JISC

Overview

The scope of MMU’s EQAL Programme offers an institutional-level test bed for many of the ideas championed by the JISC e-Learning Programme - from service-orientation and freeing time through e-administration, to curriculum transformation and digital literacy. Whilst the larger SRC project continues to share insights with the sector on processes and information flows for designing employer-responsive curricula (see, for instance, the 2009 JISC Online Conference), the W2C project will evaluate the promise of widgets, web-services and cloud-services for giving convenient personalised access to learning systems on an institutional scale.

Aims and objectives 

• enhance the capability of our VLE to meet existing and emerging user requirements
• enhance user satisfaction of our learning systems
• heighten awareness about patterns of student engagement and success
• facilitate discovery of learning resources that others have found useful
• accelerate development of a community of practice for educational widgets
• improve, by providing practice-informed feedback, key sources of information available to others in the sector contemplating similar endeavours

Project methodology

The Project Management framework closely follows Prince2 principles with the overall organisation and reporting structure following the traditional Prince2-type structures.

Anticipated outputs and outcomes

Process maps for fee status & resource usage

Web-service:

• SSO to Live@Edu
• SSO to VLE
• PC availability
• fee status
• personal & module timetables
• module hand-in deadlines
• VLE engagement reporting
• VLE marks export
• linked data module description
• library resource lists
• resource list recommendation

Relevant web-service APIs + technical model documented

Module / personal timetable widget

Module / personal deadlines widget

Module reading list widget

Relevant widgets developed & deployed to VLE + for mobiles

Pilot groups identified to compare VLE + mobile widgets

Interim report from student focus groups + learner device surveys

Staff identified to evaluate resource + engagement data

Interim report from staff focus groups + evaluation

Staff + student evaluation report published

Summary of business rationale for MMU’s “core plus” VLE model

EQAL user experience evaluation metrics identified

EQAL evaluation data analysed

Case study published critiquing DLE & e-Framework guidance

EQAL approval to incorporate W2C in user experience strand

Ongoing engagement with 03/10 programme + blogging & twitter

Technology / Standards used

• RSS 2.0
• W3C Widget Packaging and Configuration
• XCRI-CAP 1.1
• BPMN 2.0
• ATOM