Ah-ha will initially function similarly to a blog, but is expected to evolve to serve other purposes faculty and staff members might request, said Jeffrey Snell, special adviser to the president and the facilitator of the project.,”A new electronic research tool was made available to the Academic Senate for testing Friday. Dubbed "Ah-ha," the tool is designed to facilitate idea sharing and relationship building among faculty and staff across the university.

Ah-ha will initially function similarly to a blog, but is expected to evolve to serve other purposes faculty and staff members might request, said Jeffrey Snell, special adviser to the president and the facilitator of the project.

Snell said users will be able to post and respond to research and other ideas.

The idea for the e-tool emerged in July, and developed after an Academic Senate meeting in August, Snell said.

As of Friday, Academic Senate members could reach the trial run of Ah-ha by logging onto their Marquette servers and clicking on a link to the tool, Snell said. The Academic Senate will test out Ah-ha and work to improve it and fix any problems. The tool is then expected to be available to all faculty and staff by the end of the academic year, Snell said.

"The goal is to provide a tool for faculty and staff to share ideas on raising their game (as faculty and staff members) at Marquette," Snell said.

Snell said Ah-ha will help facilitate the sharing of ideas in an effort to build relationships and communities around those ideas and make them better.

Part of Ah-ha's mission is to connect ideas and research of different disciplines. Ideas shared can include both academic and non-academic topics, Snell said.

William Thorn, chair of the journalism department, said with more than 600 faculty members spread across the university it is difficult to find people who are interested in the same projects.

"This is a way to use software and Internet to try to bring together people in different disciplines with the same interests," Thorn said.

Thorn said the university will have to wait and see how much faculty and staff members use the tool. He said some people are focused on their own agendas and may not desire collaboration, while others may find the tool helpful in their research.

"A lot of people want to try it out, though, and it's not a problem to try it out," Thorn said.

Dan Smith, senior director of Information Technology Services, said the project has no additional cost to the university and putting the tool in place did not take very long.

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