All Quiet

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 packages from HIVE but there are a few problems with that. Mainly the IMS/Scorm viewer in HIVE is not displaying objects in the way expected, and now it also looks like without a big upgrade to Blackboard they will not be able to be used in there either! I am trying to think about work arounds that won't involve putting all the HTML files in - and darn it the only thought I can come up with is using frames....there has to be a better option out there.
Our portal has now got some users on it and we have had some useful feedback - especially on the use of forums in the community, and the fact that the permissions did not work as we expected. Thankfully the LifeRay community have come to the rescue with some work arounds - thanks guys. Calling on experts when needed means that the development team don't have spend lots of time investigating the back end of the software.
We had a project meeting last week, where the technical team have confirmed that they now have their own blog, and I will certainly be putting the link up here as soon as I get it. The project team are working together to prioritise the different features requested for learners over this week and by Friday they should have chosen the features most important to the success of the portal. They are using the project WIKI and will be blogging their experiences too.

Deja Vu

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 raised in our eXchange for Learning projects (X4L & SURF WBL), including IT fatigue, unclear roles in support foundation degrees (see Burtons Blog), and lack of learner knowledge of available tools available via the University. One thing can certainly be said of this project, we have found that these problems just keep coming up and have to be faced and dealt with. Thankfully that is the main role of the support point, delivering information where it is needed and helping those involved in WBL understand how they fit in. Ideally it will be used to reduce the technologies the stakeholders will be aware of (they will, of course, still be in the background) - one point of access to the tools and information available. For example the repository will be a tool they will use but wont need to know anything about, it will be delivering content to them as they request it using the support point as a front end. The same could be said from any MIS such as Dolphin, Frame-Up etc.

Happy New Year

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 project and have come across some interesting software. Their links are well worth a peek.
The project team meeting has been cancelled for this month but the team are still working hard, Stoke have been making progress on finding out about initial thoughts from end users on the support point, fingers crossed that will be blogged soon. Also, from looking at statistics the PageFlakes page is bringing more traffic to our blog and raising awareness of the project. Still not getting much feedback from the community but I am forever hopeful! The Wiki is taking a while to get going, but as meetings take place at the colleges this should become more active. We will have to see.
I am talking with different departments about institutional calendars and seeing if they are progressing beyond the traditional word/pdf files so that they can be shared through the support point as well as other methods (website, email etc). Plus it would bring all information into one place (open days, term dates, exam timetables, award events etc) rather than in different places.
Other than that I am down to London next week for the Engage Conference and presenting at the JISC conference the week after, which is keeping me busy.

Handing over control

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 set up a couple of new tools for the project, there is a public page in pageflakes (http://www.pageflakes.com/surfwblway/) that lets you see all the blogs, project calendars and websites from one page. I have also set up a private WetPaint WIKI for discussing the support point features. This is after our unsuccessful attempt to use it for the last project. I really want to see a more positive outcome to using it this time - so fingers crossed. If all goes well with the pages this could also go public as part of the project dissemination.

Development Work

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 database and I am working at trying to get content into the universities repository (HIVE) in a way that will be usable.

I have got a number of learning activities in - over 35, but with another 50 to go the task seems never ending. Plus there are some problems with how Blackboard reads IMS packages, for some reason putting the Base attribute after the HREF attribute rather than before it. Hopefully this will be a quick fix otherwise it really impacts on the work I have been doing. The other main issue is how HIVE previews SCORM packages, with the embedding of Reload with its Explorer programme I was hoping for SCORM to be using the Reload previewer. Unfortunately not which means that at the moment the SCORM packages only show their top level navigation. I have demonstrated to the technical team here how Reload Previewer works and how Jorum displays IMS packages but it looks like we will have to purchase a commercial product to cover this gap in the software.