JISC

Background and Context 
Aims and Objectives 
Project Design 
Implications / Deliverables / Stakeholders 

Background and Context

Spread across multiple sites in a rural Welsh speaking area, the possibilities presented by an MLE are extremely significant for Coleg Menai within its day-to-day operating procedures. For the VLE to be suitable for each of these uses it is vital that every piece of software making up the MLE works together reliably. Significant work has already been done in this area, but the JISC SWaNI project will allow us to address many issues sooner than we had envisaged – and to disseminate our findings and results to a far broader audience than would otherwise have been possible. 

Granada Learning and MicroCompass Systems will be working with us to achieve our aims. Each of these companies recognises the critical importance of these issues to the future of their products – as is indicated not only by their involvement in this project but also the features already existing within their respective products. Their knowledge and experience will drive forward the technical aspects of the project.

Aims and Objectives

• Ensure that interoperability results in reduced administration overheads on courses within the VLE (Granada Learnwise)
• Courses held within the VLE to be populated with students using Student Record System (SRS; MicroCompass QLS).
• Student achievements returned from the VLE to the SRS
• Information about student status (i.e. active/withdrawn) transferred between MLE components
• Use biographical information stored in the SRS to modify the interface options presented to the learner in the VLE
• Report on the impact of multi-lingual software on MLE interoperability. This will include our findings on how this may be applicable to other accessibility needs

Project Design

We feel it is important that our interoperability project supports and extends our existing work. As such we need to measure our progress against existing college procedures; this qualitative analysis forms the backbone of the project. We will be mapping out existing college procedures and cross-referencing the impact of our project against this map. Human detail on the effect of MLE interoperability will be collected through the use of targeted questionnaires and interviews. Individual goals lend themselves to a quantitative approach, e.g. efficiency savings will be measured using time-modelling and an analysis of how our trials will scale when applied throughout the college. 

Implications / Deliverables / Stakeholders

Interoperability remains in its infancy, with many specifications still in development. Software fully supporting available standards and specifications also remain few and far between. Yet this area is also one of increasing importance as VLEs grow in functionality, funding requirements increase in complexity and learning content held in a digital form widen in scope and availability. The dissemination of our results to the wider educational community thus has special significance within the project. The project will ensure our MLE can achieve the following: VLE courses populated using data stored in the SRS; VLE returns results to the SRS; transfers student status between the VLE and the SRS; transfers language preferences from the SRS to the VLE. To allow our results to be used throughout the sector 4 bimonthly reports; 1 summative report (July 2003) and an up-to-date project website will be produced. The project stakeholders are: JISC, MicroCompass, Granada Learning and Coleg Menai (MIS department; e-learning department; tutors; students; and the senior management team).