Forums

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. Thus tutors will be managing something they already take control of in the VLE. This way link tutors manage the overall generic work based learning forums and the subject specific forums are managed by tutors involved on the course. In order to ensure that the correct tutors get the right permissions we need to ensure that the right information is collected at registration (and kept up to date by the user). We need to ensure we cover main job roles in each of the institutions and the faculties/departments each institution has.
One bonus would be if we can show the different forums under different areas so that they could be under the generic WBL Support page and then the Learner sub category (and those categories under it) are also displayed under Learners Public area as the main category. This is being investigated by the technical team.
The technical team have managed to investigate further into the use of LDAP within lifeRay and copying data across (very like the tool in HIVE) into a local database and it is looking good. It could be an easier issue than previously thought (thanks to the new version of lifeRay - this should be up on our severs by the end of the week). We are planning a meeting with the Corp. Info people for two weeks time so that we can start looking at linking with their data too.

Timescales and planning

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 users to access data from the university. We will need learners and tutors to go through this process to prove they are who they say they are. We need some way of verifying the employers now :)
Other than authentication we are looking at different ways of giving access to the forums and prioritising the different functions of the support point. To get everything together at once might be difficult but once the pilot is out functionality can be added as we go along. We do need to think about evaluation after the Christmas holidays to look at what everyone thinks, how often they have used it and also if they have any extra requirements that have not been considered.
Rather depressingly I have had no response from those sector skills councils I contacted about RSS feeds so it is looking like another load of emails.

Moving Closer

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 registration screen shots and what information will be used for each login.

The project will be using its own database for the pilot phase of the project due to the time/ staff restrictions in place and also due to data protection issues. This is mainly because learners don't have to give employers access to their study information even if they have paid for it. This also allows the database to be used for other purposes in the future (i.e. Careers/ Competitive Workforce/ Marketing etc). It is important that we make it clear to all stakeholders involved in the pilot that the information in the site will be viewable by other users (mentors, learners, employers, tutors etc).

Everyone has given the thumbs up to the project leaflet so copies are now being printed and will be going out to project partners and to university staff.

The HIVE meeting went well, I was able to use it easily to upload some learning objects from the last project, however it was less obvious if IMS packages were used how they would be viewable through VLE's etc. The case studies really helped and also gave other departments ideas on how they would be using the repository.

There was also a meeting with AimHigher as we discussed their involvement in the project pilot phase. It was agreed that their role would be more as advisors with regards to setting up the pilots but they will be in charge of any focus groups.

I have contacted a number sector skill councils, based on their websites, about the possibility of them setting up RSS feeds to both their news and events items.

Learners lead the way

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 and also like more colourful sites (although they also say this is confusing to use...). The project will have to think about how this impacts on the demo site or whether the changes are simply reflected in the next stage of the project - the pilot.

At the start of the week I had a meeting with Sian and Jodie from the competitive workforce department. They are also working on employer engagement with the university and are interested in the project, they have their own employer database. I mentioned that the project is looking at ways to centralise this information, saving employers being contacted by different people keeping their own databases up to date. So far the project has found over 5 different employer databases within the university, they are used for different reasons but hold the same information.

As mentioned last week changes have been made to the demo site based around the pilot document I am writing. The project team are kept up to date with the changes through GoogleGroups. Some new pages have been created including registration pages and others have been changed. I hope they will get some good responses.

Thanks to feedback from the project team the project leaflet is going well and has had a total overhaul. It now includes a number of screenshots from the demo site which I wasn't going to do but it got some positive responses so as long as we are clear they are demonstration pages then we should be ok. I am hoping to get the leaflet confirmed as ok at the next team meeting so we can start using it for promotional purposes.

The SURF WBL-Way project is working with the HIVE repository project at Staffordshire university, as part of this work I have had to consider a number of case studies on how the project will be accessing information from the repository into lifeRay. There is a meeting on this at the start of next week. This also meant changes to the demo screens to clear things in my head. The case study document is now with the project manager so just waiting on feedback.

As I am not here the first week of August I am putting together a list of actions for the next team meeting and things that need to be discussed.

Summer?

It's the summer season at the university and colleges so a lot of staff are on holiday, and yes in two weeks time I too will be enjoying a short break. Which will be nice, especially after the rain we have had recently. The project team is data mining at the moment at each college identifying what information they hold and where it is held. I am working on what to do if the data doesn't exist (or exists in an unusable format). Also having to think about the pilot phase which involves checking out all the partner surveys and working out exactly what we want to know. It is looking like a bigger job than initially thought, need to work out how to keep questions short and interesting to the stakeholders. It is making me think more about the functionality and management of the lifeRay site too. I am planning on working on the support point a bit more over the next week.

Attended the fdf conference on Tuesday which made for interesting thinking, they have a number of resources that we could use in the support point, (employer case studies being the best) plus we could give them some of the materials we are creating (i.e. guidelines on validation). Saw a few members of Staffs Uni and SURF at the meeting and managed to do a bit of that project management nagging I seem to be getting a name for!