Survey Presentation

Just preparing a presentation on a survey we did of the use of our VLE last year. It's really heartening to know that staff and students get a lot out of using the VLE.

Tomorrow I'll mainly be looking at the impact that it has on learning and teaching and also how staff and students use it. The different ways that students approach using the materials available to them was really interesting - each one had their own different way which suited their own learning style. And staff also found that it impacted (positively) on their teaching.

I'm hoping that we'll get a lot of staff there (and that the snow won't put them off!). Our new member of staff starts tomorrow too, so it will be a good chance for him to meet some of our users, and get to know their views on the VLE.

Right - off to battle(!) my way home through the snow (it's been snowing on and off all day, but nothing has stuck ... boo hiss!!).

How much to do?

Hadn't realised how much work there was involved in someone new starting. Not only do we have to sort out the office, but there's a whole list of other things to do (parking permits, cards, door signs .....).

Expanding Team

We have a new member of staff on board ... Our team is getting bigger!!

We now have a new E-learning Advisor who is going to help me with the implementation of our new institutional E-learning Strategy.

The Advisor is going to be starting soon, and I'm going to be his supervisor ... so I better get my skates on and make sure we have enough space for him to work. Time to tidy the office guys!!

Peer-to-peer learning

Had a great experience yesterday. A member of staff sent me a query about our VLE which was copied to another colleague. Before I had a chance to reply, the colleague answered the query, correctly. I was so pleased. Clearly she had both learnt the procedure (it wasn't a hugely common problem, and I wouldn't have neccesarily expected her to know the answer) and was confident enough to share this with her colleague. I really felt that 'my work here is done'; the training that I have done has become so embedded that they are confident to work on their own, and train other people.

A good day and a good outcome ...

Starting Out

Well - this is a first for me.

I'm an e-learning devlopment officer in a UK Higher Education Institution. Part of my job is to look after our VLE (Blackboard), as well as investigate the use of e-learning in teaching and learning. Blogs is one of the things on my 'To Do' list at the moment. So I thought it would be a good start to have one of my own!

Not sure how regularly I'll do this, but I'll try and keep my e-learning musings fairly frequent. At the moment I'm looking at organising an online discussion for staff who want to experience this type of thing for themselves. I need to try and find some good authentic activities for them to do without swamping them wiht too much to read etc. HE staff are very busy, and I would like people to engage in this without feeling I'm taking up too much of their time. At the moment I'm thinking that maybe reading a short article on an issue relating to e-moderating or online discussion and then posting reflections on it would be a good start. I'll let you know how I get on!