Excellence Gateway
This case study was produced by JISC RSC (Regional Support Centres) London on behalf of the Excellence Gateway.
Sector relevance: Further education colleges
Keywords: Improving teaching and learning, improving responsiveness to learners, learning centres and library services, curriculum good practice, planning and resources, virtual learning environment, VLE
Subject Finder was an original idea of Teum Teklehaimanot, a member of Lambeth's Learning Resources team, when he was himself a student and considering options for a web design course project. The subsequent development of Subject Finder as an education-based web directory and search engine has also been driven by his personal interest and commitment to providing a student-friendly Internet search tool. It is now becoming an embedded tool within the College's virtual learning environment to support Lambeth's students across a variety of disciplines.
Lambeth College is a large inner city further education college in the London Borough of Lambeth. It operates from three main centres, in Brixton, Clapham and Vauxhall and over 20 other venues, including community and employer premises.
Lambeth College is embarking on an ambitious multi-million pound redevelopment of its estate. A new Sixth Form building at the Clapham Centre is due to open in September 2009 and there are plans for a new technology centre at Brixton Hill.
The College has a wide range of provision including a small amount of adult and community learning for the London Borough of Lambeth, foundation degrees funded through universities and work for local employers. Lambeth College has Centre of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) status for Construction and Administration, Finance and Management.
The 2008 Ofsted Inspection rated the College as ‘outstanding' in the areas of its response to education and social inclusion; equality of opportunity; meeting the needs and interests of learners; pastoral support for learners and Governance. It also identified many areas as ‘Good' which included teaching and learning and the overall effectiveness provision.
In his current role in Learning Resources at Lambeth College, Teum Teklehaimanot helps train students and staff in IT and helps them get the most out of technology applications. He is well placed to observe the challenge new students face in finding appropriate subject-related information on the Internet using the most popular search engines.
Teum and other members of staff are often presented with the same queries from each cohort of students. As well as saving staff time dealing with generic search-related questions, Subject Finder helps students become more independent learners whilst returning reliable online resources for their subject area.
The main development of Subject Finder was undertaken during 2003-04 prompted by Teum's own experience as a learner and as his Level 3 course project in web design. Whilst ‘not aiming to compete with Google,' says Teum, the idea was to develop a search tool that returned authoritative sources of information appropriate for students in sixth forms and further and higher education.
As well as the technological development Teum researched subject classification, focusing on Lambeth College's broad curriculum.
There are currently over 8660 sites on the subject finder database which emphasises academic provenance over quantity.
The subject librarians in the Learning Resources Department at Lambeth, suggest and advise on new web sites for Subject Finder and other additions can be proposed via an online form.
Although more an educational web directory than a search engine, Subject Finder makes use of ranking, returning sites from within the database according to their popularity.
The site offers two search modes: keywords and a subject directory. If a keyword is entered inaccurately a help message suggests ways of refining the search together with keywords by subject. The directory, based on Lambeth's curriculum areas, makes the tool more accessible for many students, organised hierarchically into subject categories and sub-categories.
Whilst any subject categorisation is open to question, Teum says, “the categories are designed with students in mind to make it easier for them to use and to find the material they need.” Mathematics, for example, can be searched under sub headings such as arithmetic, probability and statistics.
Teum's Manager, Mary Findlay recognised the potential value of Subject Finder at an early stage and now students are introduced to it in the learning centres as part of their induction.
Image 1: Screenshot of Subject Finder integrated with Lambeth College's Moodle VLE
Image 2: Screenshot of Subject Finder integrated with Lambeth College's Moodle VLE
Subject Finder is accessed worldwide and used extensively by students and staff at Lambeth.
Students can access it from home or elsewhere like any search engine, but with more confidence about the links it returns for them as it provides only sites with educational content.
A recent development of Subject Finder is its use within the college virtual learning environment (Moodle) which was introduced in September 2008. It can be integrated with Moodle to provide a resource list relevant to the students' courses and viewable by students when they log onto their individual accounts. For example a student on a Level 1 childcare course will see a view of links from Subject Finder - filtered by that subject and level.
As the Subject Finder search tool becomes more integrated into student accounts on Moodle there will be opportunity to gather feedback from students and teachers on this resource, and further develop it.
The sustainability of Subject Finder as a resource is as yet an unresolved issue. At present it is reliant on Teum maintaining the site and discussion about how to secure it as a long term resource are ongoing.
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Disclaimer: The Regional Support Centres (RSC) and the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) support the development of educational e-learning. We may refer to specific products, processes or services. Such references are examples and are not endorsements or recommendations and should not be used for product endorsement purposes.
You can find this page and download any referenced resources from the Excellence Gateway at http://excellence.org.uk/191739.
