As of 21 November, the Website Programme offices will be located in our new home in Argyle House. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity for our support and training services.

New training facilities

I had my first opportunity to use one of the new Argyle House training rooms on Tuesday during our regular EdWeb training session, and I was extremely impressed by the space and equipment on offer.

Argyle House on the University of Edinburgh campus map

Three training rooms are available that will now allow for larger groups, focused software teaching, and collaboration. One room has dual monitors that will be very useful for software demonstration; another has collaborative spaces set up with carousel tables, each with a separate screen to allow screencasting from both phone/tablet and laptop. All screens come with smart technology, allowing notation and touch screen when presenting and demonstrating. All of this should help with current courses, and when considering new training sessions. My feeling is that these will be particularly suitable for usability testing.

University Website Programme training courses

I hope that the rooms will soon feature the University’s new lecture recording service, so that we can make our presentations more widely available, and use our time more effectively by designing new materials instead of repeating in-person sessions. Video materials allow us greater flexibility over delivery, and total flexibility for you to enjoy our materials when you need them.

Lecture recording project

Website support clinic move

We’ll continue to offer our popular website support clinics from our new offices. These sessions take place on Tuesdays, from 12-3pm, and allow any University web publisher to come and talk to us about their web presence. This isn’t limited to EdWeb, though it is the only platform we can guarantee technical advise on. Alongside editing and publishing in EdWeb, we can help with:

• setting site objectives
• planning and structuring content
• Google Analytics
• appraising your site

If you’re interested in coming to talk to us, please let us know you’re coming so the correct number of staff are available for you. Further details and contact information are available on the Website Programme website.

Website support clinics

Service continuity

During the move on the afternoon of Friday 18 November, it’s possible that our usual editorial support service may be slightly disrupted, but we will be taking all steps to ensure we can provide as full a service as we can. Of course, our IS Helpline colleagues will be on hand to offer technical support throughout this time.