Discussion boards and staff blogs

At our project meeting yesterday Jo Burbidge and I asked the tutors to try to blog at least once a month about their experiences of using the Learner Portal to deliver the Diploma. I know that it may be time consuming but I also know from personal experience that it is invaluable when trying to remember how something feels when looking back some months later. Things that are fresh in the mind this week, will be a distant memory next summer. To help with this, Jane Teh has set up a team blog and is encouraging all tutors to contribute to this, but some tutors are finding that they have to use their Internet Use Quota time to do this, so this will need to be investigated and resolved.

We have also asked tutors to contribute to the discussion boards, so watch this space!

Contributions gratefully received

At our last project meeting we talked about getting the students to add their comments to the discussion boards that I set up. At last - the students have begun to post their thoughts about using the new features available to them in the Learner Portal (a big thank you to Jane Teh, their wonderful course tutor, for helping with this) and there is lots for me to read. I hope by replying to their posts we can open up a dialogue which might encourage them to continue to talk about their experiences.

Personal Development Plan refresher training

Held a session yesterday with the tutors who are teaching on the Diploma course in order to refresh their knowledge of using the electronic Personal Development Plan (PDP). It has been sometime since the initial training session and only now are they actively using the PDP with their students. As this initial session took place before the summer holidays and our tutors have also had to learn how to use a new Student tracking system as well as all the other aspects of the Learner Portal, it is unsurprising that they felt that a refresher was needed.


During the session some tutors had an issue with the updating of progress reviews as this is something that is, in the School of Computing, currently completed by the learner in the paper based version and then agreed by the tutor. In the electronic version, only the tutor could complete this area. We agreed to ask ULCC to amend the functionality to allow for update by tutors and learners, which they did immediately (fortunately this was a minor amendment) and tutors seem to be happier about this. I am conscious that sometimes we are adding to their already heavy workload and so I will try to do anything that I can to facilitate the use of the learner portal features with their students.