Notes from Compass Pathfinder Steering Group Meeting - 21 February 2008

The third of the Steering Group meetings for LSBU's pathfinder project took place on 21 February. Jon Warwick chaired the meeting in Peter McCaffery's absence, and other attendees were Sarah Bell, Ruth Brown, Helen George, Russell Kenny, Laurence Marlow and Joanne Monk. Apologies were also received from Janet Cattini.

Helen provided the members of the Steering Group with a background of the clustering methodology used in the Pathfinder Phase 1 project, and updated them on the activities of the project since last they met:

1. The LSBU team met with Prof Gráinne Conole, Cluster C's critical friend, on 3 December. In addition to discussing the project with the team, she also met with members of the Steering Group and leaders of some of the sub-projects that are feeding into Compass. Her style of mentoring is pushing the team (and the cluster) towards scholarly outcomes without sacrificing practical results.
   
2. Achievement of scholarly outcomes from the LSBU project so far: Poster presentation at HELTASA 2007, acceptance of case study paper, Equipping academics to adapt to the complexities of the digital age, at EdMedia 2008.
   
3. Cluster C met twice during the period - on 5 December at Cambridge and on 7 February at Reading. A part of the time at each meeting was assigned to developing workshops for presentation at EdMedia 2008 and ALT-C 2008. A cluster poster presentation has been accepted by the Networked Learning Conference 2008. The cluster will be represented by Maria Papaefthimiou of the University of Reading.
   
4. Meetings have been held with all the sub-project groups that are feeding into Compass, and follow-up meetings are planned. Two of the three Carpe Diem workshops with the University of Leicester have taken place and were enthusiastically received by participants.
   
5. The University's e-Learning Conference in May will be used to showcase the project to academics.

The Faculty of Engineering, Science and the Built Environment are to use an adapted version of the ICT survey tool across the whole faculty, with a focus on academics and those who support learning. This use of the survey will improve the proportion of staff who participated in the survey. The main anticipated outcomes are:

• Identification of the level of staff confidence in using ICT;
• Concrete understanding of the potential of existing tools to meet ICT needs, and identifying the new tools that need to be acquired;
• Categorisation of the different requirements of different disciplines for ICT skills.

Helen is to discuss the possibility of interviewing staff - in focus groups, at departmental meetings or one-to-one - with Chris Dowlen and Heads of Departments. We will use this opportunity to encourage people to upgrade their e-skills using the HE Academy's Professional Development Framework.

It was mentioned that many of the Phase 1 Pathfinder projects focused on the development of staff in one way or another, and LSBU has suggested to the HE Academy that a special interest group with a focus on staff development might be a useful way forward. Since the last Steering Group meeting, Cambridge had heard that they had not been successful in their NTFS project bid.

The project is on track for outputs, and Helen noted to the Steering Group that LSBU has met its contractual requirements thus far.

A part-time learning technologist has been appointed to work on the ICT training modules, and an extra module that covers the pedagogy of e-learning has been agreed upon. Work on writing up the case study outputs will start after the Easter break.

The last meeting of the Steering Group is on Friday, 16 May.