www.imperial.ac.uk/events

1

Education Day

e-Learning@imperial: Structure & Strategy

Omar K. Matar

Chair of e-LSC

Tuesday 20 April 2010

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/elearning/

Outline

• Why ‘e-Learning@imperial’?

• ELSC membership

• Terms of reference

• Structure

• Strategy and implementation

• Education Day: examples

Why e-learning@imperial?

The key drivers for e-learning are the evolving nature of

• students and their needs

• staff, their skills and roles

• technology and its use in education

• HE institutions

• competition

Membership

• Prof. Omar K. Matar (Chem. Eng., Chair) • Mr. Paul Allatt (ICT) • Dr. Steven Cook (Life Sciences) • Prof. Susan Eisenbach (Computing)• Ms. Ruth Harrison (Library) • Mr. David Lefevre (Business School) • Prof. Alan Spivey (Chemistry) • Dr. Maria Toro-Troconis (Medicine)• Mr. Jonathan Silver (Student Rep.)

Terms of Reference

• To advise the Strategic Education Committee (SEC) on the College’s current use of educational technologies in learning, teaching and assessment.

• To advise the SEC on recent trends and forthcoming developments in the use of technology within education.

• To advise the SEC on the College’s strategic priorities in the planning, implementation and evaluation/research of educational technology, and administration thereof, including implications for internal funding, and theco-ordination or management of future developments.

• To prioritise and approve College bids for the external funding of educational technology initiatives, for instance, bids for JISC funding, as appropriate.

• To allocate funding for College-wide e-Learning technology initiatives.

Organisational structure

1. To coordinate, support and promote e-learning activity across the College to further the aims of the College’s teaching and learning strategy:• To promote a blended approach to teaching and learning which incorporates

use of e-learning into traditional teaching and learning methods • To promote innovation and creativity in the use of technology in teaching and

learning • To promote the use of e-learning to enhance the quality, efficiency and flexibi

lity of assessment and feedback • To ensure adequate capacity/capability of e-learning provision and associated

support across the College

• To encourage departments to develop ‘local’ strategies that mesh with the ELSC and College strategies

• To work with those areas of the College  other than academic departments, eg SPD, AHSC, to encourage the use of E-learning tools where appropriate

2. To promote Imperial College as a leader in worldwide education: • To encourage the development of an infrastructure to allow publication  of lea

rning materials, where appropriate, to a worldwide audience through the use of tools such as Open Courseware and iTunes-U

Strategy

Implementation

• Secure internal and external funding for core e-learning

activities

• Continue to develop the role of Learning Technologists (LTs)

• Continue to recruit LTs as appropriate

• Ensure that the VLE remains up-to-date and suited to the

strategic needs of the College by carrying out regular reviews

Implementation

• Encourage departments to support e-learning and LTs

• Encourage departments to develop an appropriate infrastructure for e-learning integration in teaching and learning

• Encourage departments to integrate LTs into their teaching committees as appropriate

Implementation

• Encourage LTs and academics to remain abreast of developments in e-learning via attendance of conferences, seminars, workshops

• Incentivise and reward LTs and academics for the development of creative and novel e-learning tools

• Provide advice on how to explore novel technologies that support e-learning

Implementation

• Provide guidelines for and support the use of e-learning tools for formative and summative assessments

• Support the design of courses (both blended and fully on-line) taking into account student support, special needs and accessibility, QAA codes

• Raise student awareness of support provided by the VLE (for assessment, coursework submission, discussion groups etc)

• Enhance student skill set in e-learning techniques

Implementation

• Resolve issues related to IP

• Set up framework (and associated support network) for development of open courseware e-learning tools: from content creation to publishing

• Monitor the development of open courseware tools in other HE institutions world-wide

Implementation

• Ensure penetration of e-learning into departments

• Create discussion forums for academics and LTs, and disseminate best-practice across the College

• Keep strategy under constant review

Examples of what’s on offer today

Workshop: 11.15: A journey from PowerPoint to the Virtual Learning Environment

Examples of what’s on offer today

Workshop: 15.00: Content Creation: Creating reusable digital course content