Student computing innovation highly commended in national awards
Fri, 18 Dec 2015 12:22:00 GMT
The University’s UniAsk forum, created by the Computing and Library Services, praised in UCISA awards
EVERY year the Amber Miro Memorial Award, awarded by the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA), recognises “innovation and innovative thinking” in the education sector. This year, the peer-to-peer support forum UniAsk, created by the University of Huddersfield’s Computing and Library Services (CLS), has been ‘Highly Commended’ with this coveted award.
UniAsk is a support network where students can access help, find information and assist one another by asking and answering questions. Now, in its second year of operation, the panel of judges were particularly impressed with the collaborative network established and the way the project had moved from being an idea to a fully-functioning product.
The award-winning concept began as the brainchild of IT Manager Alistair Reid-Pearson (pictured) after he attended a UCISA conference and was asked to think about the meaning of ‘bring your own collaborative environment’. After subsequently discussing the idea with the Director of CLS Sue White, he was given full funding to set it up and, a year later, UniAsk was born.
“Students can ask everything from where to find support to how to solve an IT issue,” said Mr Reid-Pearson. “Once the subject matter has been moderated, other students and staff can then provide help by replying to their questions,” he said.
In the fast moving world of IT nothing stays the same for long and the CLS team have big plans for the network.
“At the moment, UniAsk is a webpage hosted on WordPress,” said Mr Reid-Pearson. “As a result, students have to intentionally go to the page and log-in. The next step is to integrate the software with the University’s desktop, so when anybody logs on to a computer on campus they will automatically be in UniAsk, therefore making it available to a much wider audience.”
