"Institutional Web Management 2001" WorkshopThis page provides a report of the "E-Learning- Barriers and Enablers" workshop session facilitated by Paul Helm (Sheffield Hallam University) and Megan Quentin-Baxter (LTSN) at the Institutional Web Management: 2001 workshop to be held at Queen's University Belfast on 25-27 June 2001.
Participants introduced themselves and stated what they were hoping to get out of the session-generally a wider look at e-learning and a consideration of how managed learning environments fit in. Some of the group had responsibility for implementing the MLE in their institution. From this the structure was changed slightly to include a demonstration of a MLE.
Participants willingly undertook the basket-weaving exercise and cited over 12 things wrong with the site ranging from sheer functionality (broken links) to a boring content, and 3 things that were good including an attempt to communicate the material.
The views of different stakeholders varied slightly with 'students' more likely to say that it was boring and 'managers' critising the quality assurance aspects (learning outcomes).
The review of a variety of websites also highlighted differences between stakeholders. Many of the participants had not used a subject gateway such as SOSIG before and it was indicated that subject gateways tend to be rather mysterious, with little known about the effective uptake of their content.
The Hoolf site was liked by the majority of participants but some technical errors interfered with the interface. The Knee Tutorial failed to operate properly on the local computers, there were no learning outcomes or indication of who the materials were appropriate for, but some aspects of it were liked by the group.
The two commercial sites were considered by the group, with few comments about Amazon but a mixed reaction to the results of searching for materials in the Monster Learning (one person found nothing that they were looking for, another person did find some courses). It didn't appear to have very much content.
After coffee a demonstration of the Blackboard learning site with 'portal' features was undertaken. Participants were invited to ask questions and there was some clarification of understanding throughout the demonstration.
Participants were then asked to break into two groups to solve one of the problems outlined below. One group chose to implement a distance learning masters degree on a budget of £5K, and suggested that the most practical way to do this might be by utilising the work produced by the students as a template for discussion. This work was the major content of the course. This kind of approach already been successfully implemented at the University of Sheffield.
The other group opted to undertake an internally funded project (to deliver the institutional web site) which raised issues of external vs. internal web presence, relationship to materials located inside a VMLE or MIS, and the possibility of duplication of information and data throughout the site. There was a sense that these issues had been tackled by institutions and that people were not so much interested in knowing the issues as implementing real change and ensuring sufficient support for the work that was being conducted. It was indicated that £100K wasn't a lot to support development if you considered the price of Blackboard, for example, and a systems administrator to support technical aspects.
This session was somewhat shorter than had been planned due to the demonstration of Blackboard and there wasn't quite enough time to complete it prior to summarising. The rapporteur fed back the summary to be presented to the assembled group on the following day.