At dot.rural we are aiming to develop digital solutions that have a transformational impact on rural communities to overcome the urban/rural divide. The role of the Impact team is to develop indicators and measurements to evaluate the impact of digital technologies on end user communities.

We anticipate that the impact of dot.rural initiatives will be multi-faceted across a range of rural UK spaces, communities, businesses, policy sectors, and users/partners, and a process has been developed as an integral spinal/core activity throughout dot.rural operations to capture an holistic understanding of the full range of impacts resulting from our work.

The Impact team work with all of the projects across the four themes to monitor and evaluate user impact and provide recommendations to the project teams about methodology and user engagement.

more about impact assessment ...
The Impact team are working with the Enterprise and Culture team to evaluate the redevelopment of Hebridean Connections which is an innovative community-led electronic cultural repository containing around 80000 records relating to the Outer Hebrides in Scotland.

We will evaluate the extent to which digital tools allow for a wider range of people to become actively involved in local cultural heritage preservation and examine whether the new technologies facilitate a more participatory approach to documenting and accessing culture.

A series of metrics have been developed by the research team which comprise of qualitative and quantitative indicators devised to capture social, economic and cultural impacts of electronic cultural repositories.

people
Prof. Colin Hunter
Theme lead

My research interests are in sustainable development and environmental management ... more

Dr Elizabeth Tait
Research Fellow

My main research interest is in eParticipation, specifically in how technology can be used to engage people