About the project
HeLMET is a JISC funded project which aims to provide generic services to support on-line consultation and brainstorming in distributed communities of practice, using social software. The project seeks to achieve this through the development of a Web 2.0 based solution which comprises:
- a social networking manager
- an ontology development tool
- a semantic wiki
- a collaborative document authoring tool
- an interface to a portfolio
The five components will work together to support cycles of discussion and collaborative document authoring. The creation of this tool will be based on an UIDM approach to software development and provide cases study examples for the JISC UIDM wiki.
HeLMET takes as its exemplar the consultation phase of the update of the undergraduate medical curriculum, in a collaboration between hospital-based Placement Education Supervisors (PES) and university staff. However, HeLMET has applicability well beyond curriculum development, to any activity that includes a consultation or brainstorming phase followed by intelligently harvesting the outcome. Examples include:
- the annual review of teaching materials such as PBL cases
- consultations with staff about changes of practice
- consultations with students concerning course quality