W/b 18th April - WebCT developers area created for me to start experimenting.

Meetings. 25th April, Robert Ready, Teaching and Learning Unit. Robert is the 'Godfather' of all things WebCT at MMU so it seemed to be a good idea to start with what turned out to be an afternoon with Robert. This included an update on recent developments regarding the move towards implementing WebCT Vista. It also a 'crash' introduction to the current tools available to developers in the current version. All this helped me to start thinking about what lies ahead, issues to consider and ways to approach the project.

[Decision: Implementation will be in WebCT Vista, not in the current version]

Tuesday 26th April, Faculty WebCT group. It was good to be invited to join the group and was a good start to hear of peoples experiences. I was very surprised at the response to the description of my project. This generated a lot of positive comments and interest.
Wednesday 27th April, Eddie Higgins, MMU Law School. The Law school already deliver a large amount of content (in both e-learning and document delivery contexts), so it made sense to talk to Eddie and see how this is being done. It is going to be an important part of the project, seeing how people use the same tools to support learning. For the initial phase, producing a WebCT based 'upgrade' of Courseware I think the focus is going to need to be on WebCT as a document delivery tool. That does not mean that staff that already use, or wish develop the additional facilities cannot, but to establish a base setup I think the focus has to remain document delivery. Over a couple of hours with Eddie I got a good insight into how others are making good use of WebCT already, and some of the issues facing the course developers.

This blog is to be used to record my progress throughout my 2 year (half a day a week) Teaching and Learning Fellowship. I will publish further details soon, but the essence of the project is investigate and possibly implement the move of the Department's current content delivery system 'Courseware', into the WebCT Vista environment.

Courseware, a home grown system, has been developed and used by the Department for 10 years to deliver supporting materials such as reading lists, lecture slides and handouts for most of the units taught on both the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in Information and Communications. As a Department we have been unique in that we implemented the system for all taught units with near 100 percent take up. Some units have not used Courseware because they have made use of WebCT's advanced features.

Courseware currently carries thousands of weekly entries plus the associated teaching materials. This project seeks to transfer this information into the WebCT Vista environment. To be successful I hope to establish a format for implementing WebCT Vista across a whole Department in much the same way as we did for Courseware. In the past each WebCT unit has been created by staff who have taken an interest in delivering content online. The Courseware model provides a place for every unit from the start.

One of the key elements of Courseware's success has been its simplicity, both for staff and students. Part of this project will be to create a standardised 'basic' interface for staff to ensure a good take up. Likewise for students, the use of a templated environment that provides a standard look and feel for all units will be part of the goals of the project.

Anyway, enough rambling. You can see there is much to do, a variety of unknowns and a bumpy (this is MMU) path of discovery to follow. If you think you can help or would like to contribute your thoughts, please post below or email me direct.