A work-in-progress - Poster presented at HELTASA 2007

A poster explaining LSBU's Compass Pathfinder project was presented at HELTASA 2007, the annual conference of the Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of South Africa in Bloemfontein, South Africa, from 19-21 November 2007.

The poster contextualised the project in the 21st Century UK university, and described the aims of the project to deliver 2 major outputs - an ECDL-type training course for academics, based on their roles in the university, and a "skills-and-resources profile" for different e-applications.

The methodology of the project was also explained, along with a short description of the sub-projects that feed into Compass.

Notes from Compass Pathfinder Steering Group Meeting - 2 November 2007

The second meeting of the Steering Group took place on Friday, 2 November and was attended by Peter McCaffery, Jon Warwick, Russell Kenny, Helen George and Ruth Brown.

We reviewed the notes from the first meeting, and discussed the idea of inviting faculties to use the staff ICT survey as part of their strategic commitment to embed e-learning. To answer the question "How do you know which e-skills your staff have?", Heads of Department could use the survey as a diagnostic tool to ascertain development needs.

The invitation to use the survey could be extended during the Roadshow to introduce the recent Blackboard upgrade, and could be linked to the purposeful use of the community content system. It was suggested that the survey might benefit from being repurposed in a way tailored to a more specific audience. It would also be necessary to adapt it so that anonymous postings were not allowed.

A driver for encouraging staff to upgrade their e-skills might be the new possibilities for accreditation offered by the Higher Education Academy.

We discussed the various sub-projects that feed into the Compass projects (see below) and the issues that were emerging from these - in particular those around the use of Blackboard as a summative testing tool, and the time commitment required from academic staff.

It is a priority to appoint a learning technologist to assist academic staff in their use of Blackboard.

It was noted that, through our association in the Pathfinder cluster, LSBU is a partner with Cambridge in an NTFS project bid that inquires into the influence of an evidence base for the use of e-learning over the development of policies and practices in higher education.

Our critical friend, Gráinne Conole, will be spending the day at LSBU on 3 December. She will work with the project team, and will feed back to the sub-project leaders and the project steering group during the day.

The next Steering Group meeting dates are: Thursday, 21 February 2008 from 14.00-15.00 and Friday, 16 May 2008 from 10.00-11.00 - both meetings are in Technopark, 1D07.

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UPDATE ON SUB-PROJECTS OF PATHFINDER COMPASS PROJECT – 2 November 2007

Group A – e-Portfolios
Ruth met with Elizabeth Shaw to discuss e-portfolios. We have asked George Bell for a date to meet with him.

Group B – Induction
Lunch-time meeting set up for 28 November.

Group C - Assessment
Ruth met with Alan Winter and Phil Hammond for lunch on 25 October. They plan to share certain resources as their projects are fairly similar. The skills that they perceive to be required are firstly, enthusiasm of staff and secondly “stickability” to master the tests tool in Blackboard. They believe that students should have the opportunity in a formal setting to practice using the testing software (they are collaborating around this).

They have expressed concern about the robustness of Blackboard to support large student numbers at the same time, and the laboratory facilities to accommodate them (Phil has + 300 students on his unit).

There are also issues around creating exam conditions for online assessment. Ruth has met with Wojtek Adamek who confirms that computers can be ring-fenced for exam conditions. He has undertaken to establish what the system requirements are to support large numbers. We need to take online assessment into account in the upgrading of areas such as the LRC.

There is concern about the time commitments of academics in adopting e-learning.

Lastly, Ruth has spoken to John Seeley about his assessment tool – and the greatest need at this stage is to find other academics to test it. Phil Hammond has expressed an interest in this.

Group D – Communication/Collaboration
Helen to give update.

Group E – Integrating Study
Tom and Ruth to meet with Maggie Clinton and Tom Aird on the 30th of November.

Group F – Use of Blackboard
Ruth has been in contact with Susan McLaren who was unaware of the initiative, but has undertaken to talk to David Cowan (who is on long term sick leave) and get back to me.

Group G – Pre-enrolment use of Blackboard
Helen has a meeting with Jenny Laws.

Group H – Central Repository
Ruth has spoken to Sarah Mobbs who is investigating this.

Group I – ADDER project/online course delivery
The ADDER project with the University of Leicester is on track. Ale Armellini has met with the leads of teams from Arts & Media, Education and Psychology, and another meeting is scheduled for 14 December.

The 3 Carpe Diem workshops are scheduled as follows:
15/16 January – Psychology
19/20 February – Education
5/6 March – Arts & Media

The information advisers (subject librarians) have been approached and will attend the 2 day workshops. Sarah Mobbs, Ruth Brown, Rob Kenny and Sarah Bell will both be attending all the sessions, and Russell Kenny will be along when he doesn’t have other commitments. Lynn Coutts will be invited to participate as well.

NOTES from Compass Pathfinder Steering Group Meeting – 17 July 2007

The following people attended the first Steering Group Meeting on 17 July: Peter McCaffery, Laurence Marlow, Helen George, Joanne Monk, Sue Mullaney, Dympna Coughlan, Russell Kenny, Jon Warwick and Ruth Brown.

Helen George introduced the Compass project, giving the purpose, and contextualising it within the ICT Benchmarking Initiative. The importance of linking outcomes from the project with future people development strategies was highlighted.

The committee then discussed the project plan, noting that the project was running on target. A list of the projects linked to the plan was presented to the team

The staff ICT survey had been completed, and the results were presented to the committee. Of particular concern was an apparent lack of competence in using e-resources, not least because of the University’s substantial investment in this area.

It was agreed that the results of the ICT survey, and the potential created in the current upgrade of Blackboard to the community system, would be drivers in moving staff ICT training forward. The plan is to address departmental, rather than individual, development, and the co-operation of the Heads of Department is critical to the plan.

It was suggested that participation in pilot projects, for instance under the umbrella of Compass, be considered in awarding such awards as the Learning & Teaching Innovation Awards in future. It was considered that management need to be more strategic/directive in encouraging innovative projects and people development strategies.

New page elements

There is now a page element available on the right hand side of the page that let's you view new posts to the JISC Pathfinder Blog.

In addition there is also an e-mail subscription link for this blog available beneath it (as is discussed below).

Feedburner & e-mail digests

Feedburner provide the nice feature Ruth talks about in the previous post, allowing people without RSS readers to get blog updates via e-mail, a bit like mailing list digests.

Various blogging services (including Blogger, the service hosting this blog) provide a way to e-mail updates to the blog itself, allowing the technophobic blogger to never actually have to venture onto the web.

Found my way in!

Hi everyone,

Thanks, Rob, for making it so easy to join - even for technophobes!

Do we have a feed into our emails for this blog, as well? And would anyone mind if I sent the link for getting the Pathfinder posts in our emails to the rest of our cluster?

Ruth