Piloting innovative uses of informal repositories in campus-based student assessment and associate tutor communities of practice.

Collaborative environments, such as wikis and blogs, offer opportunities in diverse areas of education. Results from early exploration and the perceived potential of such environments are reported. One campus-based assessment initiative was based on student contributions to online discussion boards. Analysis showed evidence of ‘participant fatigue’, and an alternative approach was used of a collaborative writing assignment with students making defined contributions to Wikipedia. The use of informal repositories by associate tutors for sharing and storing resources has also been investigated as part of a JISC-funded project. Institutional-tutor relationships and involvements vary, so an early focus has been on common teaching and learning themes that support personal/professional development needs. Accompanying infrastructure developments have allowed such new technologies to be deployed flexibly, the model adopted allowing full control over how system components are made available and accessed by staff, students and other community network members.