Agricultural Sciences e-Lifeline
Client: UBC Faculty of Agricultural Sciences
Role: Web Developer, Technical Writer
Dates: May 2003 – April 2004
Created a standards-compliant, accessible website to serve as an online resource tailored to the needs of UBC undergraduates in Agricultural Sciences. This tool was piloted in the winter of 2003 and was well-received by students. It was also featured in UBC’s e-Learning Open House (March 2004).
The Learning Centre conducted a survey and found that there was a large gap between the expectations faculty had of students’ technological skills and the skills the students actually possessed. The range of skills also varied - students were being asked to create websites and/or presentations in required courses, and those who were more technically inclined felt perfectly comfortable, others felt abandoned and overwhelmed.
I was hired to create a resource that would help solve these discrepancies in a way that was specific and sensitive to the needs of AgSci undergraduates. Over the course of the summer, I developed an accessible, standards-compliant website consistent with the design of the faculty website, and then wrote all the tutorials and created the viewlet demonstrations (using Qarbon’s ViewletBuilder) throughout the course of the year based on student feedback.
The AgSci tutorial site is still around, though it is no longer updated.
Feb 2005: eStrategy Town Hall article - E-Lifeline: Software Self-Help for Students.