Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Suggestions for Blog

Mark and I are working on trying to make the blog more useful to people interested in the research centre and in behavioural science more generally. One of the main things we have been doing is reorganising the blog including inserting new tabs for things like upcoming events and vacancies. If there is anything else you think would be useful please feel free to email suggestions or contact through the comments here or on twitter.

3 comments:

Karl Purcell said...

What about including a list of terminology for Behavioural Science including examples?

So for example, Status Quo bias/inertia: The so called “yeah, whatever” heuristic where people continue doing what they were doing so that don’t have to face some switching cost (however minimal that cost may be). For example, leaving a channel on even though the program you were watching has finished.

I know terminology is explained as it arises in Liam's lecture posts, but perhaps a list which people could refer to when they encounter a term they are not used to may aid understanding? Also, people could look through the list and perhaps identify terms they hadn't heard before for further reading?

Liam Delaney said...

This is a good suggestion Karl. We are trying to turn the blog somewhat into a "MOOC" (horrible phrase) over time with lots more resources and so on including eventually a full set of lectures. We have been talking in the group a lot about eventually making the lectures for some courses available in the format of a blog with audio and readings and then using the class for far more collaborative stuff ("flipping") is the phrase sometimes used. Mark is particularly interested in this.

In terms of your specific suggestion, we could certainly do that though I want to check properly what the existing options are so that we don't duplicate something already done very well. Instead of making one, we might just link to one under the resources tab.

If you look at the "resources" tab above it is a bit weak at present but this is where we are going to do most work over the year and try to make that a one-stop shop for the MSc students (and others interested).

Be good to get more thoughts as we go. Thanks again.

Marie said...

The way I use the blog..

Search function works well, but it would also be nice to have a sort-able list of older posts. E.g. sort by date and type of resource (paper? media? event? rant? This may be a bother to retrofit on older posts but new posts could be tagged with a sort function in mind.

Maybe old fashioned but I tend to prefer a cleaner page with menu options than all that info visible in the front page. I'd keep the front page clean with a description of the blog, the most recent contribution and links to everything else.