Friday, November 30, 2007

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.

Friday, November 2, 2007

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, GrĂ¡inne 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.




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.