JISC

The Pilots are seen as an ideal opportunity to gain knowledge and experience which will enhance the services supplied to future MLE implementation projects.

Executive summary

The main findings of the project relate to emerging College priorities and the nature of relationships with vendors.

For the College, security has been the key issue as the VLE/MLE opens the College systems to the world. The College is working hard to resolve these issues as remote access will be essential to the success of MLEs. Currently, the College is unwilling to support internet access to the Learnwise server located within the College’s firewall.

South Birmingham College’s focus has been the integration with the LDAP/ MIS systems. Development has been concerned with Enterprise IMS standards rather than LIP, although some work  on LIP specificaions has been completed.

• Vendors have focussed on products talking to each other and have created bespoke solutions to allow this to happen
• Working relations with vendors have facilitated developments. There are longer term plans to work closely with Granada
• The project work was facilitated by positive working relationships between  IT services and curriculum staff within the College
• There have been instances of commercial /College cultural differences   which  have been usefully explored and, largely, resolvedThere are issues specific to large FE institutions which the College has had to address and which could inform developments across the sector
• There are different perceptions of user trust amongst the FE and commercial communities. College adopts a view that all users are potential hackers, even authenticated users