Shrewsbury College WBL-WAY Blog
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We now have the latest liferay software running behind the scenes of the Support Point. We are hoping that this will resolve the connection problem we were getting with users logging on with differ...
Just had an interesting session with the head of Information Services, to talk about how the university handles course information and its different purposes. This is linked to the fact that during...
Well I am now fully recovered from yesterdays launch, which went well. We did have a lot of positive comments about the usefulness of the support point, although there where concerns about the usa...
With the launch coming up the technical team are working hard with testing to ensure everything works smoothly next week. We have over 30 people registered for the event with a number from the part...
Although the validation process requires that progression advice is available to students, there is no formal method in place to undertake this. Staff generally have experience of available routes ...
I am back in the office after a good week at ALT-C, even though the event was over three days last week I was still thinking about it on Friday and sharing my experience with colleagues through peb...
When: Tue Sep 9, 2008 to Thu Sep 11, 2008Â Where: Leeds Event Status: confirmed Event Description: The SURF WBL-Way team will be presenting at this years ALT-C 2008 conference
The event is set for 1st October, at Staffordshire University and will be held over a morning, with lunch at the end. I have now posted information about the event in the WBL Google Calendar that w...
When: Wed Oct 1, 2008 9:30am to 12:30pm BST Where: Octagon Boardroom, Staffordshire University Event Status: confirmed Event Description: The SURF WBL-Way project has built on experience that the...
After a short team meeting (due to it being Summer break) I went to see Shrewsbury on site last week to discuss what the project was planning as they missed the project meeting. It was a good thing...
We looked at the course descriptions in our College prospectuses, and talked to the learning services staff for information on progression routes. Our updated propsectus details some information ab...
Had an interesting meeting today with the Director of Sales and Student Recruitment. She is running an Employer Engagement Project that fits nicely with the work already taken within SURF WBL-Way. ...
As I mentioned last Monday I attended the JISC 08 Innovation Forum. I attended the three sessions around sustainability, these sessions held some interesting conversations. I was interested to see ...
The last few weeks have been spent publicising the work done in the project. The first event was last week at Bradford, part of supporting the SpaCED-FD project, this was a two day conference invo...
As it is difficult to get Managers, mentors, tutors, to adopt WBLWAY in the face of the numerous ILT/IT software initiatives that the college is lauching (from FrameUp to Covalent to Pro- Achieve t...
From wish lists back in 2007 ...to the Support Point getting the features in 2008...the team have worked hard and are still doing great work in finding useful data in their systems. In the meantim...
Well the techie team has been working hard and its looking like they have the liferay performance issues licked. This was causing some problems with liferay only plodding on rather than running at ...
At the last project meeting we discussed the possibility of capturing attendance data from the relevant partner Colleges and adding this to the data stored in the Support Point.I have just spoken w...
Following last week's meeting we have been catching up with some actions.We have rated both the Manager and Mentor sections of the Support Point and given explanations to our rated scores. I made c...
The paper of 6th June 2008 (posted on WBLWAY Google Groups) was presented today to our Operations Management Group (Deputy/Assistant Principals, Heads of Faculties).I had the opportunity to brief t...
I have had a busy May with lots of travelling to promote the SURF WBL-Way project and a week off to enjoy the first bit of sunshine for this year. We have received some good news today - we will be...
This event, organised jointly by the University of Plymouth Colleges Faculty and JISC Regional Support Centre South West, will focus on e-Resources for practitioners in the HE and HE in FE sector. ...
The process of embedding WBLWAY into college processes is continuing. It features in the ILT Development Plan but not in the consciousness of the key players in employer engagement and HE in FE.Re...
When: Thu May 29, 2008 9:30am to 4pm BST Where: 3-15 Endsleigh Place, HELP CETL, University of Plymouth Event Status: confirmed Event Description: This event, organised jointly by the University ...
Ruth Gill, Burton Nursery, has now reviewed the changes made to improve the Information Point. All of the FD students that Ruth manages will now be encouraged to use WBLWAY to access course detail...
Well it has been an interesting week with a meeting with Corporate Information and the team working on the university MyPortal project. As Sam and I were talking to the team it was obvious that the...
As a follow up to Mark Stiles and Fleur Corfield's address to our ILT Strategic Planning Group, I am presenting a WBLWAY update to our Operational Management Team (OMT) on Friday 6th June 2008.In t...
It has been an interesting two weeks, with a number of meetings with different people and writing a new bid for a project linked to this one. So where to start?Had a meeting with the FCET elearning...
I know that this blog focuses on the SURF WBL-Way project but as I was promoting this project to our Computing, Engineering and Technology faculty I was pleased to hear that they had successfully u...
Today we introduced the support point to 5 of the 6 Construction FD learners and got them to access the support point and sign in using their Staffs Uni username and password details.On the whole i...
I engaged employers who would not be deterred by project setbacks and who would be proactive. I particularly avoided larger prominent employers when planning the pilot phase. As our college had bee...
What a title but I think I should have covered it all! Mark and I went down to the Plymouth e-Learning conference, where Mark was the Key Note speaker. This had a lot of interesting things going on...
On Thursday 20th March, we visited the Employer (a local architect with learners on the Construction Foundation Degree) to register and use the Support Point. The tutor on the FD course came along ...
Have had a busy few weeks, and a few more ahead with the pilot taking off, features being rated with the technical team, and attending a few conferences. Last week was particularly interesting as I...
Had an interesting week that has involved a get together at Birmingham for those involved in JISC projects (see http://cetisllg.ning.com/) and a project meeting within two days of each other. Found...
I am thinking about ways of making life more easy and centralising information about university calendars and then how they will fit within the Support Point, the University website and its own por...
I am being encouraged to increase our involvement with ILT Development Projects. Recently I joined the QIA/CEL (Quality Improvement Agency/ Centre for Excellence in Leadership) eXplorer programme. ...
East Staffordshire Childrens' centre registered for WBLWAY Infomation Point services today. Hayley Johnson (training Officer) will be the point of contact. Staff and students relayed their apprecia...
As the project moves forward there is more need to spread the word, one opportunity made available to us was through the SURF Curriculum & Qualifications Group Meeting. This meeting had its focus ...
When: Mon Jun 9, 2008 Where: Staffordshire University Event Status: confirmed Event Description: Technology Supported Learning in the 21st Century: Issues and Paradigms in Transformative Tertiary...
When: Thu Mar 13, 2008 Where: Centre of Excellence in Professional Learning from the Workplace, University of Westminster, London Event Status: confirmed Event Description: How staff development ...
When: Wed Mar 12, 2008 Where: Croydon College. Event Status: confirmed Event Description: A Higher Education Academy HE in FE/fdf collaborative event suitable for all subject areas This multi-disc...
Just finished rating the tutor bit of Wetpaint. We think we're reasonably consistent with other views but we are being much gentler with priority 1's in an attempt to not overload the technical tea...
Had an interesting meeting with Student Information yesterday, initially about how the University delivers it's calendars and how the calendars are used for funding etc. It seems that the calendar ...
The team have worked this week on setting the ratings for features through the project WIKI rating them from very important to not important at all. The team went through and rated them on their ow...
Work has been slowly moving on without blog updates, sorry folks. We have had to make some decisions on the HIVE software and how we get our learning objects out of it. We were hoping to access IMS...
Dave and I went to Wetpaint to go through the different features of the learner area and what sections would be useful for the learners to see.This needed a scale from 1-5, (1 being high priority a...
As we move towards the pilot phase of the project I have been talking about the experiences we have had to date with the Information Services team. Staffordshire Uni has these events where we showc...
The launch of the pilot turned out to be a bit disappointing with a few technical problems that could not be resolved as quickly as we hoped. Fortunately the pilot launch coincided with half term a...
Yep, the pilot is still on the runway! Technical problems seem to be the order of the day and they keep on coming at us. The pilot is now looking at launching next Monday which is 3 weeks late, but...
Went out and about yesterday with Mark to talk to Bradford college about their HE in FE project that is using some of our content. It was an interesting day that reinforced some of the points raise...
As the development work takes place for SURF WBL-Way the blog has been really quiet. Sorry folks! There is not much to report, the technical team are still working at tidying the code and the datab...
Well the pilot is now up and running, anyone interested in registering as an employer, learner, tutor or support staff can do so. While this has been going on I have tried to put a list of all the ...
Over the next few weeks I will be trying all the cliche's for pilot and flying that I can! This is because the project has reached that important stage of running the pilot. Yesterdays meeting made...
This is more of a general blog about what I have been up to this week rather than a total focus on the project. I have been to several meetings, including one covering the "dynamic prospectus" with...
Had a meeting this morning to discuss access and management of the forums within lifeRay. The main solution to managing the forums is to focus the information much like we already do in Blackboard....
After a well rested week off I was busy last week catching up on everything the team had been up to as I missed a team meeting. I have also worked at updating the Google Group with all the registra...
We received the final report back from AimHigher WM today, it made for interesting reading and demonstrates where the demo is going right / wrong. It seems learners like information dripped to them...
Had a few meetings recently, and will be having a few more, about the functionality of the support point and what will be possible for the end of September. The main one is LDAP authentication of u...
As the project moves forward I am handing over the blogging to the techies for the next few weeks as they let you know what they are up to - although you still might hear a little from me.I have se...
We are now fully into the new year and its starting off with some interesting posts from other JISC projects, mainly SPLASH who are looking at different social networking technologies for their pro...
The project team are now working towards inducting employers, mentors, learners and tutors into the support point. Rather interesting this has highlighted some standard issues (some of which were r...
Rachel Huyton from Burton Arts Centre registered on 10th Jan 2008. A report has been filed in Google Groups, detailing Rachels first impresssions. The Aim Higher Survey on local employer attitudes ...
Having piloted the information point with Ruth Gill at Burton College, meetings with other employers have been scheduled. The Burton Arts Centre manager is to review WBLWAY on Thursday 10th January...
When: Mon Dec 24, 2007 to Tue Jan 1, 2008Â Who: WBL Calendar (public) Event Status: confirmed Event Description: Staffordshire University Shut for Holidays
Met up with Max from Stoke on Trent and Dave from Shrewsbury at Burton College on 23rd Nov 07 to restart the pilot with our "friendly employer" Ruth Gill. The information point fell over everytime ...
On Friday 23rd November Dave, Mike and Max met at Burton College to do another run through with the nursery manager. The experience left us deflated in more ways than one. Max's car had been abando...
SMT welcomed visits from WBLWAY Team to college groups. Comment, "as project has invested £Xxx in college there is an expectation that updates occur".Staff most responsive to Harvest Road Hive dev...
Dave and I met Max, the new person appointed at Stoke for the project and we had an informal chat about the project and progress made to date.We detailed our work so far and as Max is a student at ...
When: Tue Jan 22, 2008 Where: Birmingham Event Status: confirmed Event Description: Agenda: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2008/01/lra
When: Tue Jan 15, 2008 Where: London Event Status: confirmed Event Description: Conference Details: http://www.engsc.ac.uk/nef/events/engage-conference.asp Project Website: http://engage.lboro.ac....
SMT (Senior Management Team)Along with Assistant Principal Garry Phillips and following Mark and Fleur's presentation to our ILT Group, I included WBLWAY in my 1st October update to the SMT on my a...
Dave and I met with Fleur (Programme Manager for the SURF-WBL Way project), today to go through the testing of LifeRay and the portal undertaken yesterday, and to document what worked well and what...
Dave and I met with Mike Parker at Burton to go through the process of creating an account on LifeRay and using the portal process. We expected that certain aspects of the system would not be in p...
Richard Booth and Dave Shearan from Shrewsbury College met up with Myself (Mike Parker) today to run through the support portal and run a pre-trial trial with friendly employer Ruth Gill and one of...
When: Tue Nov 20, 2007 to Wed Nov 21, 2007Â Who: WBL Calendar (public) Where: Birmingham Event Status: confirmed
We are filling the gas bottles as we write and preparing to light the blue touch paper!In preparation for the pilot we have done the following:Arranged for Fleur to give us a detailed demo of LifeR...
A series of ongoing meetings has been taking place with the intention of engaging the FD Construction team. The information regarding their policies on course management is rather diffuse, to put i...
As a consequence of Mark and Fleurs visit to the Burton College ILT Strategic Planning Group, some further explanation of the developments planned for our IT infrastructure is needed. The statement...
Mark Stiles and Fleur Phillips (Corfield) attended the College ILT Strategic Planning Group chaired by our Deputy Principal, Jon Vincent, and several senior post holders. Mark and Fleur presented t...
When: Thu Oct 11, 2007 Where: Birmingham Event Status: confirmed
When: Wed Oct 10, 2007 Where: Birmingham Event Status: confirmed
When: Tue Oct 9, 2007 10:30am to 12:30pm BST Who: WBL Calendar (public) Where: Leeds Event Status: confirmed
As you can see this week I have been attending the ALT-C conference in Nottingham with some colleagues. This has been an interesting event covering some useful subjects for the project including me...
Damian Brant, our newly appointed Quality Manager, has began to get involved with the promotion of our ILT services and has included WBLWAY in this. Internally, Damian will ensure that Curriculum A...
Well here we are blogging again!Our recent aim has been to try and tie up the loose ends, work out what was outstanding and try and get ourselves up to date with any actions. So we went through me...
Details of Burton's three employers who will participate in the WBLWAY trial have been put onto the WBL-WAY Google groups.The final addition is The Burton Brewhouse. This Arts Centre, fairly recent...
After meeting with Ian Ross (Assistant Principal MIS and IT Services), Muhalb Alsaffar (Network Manager), and Tim Davies (IT Database Support), our statement on information held electronically has ...
Just spoke with Nick diMarco (Construction FD tutor) and the identified employer who we wanted for the project has agreed to be involved in the pilot with their learner! The Architect company who h...
Dave and I had a meeting with Chas Warren (the new Director of Business) and Sandra Harris regarding the Goldmine system and what has been done to capture employer data.The system is there, but not...
Today, I met with Phil Bentley who is in charge of Quality and Curriculum and discussed the pilot of the project from September.Phil is very keen to attend one of the next project management meetin...
This week we are concentrating on the data mining bit of the project, and particuarly the storage of employer data at the College.Dave and I met with Brian Hollis, the MIS Manager to find out what ...
Or another possible title (Pilot - we're cooking on gas!)It's been a seesaw of emotions today as we tried to find possible volunteers for the pilot. At the last meeting we mentioned that the number...
The new mangement structure at Burton College (Faculties/Curriculum Areas/with supporting cross college roles for 4 Assistant Principals/Dircctors) has now been embedded with all key pot-holders in...
When: Thu Jun 21, 2007 Where: Manchester Event Status: confirmed Event Description: http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/Portfolio_SIG_HE_in_FE#Programme
When: Wed Jun 13, 2007 to Thu Jun 14, 2007Â Where: online Event Status: confirmed Event Description: SURF and WBL-Way project discussing employer engagement in developing successful work based le...
I'm looking forward to the next WBL-WAY meeting where we are going to involve college managers and brief them on the project progress. Having explored Burton College's organisation and IT infrastru...
With the questions sent out to the tutors yesterday regarding information about employers and mentors, I have received a reply from the tutor for the Arts FDs.The FDs for the Creative Industries sp...
I spent the morning in between supporting tutors with ILT relation problems, trying to find answers to some of the questions posed at the last project meeting which took place on 10th May. Contacte...
I know it's taken a long time but I've finally gotten round to reviewing the Aimhigher report and these are my musings:Progression - It's interesting that this is sought after by employers as much ...
Last week I had a meeting with the marketing department to find out what methods they are adopting in promoting the college courses and to get their views about the portal. They are using the coll...
I have posted two new documents to WBL-WAY Group. One gives details on usable FD data the other suggests different focus for the portal.On the data front, our development of "useful databases" is n...
Yesterday I had a meeting with the college brokers team leader David Bullock (his job entails meeting local employers in order to explain what the college has to offer and persuading them to use th...
Dave and I reviewed the responses from the Complementary Therapies online response form to see what materials could be developed for the project.The learners would liked to have a full description ...
Last week I attended a meeting at Staffs Uni with tutors from FD Complementary Therapy faculties and IT delegates from Cannock, Shrewsbury, Newcastle and Stoke colleges. The tutors were interested...
The development of Foundation Degrees at Burton college continues against a backdrop of restructuring and ecpd developments. These will impact on project aims.Having moved to a faculty structure w...
Just returned from a Steering group meeting for Complementary Therapy which took place at Staffs Uni. After the horrendous journey stuck in a huge queue of traffic, tutors and 'IT' representatives ...
When: Thu May 3, 2007 Who: WBL Calendar (public) Where: Wolverhampton Event Status: confirmed
When: Wed Apr 18, 2007 Where: Bradford University Event Status: confirmed Event Description: To disseminate WBL Project and discuss project work with partner colleges
Most of FD tutors were reluctant to give me the employers' addresses. i gathered that the main reason behind this was political as they fear for the security of their jobs. However some of the tuto...
I have been in contact with Tanya from Training Solutions in the last month. we needed to obtain the completed employers questionnaire as soon as possible as she mentioned that the last day of subm...
I have completed the questionnaire with the tutors of FD faculties across the college. Their requirements were collected and comments highlighted. In general, FD tutors were interested in having a...
On Wednesday this week Richard and I met with the students taking the Complementary Therapies Foundation Degree. We gave an outline of the project and had an informal discussion based around the qu...
Meetings with FD students were taken place last month in most FD faculties Construction, Teaching Assistants, Computing, Care management and Early Years. The meeting schedule was as follows: talk...
I attended a meeting on Monday 19th March to discuss how the College could market the 'Creative Arts' foundation degree. Members of the Marketing team, the tutor for the course and the Head of Art ...
Finally got most respnses to questionnaires back. Respondants include SMT, Curriculum Area Leaders, tutors and four groups of students - along with interesting inputs from Marketing and self financ...
Great day on WBL-Way!Richard and I used the staff interview responses to produce 4 tutor scenarios for using the portal. Interestingly the main theme appeared to be communications, either messaging...
After the very productive Project meeting on Thursday 15th March, I met with the Management at the College (Abi Smith and Len Tildsley) to feedback the outcomes of the meeting and talk over the pro...
In December 2006, I have started interviewing our Foundation Degrees tutors regarding SURF WBL WAY project. This has taken place in the following faculties: Construction, Engineering Early Years, C...
Inside college - final gathering of questionnaire data underway.Within project group - wondering what the response will be to the Shrewsbury & Burton attempt to produce a definitive model for the p...
On 15th of February 2007 there was a seminal meeting at Shrewsbury college - where a scoping review document was devised. Soon to be attached to WBL-Way documents, after Steve and Hamza have viewed...
Given the task of investigating administrative procedures at Burton during our January WBL-Way meeting, I have immediately noted the lack of prescriptive organisation. Responsibility for employer e...
I have, during January and early February 2007, met many groups of FD students. As a college issue, all of them are not receiving any kind of support from our VLE services (from either the existing...
The first version of the staff/student questionnaire has been worked through with Senior Staff at Burton, selected Curriculum Area Leaders, and FD students who are employed by the college. Early i...
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