eep users newsletter
eep users newsletter
No. 5 July 2009
Intro This newsletter gives new information about the educational evidence portal (eep) for people who are interested in its development.
News
Publicising eep
The portal was officially launched in March by Baroness Estelle Morris, as part of Social Science Week. She described eep as "a critical tool for developing an evidence-using culture in education - part of the infrastructure needed to access research findings". She felt "proud to be part of a 'crusade' for more evidence based decisions in education"
We would like to enlist your help to let more people know about eep. "Banners" have been created to add as links from websites. You can see an example at DCSF DCSF, Research Programme Team. If you are able to use these (copies attached) to make a link to eep from a website you know, please do so and let us know.
The next version of eep
eep has been undertaking two R&D projects to produce a new version of the portal, adding new functions and integrating existing ones. Text-mining has been developed in conjunction with the National Centre for Text Mining to make searching smarter, whilst a new taxonomy has been developed by information experts, in consultation with users, to enable browsing. A Powerpoint presentation (attached) illustrates how the new version might look.
We invite you to participate in testing and evaluating this in the beta phase during July/August. Please contact eep to get involved.
New content
The eep database continues to grow, with 3,134 documents currently accessible. Two new organisations have joined recently - the Institute of Effective Education with its Best Evidence Encyclopaedia (Best Evidence Encyclopaedia UK ) and the international Campbell Collaboration (The Campbell Library : The Campbell Collaboration - Framed Page) with its library of systematic reviews.
A new Resource Area - on careers, work experience and employment - has been added to the portal See Careers, work experience & employment
Working with groups of users
Having developed the portal and started to publicise it, the eep project now plans to work more closely with specific communities of practice that wish to learn how to make more effective use of it. Plans are afoot to do this in conjunction with other "evidence tools" including TTRB and CERUK. If you know of a community that might be interested, reply to me with details.
Using eep
Have you used eep successfully to find evidence for a particular purpose? If so please reply to this email to let me know so we can write up your experience to encourage others.
Demonstrating eep
The 3-minute animation introducing people to eep and the various ways of searching for documents is now available on-line at eep demonstration
Contact
Contact eep: ajmorris@blueyonder.co.uk.
