Some Reflections

Why was the process of producing the validation document so difficult?

I was surprised when I saw the document printed out; it looked so small. I had been working on an electronic document and hadn't really ever had an idea of how big the document was. As I had spent so much time on it, I imagined that it would be correspondingly big.

I have referred to the main problems with this process before. The most important one is the short timescale and therefore the lack of time to think and consider. I also feel that because this was an online degree, the whole process was harder for us and we had to justify things in a way that wouldn’t have been required of a face to face course. Additionally we had to prepare the detail for modules that will not be delivered for several years and incorporate all this into our planning and design – all very good practice, but hard to do in the short timescale.

To make things even more difficult, the online content for the modules has been written during this time too. A face to face course might be delivered for the first time with a lecturer writing the lectures for each week, days, or even hours before the lecture. We have had to produce all the content for semester one and have it all ready before the course starts.

All this has meant that we have all had to do too many things at once; often things that needed to be done in sequence.

Now I feel a great relief that the validation process is over and look forward to be able to getting back to working normally.

eCommunications FdA Validated!

Today our degree was validated at SHU. We all feel that this is a big achievement and a huge relief. We have all put so much time and effort into this in such a short time and it is marvellous to be able to have now reached this stage in the development of the course.

There are 8 conditions that we have to meet by the end of January 2008, but these are all very minor; mainly they just want us to add a bit more detail or explanation to things. The big change is that they want us to make the eMentoring Module 10 Credits and the eCommmunications Work Experience module 30 credits; this is to give the students a more sustained experience in this final module. None of this is a problem to us and we will produce the final document for their approval in the New Year.


They have given us 1 recommendation, which is not necessary for us to meet, that we use ‘Turn it On’ to check for Plagiarism – however we are happy to do this as it will line us up with the existing practice at SHU.

I was a bit surprised that they didn’t ask for more than the one exam that we had planned.

The meeting was stressful but everyone was supportive and we all managed to respond to some difficult questions.

I felt that we were particularly helped by the online materials. They look excellent and most of Semester One is now on sheffcol.

A good day!

A week to go to validation

Today we have been told by Kevin from Sheffield Hallam that in Validation next week (14 12 07, we will be able to show Module 3 instead of Module 1. We had been asked to show the first module at validation but we are still uploading the pages of Module 1 onto sheffcol, the Module 3 content is mostly uploaded already and will all be in place by the 14th. It's better to show Module 3 as it is more representative of the degree as a whole and as it is being delivered first alongside Module 1. It is a moot point which is the first Module. In the event we will probably have most of Module 1 finished by the 14th but being told that we don't have to meet this deadline is a bit of a relief.

The nearness of the validation has meant that many things have had to be put on hold. However, several staff are now experimenting with the Wiki, creating new pages and adding content and others are blogging and visiting the forum. We need to make a big push on this after validation

Trialling the software

We now all have access to the forum and the mediawiki and can access these from home.

The forum is getting easier to use and we now need to work on how to manage it. Some staff are using the forum as 'tutors' and some as 'students'. The tutors now need to split the users into groups for the rest of the trialling

Editing the wiki isn't as hard as it first seemed. I've created a page for the eCommunications FdA Project and will then put up a general explanation along with links to further pages - one for JISC, one for SYeLP and others as required

The blogging is fine - the only problem here, as with all the trialling is getting people, me included to use the software regularly.

I'm discussing with Kate the other 'tutor' if we can now give people student activities to trial in their reflective blogs so that we can see how some of our proposed content will work.

Paul Warren - the College's senior programmer is meeting with us on 18 November to discuss with us our expereince of trialling and how to move things forward

Validation Document Completed

It's not quite completed but I've done all I can do and sent it to Kevin at SHU who will add a final section on WBL.

Julie needs to send Kevin the last Module Descriptor and we are a few CVs short but after months and months I've finally got this document out of the way. We've now got to wait till Validation on the 14th of Decemeber to see what changes etc we might be asked to do.

Later on today I'm off to Greece for a week, where I will not do anything to do with computers

End of a Good Week

Today I have made a good go at drafting out the Module Descriptors for the Course and sent them out for checking. Yesterday, I got the Validation Document substantially completed. I just need to meet with Kevin next Monday and hopefully finish this off before I'm due to go on holiday for a week on the Wednesday after.

The Validation Document has been really hanging over my head and taking up all my time. It should have been in place before we did anything else and it has created huge difficulties trying to do any job knowing that everything we do will mean an alteration to the Validation Document and that any altering to the Validation Document will mean changes to the other jobs. The essential problem is that we should be working through a sequence and over a long time; instead we are doing everything at once and in a few weeks.

Anyway, onwards and upwards

After a Long Silence

In our trialling of how to use blogs in our teaching we have set up two groups of tutors and staff to take the roles of tutees and tutors. Each group is lead by a 'tutor' in a simulation of how we might support student blogging.

I am one of the 'tutors' in this trial and I have just made this posting in my tutor trial blog:-


'It is very difficult to get into the habit of blogging when there are so many other urgent things to do.

I’ve therefore decided to book in a slot in my diary each week when I will blog. In this way, I’ll at least make sure that once a week I’ve visited my blog, read comments and made postings. I’ll also try and use this time to visit the forum as well.'

Medieval Helpdesk with English Subtitles

Interesting articles

A very interesting article in the Guardian 24 09 09: Information Overload

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/sep/24/information-overload-email-blackberry

A Short Summer Break

Today I sent off the project plan to JISC and completed the course outline to send to SYeLP, our other funders. I still need to complete the draft of the final document for validation but as Kevin can't check this until the end of August, this seems a good time to take a break.

Originally I had hoped that everyone involved in the development and delivery of the new course could do a bit of blogging around now so that we could trial how well blogging works as well as looking at forums, wikis etc. However, so many people are off at the moment, it is really not worth doing. We'll now have to do this when more people are around, say late August. In the meantime, if I get the chance, I'll do some reading, check out wikis, forums and perhaps do a bit of blogging.

Some Reflections

We have a very tight time frame in which to complete all that is required for the first delivery date of this degree in January 2008. Because of this I’ve been trying to rush things along a bit. However the project seems to have developed and imposed its own pace on things and I am having to accept that I need to follow this rather than try and insist on my own deadlines. In one sense I feel an acceptance here and a confidence that everything will get completed by January - at other times I have a feeling of disquiet that there won’t be enough time left for things to get done.

What I have learnt so far is to call on help whenever I need it. So far I have often spent time staring at a problem and wondering how to resolve it – this is especially true of any technical problem; it is not so much I don’t understand as that the words used totally confuse me. However, everyone I have approached has been incredibly helpful and free with their time and expertise; I have really appreciated this.

A move away from Google groups to Blogger

Today I met with Paul Warren to explore Google groups. We discovered that it could not offer what we thought. An alternative and possibly a better alternative is for each tutor to set up a series of blogs in Blogger, using student email addresses and creating passwords for them. Each blog would be set up with links to the tutor and all the other students in that cohort. Links would also be placed to the course content, a forum and a wiki. In this way a student could view everything from one place. I told Paul that I’d trial this – I phoned Kate about it. I’ll have to start this next week sometime, after the JISC project plan is finished.

Meeting with JISC 17 July 2007

JISC came to vist us on the 17th, yesterday. They seemed very happy. I had cut the project plan down and removed all the techie stuff. We are now doing an investigation of the software, and a trialling and evaluation of it, concentrating on blogs for reflective learning, wikis for an assessed activity and the student handbook and forums for online interaction and collaboration. I now need to firm up the project plan but I need to see Peter about some of the sections that require a detailed knowledge of things such as risk analysis etc

A decision about where to place the content

On the 5th of July we resolved the question of whether to place our online content in an instance of Moodle or sheffcol.

The meeting had this question as a one agenda item. Paul Warren explained things to us. Present at the meeting with me were, Dru, Julie, Wendy, Kieran and Lucy.

Paul explained that sheffcol would allow a far better presentation. He said that Moodle had ‘25%’ the ability to allow good presentation and look profesional. It was not an issue that tutors could easily place content into Moodle as Paul could create an instance of sheffcol to allow for this. Most organisations are becoming platform independent and as Moodle is a platform it would not be an appropriate choice. An example of what we want is the LeTTOL website. From there students can go to work components and sytems.

We then moved onto consider using blogs and wikis. Paul pointed out that access control levels are the only difference between wikis, blogs and forums. It is important to keep a copy of a blog somewhere if it is being used for assessment. Word could be used. We could here teach an important skill as the web is unstable. Using eBlogger would create problems as students would have to type in the names and addresses of all the people they wanted to access their blog. An alternative would be to give access to all, not a good thing for a reflective blog. Paul suggested setting up and using Google groups and from there using blogs, forums, wikis (hopefully). We could register for this a t no cost as an educational institution and be given more space to put in resources. In this way tutors only need place in one list of names and addresses and the individual blogs would all be linked from one place.

The meeting agreed to explore using an instance of sheffcol and Google groups. An instance of sheffcol would be used for the central infrastructure – it would be platform independent – and to build in links to Google groups. Content could be placed in sheffcol. Initially templates would have to be produced first. It would also be possible to design a template and allow students to place their eportfolios in sheffcol. They would need to keep their own record for the future, which would exist anyway in their blog.

Where we are now

We are doing a lot of development so far but everything takes so long to do.

What we have to do to meet the requirements of JISC - our funders

Initially I had hoped that we would have finalised the project with one of our main funders, JISC, but I am still heavily involved in writing a project plan which is requiring us all to investigate and firm up issues that I had hoped we would be able to explore at our lesiure throughout the autumn and spring term of the next academic year. The main issues here are how we are going to use blogs and wikis and how we will support our students. There are no issues around using Moodle. Today we had a very constructive meeting where we firmed up how we would use blogs and wikis. As always these meetings raise more questions that supply ansers or resolve things as the project is so big

The Validation of the Degree by SHU

Up till a week ago this was stalled as the senior managment at SHU were blocking the initiative as they were not prepared to fund the 'top year' of the degree. It is not clear how this has been resolved but SHU are now back on board and are trying to fix up meeting times.

For the validation we need to complete several Business Planning documents (BPO1-3). SHU are doing most of this. We have to complete a long document called a definitive document, that includes things such as, all the details of the course, justification, assessment methods, and module descriptors. We've written the opening sections and drafted out the module descriptors. SHU want to meet to divi up the remaining work - we have examples of previous definitive documents to look at

Organisation of Course and Production of Content

We are making tentative steps into this area. We have a broad outline organised and a site map in place. We have identified content for each module, some modules are firmed up, some not so. This is a big job and I had hoped that we could have got further on with this but we have had to resolve other things first. There have also been important educational issues to think about as well - these have become unexpectedly pressing as some of the content has been written