E-Learning Showcase - Key Points

How we support things may need to change

• Anytime, anywhere, anyplace – puts new demands on our traditional 8x5 support infrastructure
• Timeliness – perform activity on location as it happens – requires highly available and responsive networks as well as infrastructure like servers etc
• Technology that we manage and support (traditional in-house e.g. Blackboard), technology that we source from others via a contract (traditional out-source e.g. Pebblepad), emerging technology platforms sharing resources and support (or none at all e.g. second life)
• We appear to be gaining real benefits through collaboration with others and networking which means that the support could potentially be managed and shared in some innovative ways.

The infrastructure must be robust

• Is it useful – would you use this sort of technology. Needs to be more robust and ubiquitous – not an early adopter so it’s a leap of faith. Someone has to do it – should it be us?
• Next year going back to the drawing board and start again – tech has moved on from where we were with the ALPS initiatives.
• Lots of various tech niggles throughout the day – needs to be seamless and robust

There is likely to be a debate about standards

• Standardised Infrastructure - Is there any guidance to students on buying a device – we don’t currently do this for students for PCs, laptops etc – however, there are some Institutions that are choosing to be prescriptive (some schools, some FE, some HE quite a few Thinkpad Universities in the US a few years ago. Looking back did that approach work?
• Different learners make progress in lots of different ways and have different learning styles – which tech may be able to help us manage. So the content will not be standardised and the delivery platform may not be standardised. IT people (and accountants) tend to like standards

We are likely to use tools in unexpected and unanticipated ways

• Sometimes tools can be exploited and used in a range of expected and also unexpected ways ie there may be different ways to do the same things, e.g. Pebblepad we could use the tool for staff performance review (not just students). And this may have additional and unexpected support implications.