rsc east midlands newsletter "intouch" - autumn 2006
DESCRIPTION
The JISC Regional Support Centre (RSC) for the East Midlands produces a termly newsletter "intouch" that highlights current practice in e-learning/ILT in the region.TRANSCRIPT
Autumn 2006 Volume 5 • Issue 1
the termly newsletter produced by RSC East Midlands
It may be natural modesty, but we in colleges andAdult and Community Learning in the East Midlandsare often a bit reluctant to proclaim the value of whatwe do. This year’s East Midlands e-fair offered thechance to celebrate achievements and share whatworks. In this issue you can read about some of thethings explored in the workshops and exhibition - andsee who you can spot in the pictures.
There’s good news about the future of Regional Support Centres. The Learning and SkillsCouncil has agreed to fund RSCs until 2010 and we are busy planning how best to meetevolving learning provider needs. Recently introduced services such as the ILT Health Checkand the Learning Journey clearly do this and on page 4 you can read about a new placementbrokering service. This has been set up by Diane Wood who was herself taking part inanother RSC initiative by being seconded to the RSC.
To set out our services more clearly, we are launching our revised website at the start ofOctober. In the meantime, you can find keynote and other presentations from the e-fair onour current website. Just follow the e-fair link from the home page.
If you would like to know more about anything you read, we would be delighted to hearfrom you.
Chris Hill, Manager
I N S I D ET h i s i s s u eWelcome
East Midlands e-fair 2006
Information Skills: support from RSC East Midlands
National Learning Network Round 4 Materials
e-fair montage
e-portfolios: the state of the art or what will work?
Forthcoming events
Focus on: RSC Placements Service
Hints and Tips: Adding text when viewing a slide show
The East Midlands e-fair organised by the RSCat Derby University on 22 June was a reallygood day. Gilly Salmon and Terry Loane areinspirational speakers, fifteen breakoutsessions by regional learning providers andothers gave lots of ideas to think about, overthirty exhibitors set out a wealth of resourcesand support, and over 150 people were ableto network with each other in a friendly,relaxed environment with good food,giveaway prizes and even free parking.
Colin Rose says that “learning takes place indirect proportion to the amount of fun peopleare having”, so plenty of learning certainlytook place at the e-fair. But will anythinghappen to change what people do?
We asked delegates what actions theyintended to take as a result of an ideaencountered at the e-fair. Intentions, big andsmall, included:
• feedback to my colleagues;
• make a podcast;• download free open source software;• develop our use of Moodle with video clips;• use the East Midlands Information Skills
material for training;• undertake Athens Devolved Authentication;• visit the Learning and Skills Web website.
Will those actions be implemented? I’m suresome will but one of the RSC priorities for thiscoming year is to help you change more e-learning ideas into actions. For example, ifyou attend an RSC event or activity either in-house or elsewhere in the region, we willencourage you to plan for what you will doafterwards; RSC advisors will follow upactivities to see what further help you need; toensure that an event is not just an isolated day,we will provide material to think aboutbeforehand and the chance to discuss andreflect online afterwards.
Incidentally, we also asked delegates, “Whatwould you like the RSC to do for you?” Many
replies were very complimentary - “Keepdoing everything you are doing already”.However, we were also asked to supply ashoulder bag to carry all the goodies homeand someone suggested it would be helpful ifwe could simply print money.
One of the best things about the e-fair is theopportunity to find out about the good thingsthat other learning providers in the region aredoing. If this year you try something in e-learning for the first time and it works, we’dreally like you to share it at next year’s fair!
Chris Hill, RSC Manager
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Ideas Into ActionIt is important that professional development activities are enjoyable inthemselves, but how do you ensure that the learning is applied once you getback to the ranch?
Welcome edited by Martin CookeILT Advisor
The e-fair gave local LRC/library staff theopportunity to publicise the successfullaunch of the East Midlands InformationSkills Group. The Chair of the Group,Donna Harper, led a session in which sheoutlined how the Group have usedMoodle to create collaborativeInformation Skills materials. Herpresentation can be found on our websiteby following the ‘e-fair’ link on the homepage.
A person who is ‘information literate’ isone who has good information skills.
East Midlands Information Skills Group
The East Midlands Information Skills Group(EMIS), supported by the East MidlandsRSC, was set up to support thecollaboration and sharing of IS resourcesand expertise within the region. During a successful first year, thegroup has produced a range of material to support the delivery ofinformation skills. These materials are hosted on the RSC East
Midlands Moodle site http://moodle.rsc-em.ac.uk and are freely available for you todownload and adapt as required.
New members
Whilst current EMIS members representwell over half of the FE institutions in theEast Midlands, it would be invaluable tohave in the group at least onerepresentative from every learning providerin the region. Interested colleagues fromSpecialist Colleges, the Adult andCommunity Learning Sector and HigherEducation supported by the RSC are alsoinvited to join.
If you would like to become a member andcontribute to the work of the Group, pleasecontact either the current Chair, DonnaHarper: [email protected] or myself,
Judi Millage here at the RSC: [email protected] Wewould very much like to hear from you.
Judi Millage, ILT Advisor
intouch
Information Skills:support from RSC East Midlands
“To be information literate, a person must beable to recognise when information is needed
and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed
information…Ultimately, information literatepeople are those who have learned how to
learn. They know how to learn because theyknow how knowledge is organised, how to
find information and how to use information insuch a way that others can learn from them.
They are people prepared for lifelong learning,because they can always find the information
needed for any task or decision at hand”.
American Library Association PresidentialCommittee on Information Literacy, 1989
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NIACE saw the e-fair as an ideal opportunity to draw attention to the Round 4 NLN materials for Adult andCommunity Learning. You will find the presentation by Patsy Cummins and Sarah Perry on our website.Just follow the ‘e-fair’ link on the homepage.
The development of Round 4 NLN Materials has created e-learning materials specifically for the ACL sector in the following subject areas:
• Family learning
• Making learning work for you
• Modern foreign languages
• English for speakers of other languages (ESOL)
The Materials are a great source of ready-made e-learning resources that can be used in a variety of ways to help teaching and learning.
If you visit www.aclearn.net, examples of the materials are highlighted exploring how you might use these with your learners.
Accessing the materials
If you work for a local authority which delivers ACL provision you can access the Materials in two main ways:
• visit: www.aclearn.net and select the learning content section. This will take you to Xtensis, the site hosting the materials. You
will need to register to access the materials and this requires a password. To do this you will need to contact your E-Guide
coordinator for details.
• on CD ROM. All the Round 4 subject areas will be on CD and these are soon to be distributed to E-Guide coordinators.
If you are not sure who to contact in your organisation, or you have any questions about the new Round 4 Materials please email
Sharon Hutchings at the RSC East Midlands for more details: [email protected]
Sharon Hutchings, ACL advisor
National Learning Network Round 4 Materialsfor the Adult and Community Learning sector
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intouch
e-portfolios: the state of the art or what will workEssentially there are two approaches to e-portfolios – and allpoints in between. The reference model will bestandardised, cross-sector and developed with governmentmoney. It has some way to go. There is as yet no agreementover what would be included, but it would need to combineboth assessment and reflection. This implies thecontribution of both learner and teacher/tutor. The localsolution – cheap and cheerful but maybe less fraught withdangers and can be attempted now. Combining assessmentand reflection, however, might be problematic.
Some may worry about the ownership of the informationand the possible dangers of government use of personaldata. Students may feel more inclined to use a system whichis not accessible to ‘outsiders’.
As yet there is no agreed definition. The emphasis in HE is onself-reflection, while NVQs require a tick list of competencies.
Nottingham University and Nottingham City arecollaborating on real-life interoperability. Buy-in from allsectors will pave the way towards greater interoperability.Have a look at:
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/epreferencemodel/index.htm
and
http://ferl.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=13900
Meanwhile you could buy into one of the numerouscommercial vehicles available such as bksb or you could trythe cheap and cheerful route via open source such as ElggElgg provides a kind of educational version of MySpace, ahybrid of weblogging, ePortfolios and social networking.Elgg integrated with Moodle in June 2006.
Martin Cooke ILT Advisor
Clive Church ran an e-fair session following on from a one-day event in Nottingham in May, whichhighlighted key issues and developments in e-Portfolios for FE so that senior staff could be briefed to ask the
right questions at the right time. Here Martin Cooke looks at the current state of play with e-portfolios
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University of Derby 22 June 2006
Top: John Burke (JISC Inform); Gilly Salmon (Leicester University); and Terry Loane
Forthcoming
EVENTSSome dates are provisional
October19th Learning Journey 2006:
the National ILT StaffDevelopment event
26th Learning Journey
November1st LRC Forum
2nd Specialist Colleges Forum
7th JORUM - Outreach andtraining event
9th Moodle Users Group
13th Blended Learning
14th Technical Forum
16th Using ILT for learnersupport in FoundationDegrees and workplacelearning
21st HE Forum
22nd InfoNet:
Change Management
22nd ILT Forum
28th e-learning for teachers in Training
30th InfoNet: CAMEL
December4th An Introduction to Moodle
for Practitioners
5th New Build Forum
7th ACL Forum
12th e-learning for teachers ofteacher training
14th Digital images and video:intro
January16th Digital images and video:
next steps
21st June e-Fair2007
See our website for further detailswww.rsc-em.ac.uk
intouch
Last year Diane Wood from Leicester Collegeand Mark Andrews from Grantham Collegespent time on secondment to the RSC workingon developing new RSC services. Mark looked atthe use of the Moodle learning platform, andDiane the placement brokering service. If youare interested in using the placement service – ordeveloping the RSC activities by a short termsecondment to us - please contact us.Here Diane explains what she did – and how she,Leicester College and the RSC all benefited.My secondment to the RSCI am Learning Resources Advisor at LeicesterCollege. My role within the LRC is to supportvarious curriculum areas, including Construction,Hair & Beauty, Continuing Studies and Hospitality& Sport. I support all delivery staff in raisingawareness and embedding e-learning into theirteaching programmes. By attending various JISCworkshops over the past 18 months I have beenable to develop effective relationships with theRSC team. I have recently completed a three monthsecondment with JISC East Midlands RSC to set upa new service offering short-term placements toall staff working in e-learning related roles incolleges and ACL. The purpose of the scheme isto share good practice in e-learning betweenindividuals and providers. I was able to witnessfirst-hand the quality and extent of work being
produced to improve the learner’s experience andhow it contributes to their success.In setting up the scheme I visited a range oflearning providers within the region, includingspecialist colleges and adult learning. This gaveme a number of opportunities to improve mypersonal and professional skills, in particular,networking, presentation, communication,influencing and action research. I feel that all parties have benefited through my placement. • the Regional Support Centre – by raising the RSC
profile through an additional service to learningproviders within the East Midlands region.
• Leicester College – my ability to develop andimprove existing e-learning practice throughmy experience of the secondment.
• me personally – building new relationships andpartnerships across the region, whilstincreasing my confidence and continuing myon-going professional development.
I would like to thank everyone involved in thesecondment including all staff I met at learningproviders, for their hospitality, valuable time andexpertise, everyone at JISC RSC for making me feelpart of the team and valued from day one. Finally,but by no means least, Leicester College, withoutwhose agreement this would not have happened.
Diane Wood, Leicester College
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RSC Placements Service
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