As part of a major overhaul of its web services, the English Subject Centre has launched a newly designed website. The new site is hosted on the Centre’s own web server and is a public expression of our commitment to providing a flexible, responsive, and evolving service to the subject community. The new website and server better equip us to serve our community in a number of ways: they will allow us to deliver a wealth of quality teaching and learning materials; to promote community discussion of issues important to the subject; to collect in one searchable location relevant resources on topics of interest and importance to the subject; and to establish a dependable platform for the future development and delivery of electronic resources and services.
One of the site’s most exciting new features is its ‘Discussion’ area, which includes a message board facility. Organized according to topics of interest to the community and moderated by experts in the field, this community space is open to all members of the subject who are interested in participating. By means of such interactive features, the site will promote dialogue across institutions on topics deemed important by the subject community itself. (See the interactive discussion invited by Jo Gill and Alan Brown on student reading habits in their article ‘Now Read This’ on page 10 of this Newsletter). In the near future a chatroom and virtual meeting area will also be added so that we can run seminars and events online.
In addition to the ‘Discussion’ section, the new site includes five other major divisions, each of which contains a homepage highlighting that section’s content.
• In ‘About Us’ you can find out about the role and function of the English Subject Centre and its staff. It includes information about our partner institutions and an expanded ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ section.
• The revamped ‘Events’ section includes details of our upcoming events, online registration and event proposal forms, as well as archived resources from past events (PowerPoint presentations, web resources, downloadable reports, etc). And here, too, you will find links to external events of interest to the subject community.
• The ‘Resources and Links’ section has also been expanded to include new features (such as our Job Exchange board or the Learning Link Database of C&IT resources for learning and teaching), as well as established, developing resources, including our directory of expertise and database of pedagogical resources.
• The ‘Projects and Initiatives’ section contains material related to the various departmental projects we have initiated as well as information concerning our engagement of a host of issues and topics, including Cultural studies and English, Access and Widening Participation, and Post-Graduate training to name a few.
• The ‘Search and Sitemap’ section will orientate you and enable you to search or browse alphabetically.
As our website and services develop we welcome feedback and suggestions. After you have had a chance to visit the site, feel free to complete an online feedback form letting us know what you think.
