In recent months I’ve been involved with elements of the ‘Ripple’ project – a joint venture between Harper Adams University College, University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University. The project aims to promote the development and distribution of Open Educational Resources (OER) – learning materials that are visible and editable by the outside world.
Amongst the many goals of Oxford’s Ripple workshops was the idea that institutions should try to create a ‘buzz’ around the release of their learning objects, whether it be through drumming up interest via poster campaigns, announcements on the web, or simply by adding a link in an email signature.
Back at Harper Adams, a recent method we have used to help promote the activities of our e-Learning department is through the development of an ‘e-Learning Showcase’ website, which aims to publicise the many Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) that have been produced throughout the ‘University Modernisation Fund’ project and beyond.
The ‘UMF Project’, as it was more commonly known, was a HEFCE funded programme at Harper Adams running Sept ’10 – March ’11, which entailed the production of a vast array of online learning objects, created by a newly-recruited team of content developers (which, incidentally, included yours truly!). Sadly, many of the resources produced during this period (and those produced since) have inevitably ended up being tucked away in the depths of our Moodle VLE, out of sight from even many of our own academics, let alone a national or (God forbid) international audience…!
The ‘Agile’ method
Inspired by a recent workshop on ‘Agile Project Management’ methodologies, we decided to test the ‘Agile’ workflow system by implementing it on this web development project. I had developed a mixture of both intrigue and scepticism about the practicalities of using Agile methods, so it seemed like a good environment to put them to the test.
We started by generating a set of ‘user stories’ where we identified the main users of the site and their respective requirements. Such scenarios went along the lines of:
- As an academic tutor, I want to see the RLOs of colleagues in order to assist and inspire my own teaching.
- As a visitor from another institution, I want to easily learn about e-Learning at Harper Adams in order to share and network with staff at Harper.
- As a prospective student, I want to view learning material produced by Harper Adams, in order to learn more about the subject content taught there.
This paved the way for the creation of a number of tasks, which included a method to easily upload resources to the website, to specify whether they were ‘public’ or not, to develop a search function based on course content, and so on.
With the Harper Adams quarterly Learning and Teaching Forum looming just around the corner, we decided to prioritise these tasks and begin a 2-week ‘sprint’ where we would generate a demo of the site to showcase at the forum.
Umbraco CMS
Umbraco was a bit confusing to set up at first, with various bits of code scattered all over the place in some fairly awkward built-in editors, but once we had the system up and running it was pretty easy to cram in a load of content.
We managed to get a version of the site up and running in time for the Learning and Teaching Forum, where we encouraged academic staff to keep an eye on it for new content. Unfortunately many of the RLOs themselves are currently only visibly internally as they still need to be cleared for public viewing, but the site at least allows any casual visitors to have a read about our various projects, and will hopefully soon allow the public to view some of the actual learning objects themselves.
Results that we’re getting back from Google Analytics has been encouraging – currently the vast majority of our hits are, not surprisingly, coming from the Shropshire area, but it looks like we’re also drawing in an increasing number of visitors from a range of places across the UK. With more and more people getting a taste of e-Learning at Harper, we’re hoping that the site will prove to be a great way of creating that real ‘buzz’ we talked about back at Oxford!
Top image by Lies Thru a Lens (CC BY).
James Roscoe's EdTech Blog 