Introducing myself - Harriet Truscott, the new Arcadia Fellow

To all the readers of the Arcadia Blog - greetings from the new Arcadia Fellow!

My name's Harriet Truscott, and I'm picking up the Arcadia baton from Huw Jones. By the end of my ten week fellowship, I'm planning to have a tool in use by students across the University. It'll be a race, so keep reading the blog to find out how it goes.

I'll be spending my time here investigating the potential impacts of digitising the storage of all past exam papers at the University. At the moment, college libraries are storing bound copies of all exam papers (6 fat volumes, taking up a lot of shelf space) for each year. It's been suggested that these could be effectively archived in D-Space, the University's digital repository. I'll be thinking about how students can use past papers to learn most effectively, and about the practical implications for digitising papers. I've already been impressed by the vast range of materials included in Cambridge exam papers, from audio files to Sibelius composition software files.

Over the past eight years, I've worked in a number of Faculties in the University, finally putting down my roots at CARET, the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technology, where I'm Lead Researcher on the Coursetools project, looking at the way courses are designed and run at Cambridge.

I'm delighted to be taking up this Fellowship, and look forward to an illuminating 10 weeks. I'll certainly be learning a lot more about exam papers!