Pathfinder Plan Summary

Project Overview

Aims and Objectives
• To develop and deliver more accessible functionality in key areas associated with the harvesting and creation of digital resources.
• To explore and develop new work flow models to support academic staff and others involved in authoring eLearning materials.
• To identify, explore and disseminate the characteristics of successful transformational change relating to the convenient and accessible creation, deployment and use of digital resources in ways that give regard to matters of copyright and which encourage the purposeful use and re-use of these assets..

Outputs and Outcomes

Expected Outcomes
1. The key characteristics associated with the introduction and support of new patterns of working by academic and other staff associated with eLearning resource creation and harvesting are well understood, documented and disseminated.
2. A growing library of digital resources/learning objects used to support teaching and learning.
3. A number of collaborative ‘teams’ pulling together academic and eLearning support staff are formed as ‘models for a wider process of transforming the ways in which eLearning resources are created and deployed
4. Digital content that is newly created or harvested as part of the project is cleared for IPR and appropriately metadata tagged
5. The delivery mechanism for eLearning activities within the project become ‘data light’ allowing easier migration to other support frameworks

Possible Outcomes
1. The benefits of collaborative teaching and learning activities are more widely understood and accepted.
2. Teaching and learning resources are increasingly created from learning objects authored by a range of individuals and groups
3. A new range of staff development materials are developed which embody more collaborative approaches to content authoring and the use of learning objects.
4. A model of good practice for the management of e-learning materials is developed that will be disseminated across the wider HE sector

Deliverables

I. Clear, documented work-flow frameworks for creating, sharing, tagging and using digital content in all its forms. These will be made available for use both within and beyond Keele

II. Well understood and specified mechanism for using a repository for storing digital 'content' independent of a specific delivery tool e.g. VLE or ‘Learning’ Server.

III. Procedures for generating data regarding the use of digital assets relevant to strategic and operational planning and the creation of the datasets required by external agencies such as the CLA

IV. One or more Staff Development Modules created using materials held on the repository as exemplars of ‘good practice’ which can be shared across university faculties and between institutions.

V. Exemplar collection of resources, including documents and a variety of digitized multimedia assets with metadata tags, made available in the repository for staff use in a range of teaching, learning and research activities

The story so far...

The main focus of the Pathfinder Project at Keele is detailed in a separate post - the plan summary. This gives a good picture of where we started from in the early part of the year and have been revised to reflect discussions at the first Pathfinder event held in York during May.

The principal challenges in the early part of the project have been associated with the processes required to make new staff appointments and to purchase strategic software from 'sole suppliers'. We would recommend that future projects of this kind leave sufficient time between the awarding of funds and the notional start of a time limited activity to accomodate the institutional procedures to be completed before substantive activity can begin.

Now some ten weeks from the beginning of the project in May 2007, we have completed the purchase of the Intralibrary software and identified the hardware and 'infrastructure' support needed to implement the repository system which lies at the heart of our 'pathfinding'. The software will be commissioned and configured in the next two weeks.

The appointment of a new member of staff with responsibility for supporting work on metadata tagging, document scanning and copyright matters has now been accomplished and the new post holder will be in place from the end of August 2007. in the short term work will start with immediate effect harvesting and scanning those materials for the repository that will be managed under the CLA Digital materials licence.

Day to day Pathfinder activities and the management and monitoring of the project is achieved through a small core team drawn from staff involved in elearning support, staff training, technical support and the library. This group reports to an established steering committee associated with the Learning Development Unit (LDU) which in turn reports to the University Learning and Teaching Committee.