The original Digital Divas portal was designed by our first Expert Diva, who was at that time in her final year of university. It was created in open-source software (Joomla) and the design and colour schemes were a combination of her initiative using the winning logo derived from a design from the student in our first class who won the branding module. On graduation this first Expert Diva continued in a part-time capacity with the project as our web developer. In this role she developed a user manual with teacher instructions, Expert Diva instructions and student instructions. Modifications to the portal were made as the program progressed.
The portal was designed with a public front page (www.digitaldivasclub.org) with several subsidiary pages. These were:
1. More Information – this page provided further details for interested schools and included any media or press releases.
It provided information for industry speakers. This page was publically available (i.e. not password-protected).
2. Digital Divas Team – this page primarily was for administrative purposes linking to a university portal where the researchers had password access to share operational documents and information between the team.
3. Teachers – this page linked to the teachers’ portal. This is where the modules were uploaded. The teachers from the schools who signed up to the program had password access. We anticipated that they would download modules in zipped files. Instructions were provided in a user manual for this.
4. Students – this page linked to the student portal. Each school in the program had their own ‘school’ page that the teacher managed.
For confidentiality reasons it was important that the schools were not listed on the public site, so this second-level link was where the actual schools running the program were listed and linked as required. Teachers had permission to upload work and manage their own sites.
Each school had an area where the teacher could manage student enrolments, discussion boards and blogs. The Digital Diva’s web developer interacted with the teacher and relieved them of the task of enrolling their first class onto the site. She also visited each teacher at their school at least once to guide them through administration tasks such as enrolling a new student, or changing a password when students had forgotten theirs.
The web developer was integral in training the teams of Expert Divas as the program grew. These training sessions were conducted at the university.
All of the Expert Divas were currently studying an IT degree so were usually computer literate and able to provide teacher support on a regular basis. The Expert Divas training session also allowed them to connect with each other. When the original web developer gained full-time employment there was a handover to one of the most technically proficient Expert Divas, who continued to manage the back end of the portal. During the life of the program we had several web developers and in one instance this was a male.
He quite proudly called himself the first ‘Expert Dude’ in the program.
As the program developed, in 2010 and 2011 we also ran teacher training sessions at the university in the school holidays to introduce new teachers to the portal, and to reinforce the aims of the program. On the first of these occasions we invited our educational developer, who was also the first teacher to run the program at Bartik, to explain how she delivered the program and managed the portal. A user manual was developed and given to each teacher to guide them through basic administration tasks.
The Bartik teacher remained the most engaged with our portal, using it for posting activities and encouraging the Expert Divas to interact with the students through weekly blogs. She also used a variety of free online tools to create short videos for students to review and guide them through tasks such as creating a macro in Excel. Other teachers interacted with the portal in varying degrees; some left it for the Expert Diva to manage and others only accessed it to download the materials, which they would then put on a school intranet for students to access. Over time the Digital Divas team added a page to the portal titled ‘Extra Resources’, to take full advantage of new sites and tools that became available over the life of the project. Updates were emailed to teachers and they were also encouraged to keep us informed if they found anything useful too. School-to-school interaction via the portal did not develop, neither did a teacher discussion group.
A year into the project our ACS Linkage partner’s personnel changed and the new person volunteered to take on the role of web manager to guide the web developer on streamlining the original site and manage interactions
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with the schoolteachers. The professional experience of the web manager contributed to the professional appearance and accessibility of the portal.
She was also integral in advising us on the best way to streamline the site prior to opening it up for public access at the conclusion of the program.
Figure 4.1 The portal with open access http:www.digitaldivasclub.org (at 14 Nov 2013)
The portal as it currently stands has the original graphics, and acts as repository for the project materials. The modules are easily accessible for any teacher who wishes to download them (see Figure 4.1 below).
Google Analytics code was added to the site to enable us to track access statistics. This provided some insight such as major spikes in access when the program was featured in the wider media, or after one of the team presented at a conference. Figure 4.2 clearly shows the increased traffic as reported by our Expert Dude in response to three media events.
Figure 4.2: Google Analytics report
Conclusion
The impact of the Digital Divas program continues to grow. One year after the conclusion of the grant metropolitan, country and interstate schools approached the research team to gain access to the materials and inquire about what support was needed to run the program. Two were government schools from regional Victoria, one a Catholic school and the other an interstate girls’ college. Access to specific modules has been requested by individual schoolteachers, such as one who believed that the Healthy Menus model was a better way to teach student spreadsheets than that traditionally used, as well as by researchers from New Zealand. We also know that it is still running in many of the schools. The portal and the materials have been available since late 2013 to any school that wishes to run the program; the password protection on the modules has been removed.
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