UELconnect Blog

With the start of the new year, a major project we are looking at is the redevelopment of the current e-learning staff development provision. I think its fair to say that we deliver sessions on new and emerging technologies in a very non technical way (through 2hr face-to-face sessions).

Given this time, we now have the opportunity to look more closely at the mode we deliver content, the breadth of sessions available and the provision if content in other means. Our first step with be a university wide survey, asking staff what technologies they use at the moment, what support mechanisms they use and importantly what they want for the future.

A couple potential avenues we are considering are:

• Providing online ‘at your desk’ sessions for staff. Using a virtual presentation / classroom tool (e.g. Elluminate) to deliver synchronous sessions that staff can access from wherever they are. These would need to be shorter and more focussed that the sessions we currently deliver and we would need to consider the technical skills of our staff and the technical capabilities of our institutional network.
• Providing online reference / self paced content for staff on the use of UEL Plus and other emerging technologies. We have a lot of resources / guides / handouts / screen captures but could develop more for staff who are happy to explore tools on their own.

Bearing this in mind, an interesting challenge will be fulfilling what the staff surveyed need. If a recent school based survey is anything to go by, people want individualised face to face support at times suitable for them. Not sure we’ll ever be able to provide that, but more online sessions might be a step forward in the right direction.