September 09

Well, the summer break is over, the interim report submitted and now we need to prepare for the introduction of the portal to learners. The decision was made that the implementation would be cross college so it’s been all hands on deck to ensure we are ready for when the students return. Design of the home page ran a bit late but we finally managed to go live in time for the 14th.

Courses for both the Advanced and Higher Diplomas are set up and learners have been introduced to the site during their induction.

We also took part in the Student Fair on 23rd and 24th which gave us the opportunity to demonstrate eME to learners from all areas of the College.

July 09

The end of term is rapidly approaching and we need to consolidate our plans for September before the curriculum teams all go off on leave for the summer. During our Admin and Learning days in the week of 10 July we arranged training sessions for the curriculum teams on using Mahara and the PDP and also set up an event for both curriculum and support staff involved in the project.

We used this event to engage staff in the project and help them to see how the different technologies being made available to them could help them to enhance their delivery next year.

The event started with an activity where they created a poster describing the way things are at the moment based on a series of topics/questions. They were in mixed teams so that support and curriculum staff could work together. They then scored each presentation based on its accuracy and the creative flair of the creators.


Bev then provided some data from the baseline evaluation that she carried out with the diploma learners this year and those participating in this year’s mini pilots fed back on what they had been doing.

The second activity involved the same groups looking at the different types of tools, applications or devices and considering how they could be used to enhance delivery. They then added stickers to all the posters of the type of curriculum enhancement that they felt would be appropriate to each of the topics.

In the final session they divided into the two curriculum teams Higher and Advanced Diploma and discussed how they could incorporate some of the ideas into their own schemes of work. We will use the feedback from this event to help plan the implementation of the Portal from September.

Use this link to view the video of the event.

June 09

June has been all about progress chasing the pilots and mini case studies that have been taking place this year. The team looking at the different options on video conferencing fed back to us about what they had done (1:1 tutorials, lecture presentations etc) - see the video clip of Sharon Muncie – Programme Area Leader describing what her team have been doing.




They made a recommendation of the application that they feel most appropriate to use for next term based on some key criteria that we agreed earlier in the year. This is GoToMeeting and we agreed that we would invest in sufficient licenses to enable staff to use this from September. There are still a few technical issues that need to be resolved but the NT team are on the case and we hope to be up and running soon.

We also got reports on the use of 2 different mobile devices from Jane Teh who has been using the Asus Eee-PC and Paul Herbert who has been using HTC Touch PDAs.

The streaming server is up and running internally but we still have to do some work on the server to make this accessible from out side the college – hopefully this will all be sorted by September.

The structure for the Portal has been agreed, we will be using Moodle as the platform and VLE, Mahara as our e-Portfolio and the ULCC PDP built into Moodle as our personal development plan. Although there is still work being done on the portal design we have now got courses set up and staff trained in how to manage them.

Heritage is still a bit behind schedule but we have a block for Moodle provided by IS Oxford who supply Heritage and ULCC will be working to integrate this in August.

May 09

May’s been quite a busy month for us here at Lewisham. Firstly we had the programme meeting at the Lakeside Centre at Aston University - a really fabulous setting and for once the weather was on our side.

It was an interesting day looking at organisational culture and strategies for change, reverse brainstorming, evaluation and measuring change.

May also was important for us as the learners got their first look at the portal through an introduction to Moodle and Mahara. The curriculum team have also set up their own blog (see Moodle Experience link on the right) to record their experiences of using this. Our aim is to let the learners engage with some elements now so that we can use their feedback to improve the portal offering we will be using from September.

We also had a major awareness raising event on 22nd May where we introduced over 100 people across the whole college to the concept of the Learner Portal. As a result of this it looks quite likely that we will be launching Moodle, Mahara and the e-ILP to a much wider audience than anticipated.

April 09

Learners completed their initial questionnaires this month enabling Bev to gather some baseline data so we can now start introducing the learners to some elements of the Learner Portal and identify the best presentation for September. To find out more see Bev’s Evaluation blog – link on the right of the page.

The process of migrating the Diploma course from Blackboard to Mahara is well underway. As anticipated this has not been anywhere near as easy as the documentation makes out. Archive Blackboard and restore in Moodle – Joke! The team tried this but found that Moodle didn’t recognise the structure that had been set up in Blackboard but simply laid out all the materials in a long, long, long list. Some of the links worked, some didn’t. The time it would have taken to sort this out would have been incredible so we had to look for other ways to do this.

After trying various methods we finally came up with the following:
1. Archive Blackboard course
2. Run this zip file through the free application BFree which goes through the Blackboard zip and renames/recreates the content to replicate the folder structure and file names displayed on the Blackboard course.
3. Zip this new folder and import it to the Files area on the Moodle course and then design the course around it linking to the files as needed.

Anyone interested in the tips we have been recording as we progress can find out more by using the link to visit our Moodle course.

March 2009

Once we had identified the core components we spent a fair amount of time reviewing where we are at the moment and clarifying how the implementation of our Learner Portal would make a difference and enhance the delivery of the curriculum. This gave us a much more focused approach and again helped us to clarify our objectives and develop our workpackages before submitting the final plan towards the end of the month.

On a more developmental front we now have the courses set up on Moodle and LDAP working to allowing users in Active Directory to access Moodle and Mahara.

ULCC have developed an ILP template for us based on our current student planner and this will now be reviewed by the curriculum team to ensure that it meets their needs and will also be checked for functionality. We hope to start piloting/evaluating this after the Easter break.

Mahara is set up and ready for piloting and more details of this can be seen on Angela’s blog (Mahara Experiences) on the right. Angela is our eResource Manager and she is leading on the introduction of Mahara.

February 2009

Monday 2nd February – the day the draft plan’s due. Looks like I might be working from home today!

Along with the snow this month, we also had our first visit from Andrew Comrie – how he managed to get from Scotland to Lewisham on the day the college re-opened amazed me. It was great to meet up with him (eat some more chocolate chip cookies) and get some feedback on the draft plan that had just been submitted.

Later in the month we also met with Lisa and her colleagues from JISC and were able to introduce them to other key players involved in the project and again got some really good feedback about our draft plan. This really made us think about how much we would achieve during the life of the project and the final plan reflects the more focused approached we are now following. In line with this we have revised our vision to reflect this.

The core components of “Making the new Diploma a Success” will be:

My Learning – this is the VLE element of the Portal, offering learners access to their course materials, resources available from the Learning Resource Centre, a range of formative assessment tools and opportunities to collaborate using forums, discussion boards and chat facilities.

Reflections on My Work – will focus around the e-Portfolio where learners can store their work, create CVs, reflect on their learning through the use of a blog and showcase what they have produced with tutors, peers and prospective employers.

Planning for Progression – will primarily be the learners’ e-ILP enabling them to work with tutors and support staff to articulate their personal goals, set realistic targets and evaluate their progress towards these.

My Support – will provide an online support network to enable learners to make the most of their time at College and support them in making possible and realistic choices about their future.

My College – will feature College news and events, will enable learners to have their say, get involved and contribute to College life.

January 2009

The year began well with a launch to the Diploma team during our January learning days. Separate sessions took place reviewing the Moodle facilities with both curriculum and support staff. There’s still a lot of work to do structuring the site but the teams are all enthusiastic and raring to go. We’re looking at how various different technologies can enhance learning and the team were able to feed back on what was happening in the school with Mobile Devices, Web Conferencing and Google Applications. We hope to pilot a selection of components and applications during this academic year in order to inform the Learner Portal that will be introduced to Diploma learners in September.

Bev (she’s doing our evaluation – you can link to her blog on the right) and I attended the JISC evaluation event in Birmingham which was really worthwhile (especially the chocolate cookie evaluation) and left us with a lot to think about. It also gave us an opportunity to catch up with the other members of our cluster group and meet our critical friend Andrew Comrie.

November/December 2008

The project really started to get going after the start-up meeting at the University of Warwick where we got the opportunity to meet staff from other institutions and find out about the different projects. We were allocated cluster groups based on the main project areas of interest and we are working with Kingston College, Kingston/De Montfort University and the College of West Anglia.

Following the start up meeting we came back and started to put the detailed plan together by presenting the vision to those who would be involved, agreeing roles and responsibilities and forming a steering group. These discussions not only enthused our stakeholders but also helped us to clarify our objectives and work began on setting up Moodle to provide the core components.

Meetings took place between our technical team and the guys at ULCC to agree how the databases would be populated and the eLearning team worked with them to create an initial look and feel.