As you know we’ve been doing a lot of work around updating Resources within CareerHub.

Finally we’re getting to the top of the ‘hump’ and will be able to make it onto the downhill run to rolling the new features into the student interface.

But we have one task that we are going to require your help with – and it’s a bit messy. So put on your working boots, grab a mop and help clean up your topics.

We didn’t want to lose anything during the update so we converted all your Entity, Service, Discipline and Campus categories into topics. Now these these aren’t really appropriate as ‘topics’, but we couldn’t accurately just write a script to make decisions for you as it really needs a set of human eyes cast over it.

As soon as you get to this task then please let us know and we can go ahead and begin updating your student interface when student can search all your resources based on topics :)

To help you along the way I have put together this short video. If you have any Q’s please contact support. If you don’t have time to do a cleanup yourself and trust us to do it for you then please let us know and we’ll bring in the sweepers and then update your student interface straight away.

Cheers

:Dee

Over the next week we are continuing the re-think and reconfigure of the ‘resource’ management areas of CareerHub. At the moment the resources include Links (websites), News, Info Sheets and FAQ’s. As you know links and news have already been update to the concept of ‘topics’, over the next week you will see a similar change occur to FAQ’s and Info Sheets.

This core change has been one of the most significant changes to the way CareerHub ‘works’ that we have undertaken. It was quite a weighty decision on our part to change the way the system works when a practise has already been in place for many years. This significant change is not a decision that we made flippantly one afternoon – it is a core change required to implement some features we want to achieve in a modernisation of the students interfaces.

Why are we doing this?

The very first version of CareerHub was designed by me way back in the 90′s as a way to streamline how I was managing the resources to present to students. At the time people were used to ‘libraries’ and shelves and the way CareerHub worked paralleled this. As web interface became faster and more efficient to access to information, it became obvious that the ‘library management’ methodology was getting a bit outdated. It’s normal for administrators to think about things in terms of what type of resource their managing, but… what about student users? How do they want to access information, and what are they familiar with doing in todays web environment?

This is what happens now if I am a student (interfaces do differ but generally speaking).

1. I want some information about resume/CV writing
2. login to CareerHub
3. look for something that hints at resume /CV help 
4. Generally I can’t see anything obvious but can see links to FAQ’s, Info Sheets, Links, News
5. Click on any of the above hoping to find something
6. Get a list of categories and maybe resume /CV advice will be one
7. If I see something resembling Resume/ CV then click on it and look at the list of items
8. If I see an item of interest read it
9. repeat steps 5-8 for each of the other resource categories
10. If I can’t find it or get bored then give up and log out

As you can see this is quite a tedious and uncertain pathway because our ‘front door’ is based on the resource type.

This is what we want students to experience.

1. I want some information about resume/CV writing
2. login to CareerHub
3. instantly see an obvious path to resource information. This may be either a search box with ‘what are you looking for?’ or a clear link to a page that asks this question and includes suggestions of most common or recently added information for people studying the same as you.
4. As the student types resume (or CV) it uses the ‘topics’ you have added to help built ranking and also uses text in the description of the item. The search box will begin to suggest things for them in a similar way to how the ‘quick search’ works in Admin.
5. Student will immediately receive a list of all  the resources you have (regardless of type) on the topic of their choice ranked using the most popular combined with recently added.

This method is quite removed from the library approach of categorising and filing resources. I am hoping that everyone can see the end benefits of this approach.

What other goodies result from this change.

1. For a long time we have had difficulties reconciling the resources categorisation with the same categories as jobs. We did our analysis and found that most resources were already categorised for all disciplines and all services – so why have this at all? With the removal of these categories and the introduction of ‘topics’ we free up the categories for jobs and open the door to a future re-think of these categories in the sole context of how they relate to jobs.
2. A simpler and faster way to manage your resources without having to think of all the options that were previously presented.
3. Removal of things that have been used by 5% or less,  this means we clean up the interface and remove clutter of things that just simply aren’t getting used. This means Associations, Journals and Labels for Info Sheets and FAQ’s – we’ve looked at what you have entered and found that even if you were in the 5% that made an entry it usually seemed only temporary. I will be directly contacting anyone where doubts arise. But don’t worry… they will still be hidden in the database for the next few months should we need to access them.

The downside :(

All good comes at a cost – luckily these are only temporary. We are unfortunately forced to go through a slightly awkward transitional process since we have to update the admin areas first then, sweep up and then update the student interfaces. 

Here’s what to expect:

1. The change to ‘topics’ means a change in your current practices and a re-think of how you work with your resources,  don’t think ‘librarian’ from now on – think ‘journalist’ providing relevant and up-to-date information. You’ll get used to this idea soon enough.
2. All your categories currently used will be translated to topics. This is a safeguard so we don’t lose anything but… it means there are now a lot of irrelevant topics in your system. We’ll help clean these up for you after we get through the update. I’ll write a blog post to let you know about the options and process when the time comes.
3. We have to wait until the dust settles before we can update the student interfaces to make full use of what we have done. As a stop-gap solution we have built some controls to put on your student sites to temporarily make them look similar to what they are now, but using ‘topics’. For most people this will not affect the student view too badly. I will contact those with possible larger issues. 

It is not an easy decision for us to push all our users through a large change like this, however we know that the end result will be justified and enable us to help you provide a better service to your students. Please bear with us while we transition across.

:Dee