David Booth attended the cohort meeting at Woburn House on Monday 29th October. (John Scriven apologies for absence) The morning session began with updates from all the institutions about their progress so far. I gave a brief update from the University of Chichester:
1) The roll-out of the online survey for staff & students
2) Paper-based questionnaires for staff & students situated in strategic places at both Bishop Otter & Bognor Regis campuses
3) Interviews of key personnel – Senior Management & Heads of Schools
4) Big Brother Video Booths at Bishop Otter and Bognor Regis campuses (many institutions showed great interest in this and wanted to know about how we set them up, I did promise to send out details as soon as possible)
5) focus groups
One of the general themes that came out of the general roundup of updates was assigning scores to the twenty core and selected supplementary criteria. Preparation for the scoring meetings was emphasised – prepare and prescore being the operative words. Either using an easily accessible ‘table’ with commentary, evidence, cross reference to interlinked documents on the institutional network; or another version would be a spreadsheet ordering and grouping criteria with the evidence accessed in different folders.
There was an emphasis on benchmarking being an internal reflective exercise, and several institutions made the point that this is Art not Science. Discussion centred on various approaches to scoring slices as well as the institutional scoring. Scoring would not reveal the entire picture; thus the importance of the narrative to accompany the report.
The HE Academy is not comparing institutions, but looking for signs of excellence in elearning. The importance of the final report was emphasised … to raise the profile of elearning; providing evidence for strategic influence and strategic development. The final report will become a catalyst for change, engaging all stakeholders involved in the enterprise.
Jane Plenderleith, gave a briefing from EDSuT and mentioned a ‘summary report’ to be delivered to HE Academy by 15th Jan 2008 – respondents were encouraged to ‘be candid’. EDSuT have produced a draft programme for the Benchmarking Phase 2 meeting scheduled to take place in Bristol on 24 January 2008. It marks the culmination of the formal Benchmarking exercise supported by the Academy and JISC, and provides a forum for a review of Phase 2 in particular and the benchmarking exercise in general.
In the afternoon session Paul Bacsich made some observations about the importance of keeping blogging, the use (or non-use of Helga in its ‘community’ sense); look to the final report and what follows on from Benchmarking in the future …
The importance of getting senior management to buy in to elearning and maintain the sustainability of the project is a vital element in the process of the project. So that there is a continuous improvement, in mid-end January 2008 a reflection exercise how each institution can take forward the benchmarking experience through the involvement of senior management into a culture of change alongside staff development and the encouragement of future elearning initiatives.
There were several other ‘issues’ discussed during what was an eventful and rewarding cohort meeting: ‘learning object repositories’ in focusing and articulating much better ‘bids’ for funding future elearning projects in the HE sector (maybe a further blog is in order to discuss in more detail) and my favourite comment – I believe it was Paul Bacsich – who suggested looking at scoring criteria through constellations of different perspectives.
David Booth
