML.

Formatting and styles on these pages have been updated to provide a more consistent and accessible experience. These changes have extended across the Learning Lab and are a welcome improvement throughout the site.

The menu pages have all been updated to a more user-friendly list format, moving away from obscuring this content within accordions. We have begun adding short descriptions of each page to these menus to make it easier for users to identify the content that they need. Don't worry about those poor, lost accordions though. They have found a more useful purpose, logically ‘hiding’ the answers to quizzes in the maths pages until the user chooses to reveal them.

Behind the scenes

Customer Experience (CX) workshops

The RMIT University Library Digital Learning Team have run 4 workshops with over 30 members of the RMIT Library Learning teams. The workshops have two formats, one for small groups and one for larger groups. Regardless of the group size, the workshops ask participants to think about how the 7 library user types, identified in the Library's Digital Experience Plan, and how these users find and interact with the Learning Lab.

Using Teams breakout groups and Miro boards, we have structured an interactive and informative way for participants to think of existing and novel ways to engage users in the Learning Lab and to improve their experience of learning objects when they are there. These workshops have been critical insights as the Learning Team provide front-line support and resources to students and have unique insights on the RMIT student need. 

The Digital Learning Team have received some invaluable feedback and direction on:

• Reaching user types to make them aware of the Learning Lab
• Improving the experience of users once they are on the Learning Lab
• Ideas about how we can best structure the resources
• Insight into taxonomy and how we can best use tags to improve the user experience
• Missing resources – sought after information that would benefit the student cohort.

Art and Design

Work has commenced on developing materials for foundation skills in Art and Design, including uplift of the 'Artist statement' materials and colour theory - watch this space.

What's coming

• Pedagogical templates to provide better User Interface (UI) waypoints for students undertaking learning activites
• Contributors style and writing guide to facilitate the development of new resources
• Export and distribution of materials in the Learning Lab to Canvas Commons
• A new home page and navigation stucture to better support current user flows (finally).

Thanks for watching

As ever, the Library is keen to build foundation digital learning resources that support students in their studies, if you have a suggestion, new resource or wish to contribute to the Learning Lab, use this form to get in touch with the Digital Learning Team or email us.