27th June 07
From SLN e-Learning Project
27th June meeting, Plumpton College
Agenda
- •Project update report (Robert Catt)
- •Review of the mapping of elearning in Sussex (Liz Thackray and Nigel Gibson)
- •Preview the next 12 months, including research projects and the new SLN Zone on the OpenLearn website (Jenny Lynden)
Present at the third meeting of the Group were:
Keith Burnett, Chichester College; Robert Catt, Open University; John Davies, University of Sussex; Nigel Gibson, Open University; John Green, Northbrook College; Trevor Harding, Central Sussex College; Jenny Lynden, Open University; Pauline Ridley, University of Brighton; Viv Palmer, University College Chichester; Peter Rainger, Sussex Learning Network; Tom Sherred, Arts and Creative Media; Chris Taylor, Health and Social Care; Becky Taylor, Plumpton College; Liz Thackray, Open University; Huw Thomas, Sussex Downs; John Webber, Sussex Downs; Peter Wells, Sussex Downs
Notes from meeting
The meeting began with introductions and a review of members’ current elearning projects and interests. There were a number of areas of mutual interest among the group. In particular, the following projects and events were identified:
(i) Learning to tutor on-line. Nigel agreed to liaise with John Webber and Pauline Ridley to develop resources to support the development of on-line teaching skills for lecturers in further and higher education. Rob Parsons (Open University) has also been contracted to work on this project to develop resources which can be shared via the SLN Zone on OpenLearn. Pauline noted that University of Brighton has a number of study packs for their lecturers and Pauline agreed to make these available to the SLN Zone in OpenLearn.
(ii) Pauline Ridley is very interested in exploring the use of video in teaching and learning. John Webber noted that Northbrook College are currently experimenting with FlashMeeting, the video conferencing facility available in LabSpace on the OU OpenLearn website.
Trevor Harding stated that he is currently working on an LSC funded project looking at the development of mobile technologies in teaching and learning. Pauline and Trevor will explore potential collaborative work in this area.
Pauline noted that she has £4,000 of funding available to members of the group to bid for projects developing visual elearning technologies. Bids for funding should be submitted to Pauline before the end of July.
(iii) A number of members expressed interest and noted their involvement in projects developing ePDP resources. Pauline noted that University of Brighton are hosting an elearning day which includes a session on eportfolios on 9th July. Anyone who is interested in attending should contact Pauline.
Pauline also noted that an Elgg Conference was being hosted at University of Brighton on 11th July, and although now full, summaries of the workshops would be available on the University of Brighton website.
A number of themes of general interest to the group were identified, including:
- • Use of VLEs and sharing expertise in use of Moodle and Blackboard
- • Encouraging reflective styles of learning including looking at learning blogs and biographies
- • SecondLife
- • Interactive meetings – FlashMeeting and other technologies – use of video and voice
- • Use of mobile technologies by learners
- • Assistive technologies
- • PDP and CDP, eportfolios, blogs
- • Online assessment and marking
- • Anti-plagiarism software
- • Social networking and issues around colonisation, identity and social presence
Project update report
Robert Catt provided a ‘mid-life’ review of the progress of the eLearning Project against the following ‘milestones’:
===Advisory Group:=== Attention was given to the value found in the Advisory Group which was developing as a valuable community of practice within which ideas could be both shared and problematised. The introductory phase of today’s meeting – as noted, above – had been indicative of the kind of opportunities for collaboration identified and generated by the Advisory Group. The expertise of colleagues within the group was acknowledged and appreciated. ===SLN Conferences:=== The eLearning Project Conference, 9th May 2007, was also reflective of both the range and depth of interest in elearning within the region and Robert drew attention to both the value of the challenge for education in John Naughton’s polemic and Judith Good’s view of the way in which innovation should be underpinned by an understanding of learning. Robert invited comments on the SLN curriculum and core conferences and agreed with colleagues in finding value in opportunities to engage with broader interests including those of employers and the consequent insights gained into the impact of policy and initiative. ===Academic Conferences:=== The eLearning project also provided opportunities to explore ideas with a wider academic audience. The project team had already presented papers at Open University conferences where there was a good deal of interest and support. Further conference papers were planned. ===Practitioner Enquiry:=== Through meeting colleagues from a range of institutions and in discussing ideas and practice a number of small-scale action research projects had been established and others were being discussed. ===OpenLearn:=== Robert reported that a ‘Sussex Learning Network Zone’ had now been established within OpenLearn with the expectation that this would provide a forum for both the discussion and use of a broad range of resources. Robert emphasised the value of association with such a key initiative as OpenLearn and encouraged colleagues to access the site. Web Presence: Robert also drew attention to the web-presence of the eLearning Project and encouraged colleagues to make use of and contribute to the Project Wiki.
Review the mapping of elearning in Sussex (Liz Thackray and Nigel Gibson)
Nigel Gibson reviewed the background to the mapping project. In reiterating the nature and purpose of mapping Robert drew attention to the value of providing a medium through which examples of innovation and practice in elearning within the region could be readily identified. A number of members of the Advisory Group and others had participated in in-depth interviews with Jenny Lynden when data had been gathered about the use of elearning within the various institutions. Initially it had been hoped to collate this information into a database, and some concomitant technical and ethical issues had been reviewed. A technical obstacle was mapping information in such a way that could be owned and updated by partner institutions. Various approaches had been considered including the wiki, a database and a compendium map, and the Advisory Group was asked to consider ways forward. Liz Thackray recognised the depth of knowledge and expertise in the Advisory Group, referring to the themes of interest already identified. She invited members of the group to consider during the coffee break what form of information source or repository they would find useful.
Following the coffee break, the group expressed the view that they were concerned about information being publicly accessible on a wiki or other internet-based resource. However, they did value the expertise in the group and wanted a way of sharing expertise and requests for assistance with each other. It was felt that this was best achieved through a members only mailing list and it was agreed to approach JISC to investigate whether it might be possible to set up a list specifically for practitioners in Sussex. Attention was also drawn to the existing JISC mail list for the South of England.
Networking, and enabling networking, was felt to be a more useful way forward.
Preview the next 12 months, including research projects (Jenny Lynden)
Jenny Lynden outlined the research projects which the eLearning Project Team are working on in collaboration with SLN partner universities, colleges, employer and learner groups.
Number skills project (Patrick Saintas, University of Brighton & Jenny Lynden)
A collaborative project with Patrick Saintas is developing existing on-line resources which have been made available for applicants to and students on the pre-registration nursing programme at University of Brighton. The resources include initial diagnostic assessment, instructional material (including the background and context for drug calculations), differentiated activities to develop understanding of measurement, including conversion of units and formative assessment. Patrick and Jenny are developing these resources so that they can be used with learner groups in a range of contexts, including further education and work-based learning contexts.
Further collaboration is welcomed and Jenny agreed to set up a working group to explore how these resources could be further developed for a range of disciplines and other learning settings. A working group will be established during the summer with the intention of piloting the materials during the autumn term.
If you are interested in participating in this working group, please let Jenny know if you are available on the following dates to attend a meeting - the venue will be decided based upon the location of those attending, but is likely to be at either Sussex University in Brighton or the Open University in East Grinstead.
- Monday 23rd July am or pm
- Monday 30th July am or pm
- Wednesday 1st August am or pm
- Thursday 2nd August am or pm
- Friday 3rd August am or pm
On-line action learning sets (Chris Taylor, SLN Consultant & Jenny Lynden)
A collaborative project with Chris Taylor, SLN Consultant for Health and Social Care is being developed to facilitate action learning for lecturers new to the Foundation Degree in Social Care at Northbrook and Sussex Downs. The approach will enable enquiry-based reflective learning through group support. While existing on-line action learning has mostly involved asynchronous conferencing, this project will pilot FlashMeeting on OpenLearn as a resource to facilitate the learning sets. The project will use a blended approach, including face-to-face meetings in the Creativity Zone at the universities of Brighton and Sussex (Pauline Ridley, University of Brighton & Sue Orton, University of Sussex)
We will be setting up the action learning sets for the health and social care lecturers in the autumn term. By way of preparation, we will be running an experimental group over the summer period. In particular, we will be exploring the resources in the creativity zones at Brighton and Sussex to consider how they may facilitate action learning, as well as experimenting with FlashMeeting. If you would like to participate in the experimental group and would be available on 24th July to visit the Creativity Zone at Brighton, please contact Jenny as soon as possible.
Communications project
Liz Thackray has set up a space in SecondLife and is mentoring a number of people in familiarising themselves with SecondLife and how it might be used to support learners. One of the small research projects funded by SLN is for work being done in SecondLife by Sussex Downs College (Eastbourne) with uniformed services students. This project is led by Tim Macleod and is primarily concerned with role play and team building activities. Simulations are being developed which would be difficult to enact in real life such as dealing with road traffic accidents.
Second Life project (Judith Good, University of Sussex and Liz Thackray)
Judith Good is planning to incorporate SecondLife in her teaching in Spring Term 2008. As yet plans are at an early stage, but it is hoped that teams of students can develop learning activities within SecondLife which could be used by learners in other SLN curriculum strands. This will provide an opportunity to consider more objectively the learning potential of SecondLife.
Writing Skills Project
Robert discussed the development of a project designed to support students’ writing skills. He is keen to draw on the established range of resources which many institutions were already producing and using but also wanted to include case study examples of the ‘situated practices’ of both tutors and students. He would be keen to collaborate with others and, at this stage, is producing some introductory material which will be posted on the Project Wiki.
Developing on-line learning resources in the SLN OpenLearn Zone
The SLN eLearning Project has a dedicated zone on the Open University’s OpenLearn LabSpace website SLN Zone. Please note the enrolment key is ‘sussex’.
This site hosts a number of learning resources including MSG Instant Messaging, FlashMeeting and Compendium, a concept mapping tool. The eLearning Team are working on a number of projects to adapt and remix the Open University OpenLearn resources for skill development for learners in different contexts, including further education, work- and community-based learning. Resources currently identified include those to develop:
- • computing literacy;
- • information retrieval, analysis and evaluation;
- • reading and note-taking;
- • academic writing skills; and
- • number skills
If you are interested in participating in this working group, please let Jenny know if you are available on the following dates to attend a meeting - the venue will be decided based upon the location of those attending, but is likely to be at either Sussex University in Brighton or the Open University in East Grinstead.
- Monday 23rd July am or pm
- Monday 30th July am or pm
- Wednesday 1st August am or pm
- Thursday 2nd August am or pm
- Friday 3rd August am or pm
==The eLearning Project has one more year to run.== The Project Team would welcome your suggestions and ideas for project development. It is an objective of the project to extend e-learning practice through collaborative work with the SLN partnership institutions and other key stakeholders, including concomitant staff development opportunities. In particular, we are encouraging the establishment of local Sussex-based collaborative networks in the key SLN curriculum areas of: arts and new media, biosciences, computing, health and social care, travel, tourism and retail, sport and leisure, and the voluntary and community sector.
Date of next meeting:
The next meeting is on 2nd October 2007. If you would like to host this event at your institution, please contact Jenny Lynden as soon as possible.
