Learning Landscape

This week, we have been spending this week reviewing project activities and data collected so far … this is centring around the construction of case studies of participating departments and faculties, drawing on documentary sources; interviews and discussions; surveys and the student experience research carried out last term. These case studies will be useful foci for engagement with broader groups of participants in the next stage of the project, and we hope that – as ‘working documents’ – they will be developed and elaborated further.

We are also planning a range of other engagement activities involving students, staff and alumni; we will be using events at the beginning of the coming term to raise awareness of our work and recruit new cohorts of project participants.

Well I only have today and then one day next week in the office before I go off and start my new job.  This will be the last message from me on the blog, but no doubt it will be ably picked up by remaining team members! 

The meeting of the Steering Group last week was very well attended and went very well.  We presented on work to date, proposals for validating our findings so far and possible methods for engaging larger groups of staff.  The proposals were accepted with a small number of changes.  The methods of engaging students were again discussed, with more detail of the findings presented.  Again this was well-received.  Methods for engaging wider groups of students, and on working with recent alumni need to be agreed.  We will start work on this at our team meeting this week.

We have the fourth meeting of our Steering Group tomorrow with over 20 people attending. We have managed to get a date that a large number of academics can attend, I guess because most of the students have gone now, but most of the staff have not gone on leave yet. We are going to present to them on the 14 ‘coffee meetings’ we have had with various Faculties and Departments. These are initial meetings with one or two staff as a means of investigating issues to look into for that Faculty or Department. The members of the Steering Group are an initial point of contact so many have been involved personally in the coffee meetings. We will also report back on the student engagement part of the project to date.

At the last meeting of the Steering Group we were asked to produce a set of emerging themes from the investigations to date and that will form part of the discussion.

We have now agreed our detailed project plan and sent it off to HEA for monitoring against. It ended up being quite a lengthy document. The writing process did help clarify our thoughts, although things may still change as the project and its methodology evolve.

There has been a lot of activity within the project, and we have now held our third Steering Group meeting – the most recent meeting was really interesting as we were able to feed back some initial findings and start to discuss outcomes rather than just plans. We have also now had three meetings of our Project Board who have agreed the plan and the budget. To date we have had initial engagement with almost 15 Colleges, Faculties and Departments, and 52 students.

At the Pathfinder start-up meeting in York we were asked to consider how our project links to the HEFCE e-learning strategy and which of the strands of activity that it supports or builds on. As described in our project summary in an earlier blog entry our project aims to map the learning and teaching context at Cambridge, and e-learning is positioned as a sub-set of the much larger learning and teaching picture. It is widely believed that e-learning should not be considered in isolation, but rather as it contributes to the wider student experience. Evidence will be collected as part of our project as to where the ‘e’ adds value over other methods.

When considering the HEFCE strategy, our work links with two of the 7 strands:
Strand 1: Pedagogy, curriculum design and development, and
Strand 6: Research and Evaluation

In particular activities 1.1: ‘Reward excellence and promote and encourage innovation in e-learning, and 1.4: ‘Produce and disseminate models of good e-learning practice (including e-assessment) (brackets not in original) are very relevant to the project. Although staff are not financially rewarded for innovation the project aims to raise awareness of developments and recognise where good work is being done. Similarly, we plan to develop and disseminate models of good e-learning as a key output of our project.

Under strand 6, activity 6.1: ‘Contribute to the sector’s understanding and appreciation of the wider issues posed by e-learning’ is very relevant to our project. By mapping the wider picture and describing how and where ‘e’ adds value, and how and where other methods are more appropriate, we aim to provide an evidence base that will demonstrate clearly many of the wider issues posed by e-learning.

The project plan is almost complete, and we have agreed our third delegate – Mike Arnold who is working with us for four months on a sub-project looking at student use of ICT – will join the delegation.  Mike is from the University of Melbourne, and his project will add valuable insight about the student experience at Cambridge.  The different research methods being used as part of the sub-project are very innovative and could prove very useful to the wider project, and also to other institutions involved with Pathfinder projects.

Activity is picking up in advance of the start up meeting in York on the 22nd and 23rd May.  The preparation template has been completed detailing our project and the skills of our team.  We found it difficult to suggest instiutions we would like to work with in the absence of detailed information about the other Pathfinder projects.  I guess this will all be made clear at the event later this month. 

We have nominated two people to attend the event so far.  Unfortunately the dates clash with a JISC event and a large delegation from Cambridge attending a meeting in the US, which affects many of the staff on the core team.  Hopefully we will get a third member agreed in the next couple of days.

Finally, we are working away at the project plan.  Although quite a lengthy template to complete many of the sections are proving useful in clarifying our own thinking, and in encouraging us to define how and when certain activities will take place. 

On a more personal note, I am really looking forward to going to York on the 22nd, having gone to University there and not been back since 1990.  I’m sure it will bring back lots of memories!