Initial Publication Date: January 9, 2009
Leadership Characteristics
These characteristics were developed by the Cutting Edge project to evaluate the success of the leadership program. They describe the skills needed to lead the workshop and website aspects of the Cutting Edge program.
Website leaders can
- develop strong web pages
- Web pages should be written to support scanning by users: Key points should be made clear through heading and subheads. Text should be as concise and direct as possible without long paragraphs; using lists where-ever relevant
- Your site and its content and presentation should speak to faculty, their interests and needs. It should mirror the approaches used in similar materials elsewhere on SERC.
- Every page should make sense as the user's first introduction to the site. The intended audience and content should be immediately evident and appropriate outgoing links should be available. Each page should focus on a single coherent topic. New topics should beget new pages.
- Link text should clearly communicate where it will take the user, favoring longer action phrases and should never include any variant of "click here"
- All images should serve a clear purpose in the document, be appropriately sized for the web, be free of copyright issues and include descriptive captions whenever relevant
- All design elements/formatting should serve a clear purpose in communicating the message of the page. Formatting should never be used solely to make a page more interesting.
- Information should be presented directly in the page (using show/hides if it is peripheral) in preference to download-able files, unless there is a clear benefit to the user in providing the information in a download (e.g. a PowerPoint, or spreadsheet where presentation in the page would be awkward).
- The navigation should present a complete, clear picture all the material in the site. Navigation links should match page titles. Appropriate use should be made of CMS affordances such as related links, catalog records, browses.
- develop, evaluate and implement a vision for a resource that is valuable to the community
- envision how that resource could be best structured to fit into existing resources and capitalize on the search and resource sharing across sites
- develop roles for others to contribute to the resource and marshall high quality contributions
- do this with confidence
Workshop leaders can effectively design, manage and run a workshop
Including the ability to
- design and implement strong workshop programs that reflect the Cutting Edge workshop practice and philosophy, meet workshop goals, and integrate website use and collection
- take responsibility for their role in workshop development and work effectively with other members of the team
- set appropriate workshop goals and assist in design of appropriate evaluation instruments
- identify and successfully recruit quality participants, speakers and leaders
- design and lead workshop sessions with strong pedagogy for engaged learning
- react appropriately to real-time workshop challenges
- succeed in advertising and managing logistics
- envision new topics for workshops and how existing resources can be reused
- have confidence in their ability to do the above.