The completion of the validation for the eCommunications PS FdA

I completed the final draft of the validation document on the 8th of February, incorporating all the final changes that I had been asked to make. This document now becomes the 'definitive document' for the course. I have waited until now to see if any further action was required but I have not been asked to do anything apart from needing to address a typo and being asked to remove the CVs from the 'definitive document'. So I am now assuming that the whole process is complete.

This process has taken a long time and I have reflected in earlier posts on how onerous it has been. The main difficulty has been that there seem to have been almost limitless opportunities for various people from SHU to have asked me to make changes or to ask me to respond to questions. The first validation, for the eCommunications FdA took less time because we submitted the final draft of the validation document, responded to a few requests for changes and then had to attend a F2F validation where a list of recommendations were made. following these recommendations being addressed the process was complete.

I now appreciate that the many opportunities to make points/ask questions/request changes etc made this most recent validation so complex and lengthy, also some SHU people were not fully aware of of the nature of online delivery. An issue that we were asked to consider several times was in-module retrieval, this was not appropriate to us, but I now see that in-module retrieval can be very useful for other, more traditionally organised FDs and that it has been brought in to address student problems with completing modules.