Richard Eskins

richard eskins | MMU teaching and learning fellowship diary 2005/2007

Friday, April 08, 2005

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.

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