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.
Monday, 30 July 2007
Wednesday, 18 July 2007
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.
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.
Tuesday, 3 July 2007
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
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
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