Tuesday, May 20, 2008

eLearning Day 2008

London South Bank University's annual eLearning Day on 15 May 2008 was the first formal opportunity to report back internally on the Pathfinder project.


The morning plenary saw Helen George and Russell Kenny (from the Pathfinder team) provide a short reflection on Pathfinder, after which Lynn Coutts, Alan Winter and Jonathan Tanner (from the sub-projects Online Delivery, Assessment and Transition, respectively) spoke of their visions for their projects, and the successes and challenges they had had.


Three parallel workshops run by colleagues from other universities followed the plenary. They mirrored these 3 sub-project themes and were attended by all the participants in the day. Ali Ewing and Julie Usher from the University of Northampton explored Online Delivery; Gerard Lennox from Assessment21 demonstrated the product's capacity for online assessment; and Nipan Maniar from the University of Portsmouth introduced attendees to C-Shock, his mobile game for initiating international students into the UK HE environment.


The afternoon session started with a presentation by AndrĂ© van der Merwe of Cultivate. He addressed the question: ‘Why are lecturers not using technology to the extent that we or our clients had hoped?’ and challenged listeners to question their own, and others', assumptions (or Mental Models). Stephen Gomez from UWE then held the audience's attention with examples of his use of video and audio podcasting to engage students. Lastly, David King and Guinevere Glasfurd-Brown from Wimba joined remote forces to demonstrate the use of visual synchonicity in the online environment.


New conversations around the topics addressed have already started ... and many attendees have shown a willingness to become involved. Next year's event will be shaped by the responses of this year's participants.


Oh ... and the lunch was good!


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