JISC

This project was bid for by Colchester Institute as it was seen as the ideal opportunity to consider online learning using a VLE that would allow more automated functions by being linked to the main MIS. This also forced us all to re look at the needs of the College and what might be possible with interoperability. Already working with a standalone VLE (TekniCAL’s Virtual Campus) we felt that we were aware enough of what a VLE could offer, but needed to consider if a MLE could offer added enhancement to this, and what this would need to operate in terms of staff and procedures.

Executive Summary

The project has enabled us to work more closely with teams within our own working environment, which we may otherwise not have done. We needed to look carefully at the benefits that this would give to tutors, asked tutors what they wanted to see and ensured that everything considered had a genuine purpose. It was very important that we were not just using the technology for the sake of it. Everything we did within this pilot we would want to scale to fit the whole college curriculum offering at a later stage. However, although we looked at the bigger picture to ensure we got the infrastructure in place we have only tested the very basic levels of what we would hope to build upon.

One thing this bid has done is to get the vendors and the College staff working as a team, many of the meetings were not only useful they were also good humoured and at times we would forget we were all working for different organisations.

The group mix was important and after the first meeting it was evident that we needed to include other members like, curriculum, and the MIS manager. Once the group was formed it stayed together throughout the project and all the group members were involved in all the monthly meetings.

The Curriculum staff along with the tutors helped to ensure we got the build correct ensuring that the fields passed across from MIS to VLE were not only the correct ones, but that we had covered all aspects of the curriculum. Another issue we looked at was how we at Colchester Institute used the data and what reports we would need to extract from the data.

The most important thing we needed to do was looking at the Colleges own procedures. Did they need changing, what did we need from the data, how did we move it now, and what was reliant on what? Without evaluating this first we would not have been as successful with this pilot as we have been.

We have achieved what we at Colchester Institute set out to achieve showing interoperability as defined with MIS to VLE and from VLE back to MIS with small amounts of test data.
We have also identified other fields that we needed to use which were not in the IMS specifications as well as a concern over the lack of data verification that the project had. More than anything else we have a much better working relationship with some teams within the college and with the two vendors.

For any college to have a MLE will mean that the merging of the roles of MIS, ILT, IT Services, Curriculum, and Registry etc will be necessary, as the MLE will be in many cases the core of the College supporting the curriculum offering and enhancing students learning experiences.

Read the final report below