Better Blog Following Your Feedback

Posted on September 4, 2013 by Holly Hoar

The research Funding blog is getting a new look. Following feedback from users, we will be categorising funds by research areas. We have also brought in many other changes based on people comments.

The general the feedback on the blog was positive with people finding the site easy to navigate. But there were some suggestions on how to improve the site, we have been making changes in response to this.

We have introduced a Rate the Post feature which allows people to rate posts out of five. We would love to hear from you, so please use this and make use of the comments box below posts. We get lots of comments by email, but by sharing them on the blog it may get noticed by another researcher in a different faculty that you don’t know and make them aware of shared research interests.

The issue of sending daily emails was highly contentious. Some people really value it where as others found it too frequent. This left us in a situation where we were not going to be able to please everyone. We felt that it would be better to have the option of getting the daily emails and allowing people to ignore it rather than not having daily emails as an option at all.

There were also comments regarding the look of the emails. We have set up a new sign up system from the blog which sends out the emails in a more attractive HTML format. The structure of WordPress is currently preventing us from automatically converting all emails to this version. But if you would like to sign up using the subscribe box on the right of the blog, you will be able to access this new version of the daily update.

The team also plans to change the system in which blog posts are categorised to make them more focused on research areas rather than the current system of type of funder. This should make it easier to filter blogs by subject area. When this is activated it will change the location of existing posts, so please bear with us whilst things are reorganised –we have published over 250 posts since December 2012, so it will take some time to relocate them all. This change should be happening very soon.

We are currently exploring the feasibility of enabling people to register an account with the blog and then select themes of what information they would like to be sent. This will enable us to make the content much more tailored to individual interests. So far we have had technical difficulties in getting this to work. If we manage to resolve the issues we will send out details of how to set up an account.

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback on the blog, we hope that the changes we have made and are bringing in will make the site and even more useful tool for you to use.

If you ever need to find our site you can get there using our new web address www.staffs.ac.uk/researchfunding

Thanks for the Blog Suggestions

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Holly Hoar

440

The External Projects Team wishes to thank everyone who took part in the review of the Research and Funding blog. The review has given us lots of thoughts of how to develop the site to make it better for you to use. The team will be working on these ideas over the summer.

The changes we are looking at include alterations to the style of the email updates, adaptions to the structure of the site pages to make information easier to find, and taking up some of the excellent tips from the Universities Journalism department of what makes a good blog.

We will post more updates once we know exactly what the changes will be. Thanks to everyone for their ideas.

Winner of prize draw!

Posted on June 13, 2013 by ejd2

Following the recent closure of the Research and Funding Blog survey, respondents choosing to leave their name were entered into a prize drawer for up to £200 towards their professional development. We are pleased to announce the winner is Dr Claire Gwinnett from Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Sciences. Simon Dyer from Youth Enterprise selected the winner from the draw at Wednesday’s Enterprise Exchange. We would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone responding to the survey and attending the focus group yesterday. The team has had valuable feedback which we are now reviewing to inform our future blog developments.

Don’t Miss Out! Chance to win up to £200 towards your professional development

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Holly Hoar

394

A reminder for anyone who missed last weeks post, the External Projects Team have produced a short Qualtrix survey to gather your views on the Research and Funding Blog. This is a designed to take a few minutes of your time and once completed you have the option of leaving your name and being entered into a prize draw for up to £200 towards your professional development.

To take part in the survey please click on the link below:

http://staffordshire.eu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_9NY2cw3PeDVn9Jj

The closing date for the questionnaire is the 5th June 2013. The winner of the prize draw will be contacted directly following the closing date.

Thanks for your support!

Up to £200 towards professional development up for grabs……

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Josephine Beech

The External Projects Team have produced a short Qualtrix survey to gather your views on the Research and Funding Blog. This is a designed to take a few minutes of your time and once completed you have the option of leaving your name and being entered into a prize draw for up to £200 towards your professional development.