Learning Technologies part deux

The second part of the Learning Technologies was held this week. It is now rebranded as the Learning and Skills Group conference. There were very few academic institutions represented there, but there were a number of government, military and businesses that were heavily into e-learning. The overall feel of the conference was also better than the previous one with a much more relaxed, sharing environment being created. There was no keynote speaker and a mixture of sessions that included group meetings where like people/organisations could interact with each other and share good practice. I attended cafe sessions on creating and designing e-learning which gave us 7 principles of learning design, which were:
1.Design experiences not content (no one learns anything from content!).
2. Design top down and bottom up
3. Juggle constraints consciously (be realistic and honest with all involved).
4. Template comprehensively ensuring that it is based on sound theories of learning.
5.Evaluate(demonstrate value but not too much) and educate (sponsors and subject experts).
6. Build multi role, multi functional teams (This would be nice but often its the individual in our case! This also applies to pint 5 above as others have sepearte designers to do the work).
7. Make users drive your design
During the design process use users when practical where possible as it can shorten the development time. See flowinteractive.com for some evidence of this.
Where we are dealing with external providers we should ask "what theories they base learning on" as there have been changes in the last 15 years.
The cafe style workd in some ways as the session sparked conversation and sharing although possibly the numbers were too high in some sessions.
I also attended a number of practical sessions on Web 2.0 technologies and everyone should visit Centre for learning and performance tecnologies www.caltp.co.uk/25Tools/Tools/about.html (if they havent already). I liked Polldaddy, slideshare and moodle! I am also pleased to see drupal in their list of 100 tools as we like it in the library and it was used by the conference to demo sessions! These were small group sessions ans were collaborative allowing real sharing and learning in a practical session. There were some hiccoughs with the practical sessions to do with availability of software and versions but overall it was OK.
Finally my faviurite session was the hands on PSP session where we were able to play with psps that had been pre-loaded with sample training materials. This could be a really interesting way of delivery if we were to try this and is less restrictive than an ipod and cheaper!!

WP5 Student Retention

The focus of WP5 is on student retention and progression.

To recap, we began last year by engaging with staff in student-facing departments across the Library, Humanities and Business and Law. We did this mostly through interviews, although we also used a written survey and liaised with Jo Leese from our Students Union. We collated substantial information about the type of communication and information that is usually available, particularly for first-year students and tried to identify any perceived gaps that could potentially be tackled by using Web 2.0-type technologies.
Although several areas were mooted, such as wikis for potential students before they begin, it was decided through various meetings with colleagues that a first step should be to try to extend and better tie together our existing provision, but without duplicating what colleagues are currently doing. This has received considerable support from staff.

A new site is in the process of being created for students in Humanities and steps are being taken in Business and Law and the DMU Library to enhance our provision of information and opportunities for engagement and interaction with and across the student body, particularly focusing on first-year students.

We have had a range of staff meetings. In Humanities, for instance, we had a meeting with staff this week and decided on concrete steps to build resources and ideas over the next months. Administrative staff from a range of departments will participate in training and awareness raising sessions. We have begun by creating additional online information about re-enrolment for current students; which will be available alongside current learning resources. Central to this WP is capturing the student voice on this; therefore, we intend to run focus groups before the end of term with students in each or our three areas of engagement. So, although we have ambitious plans for including more sophisticated technology in the longer-term, it is clear that to work successfully there needs to be a synergy between the working practices, (and tech know-how and aspirations) of staff in these important student-facing roles and what we hope will be an enhancement of engagement for our students.

Meanwhile, staff in the library have been using blogs and wikis in particular work areas only, but to try to give this a bit more impetus, two things are happening: The first is that some web 2.0 focussed activities are being incorporated into the library service’s strategic objectives for the coming year, and secondly we are going to provide some more “focussed” training sessions. The IT training team are also developing some courses that will support staff development across the university including Coursegenie and articulate.