What I have been doing since 5th February 2007

I started this post on 5th February 2007 after giving up my teaching commitments at Coleg Glan Hafren in Cardiff. I was lucky enough to have a short hand over period, although the role I am expected to fill over this six month period was very clear set;

• Ensure the sucessful migration from Tekincal's Virtual Campus to Moodle by the end of July 2007, accross the college.

Moodle is a piece of open-source software that runs a designed to facilitate teachers in the management of educational courses for their students, especially by helping teachers and learners with course administration. The system can often track the learners' progress, which can be monitored by both teachers and learners. While often thought of as primarily tools for distance education, they are most often used to supplement the face-to-face classroom.

Components Moodle include templates for content pages, discussion forums, chat, quizzes and exercises such as multiple-choice, true/false and one-word-answer. Teachers fill in these templates and then release them for learners to use. New features in these systems include blogs and RSS. Services generally provided include access control, provision of e-learning content, communication tools, and administration of the user groups.





Here at Barry College we have been running a 'pilot' version of Moodle for one department since September 2006. Based on the success of this pilot Moodle is to be rolled out to every department in the college by July 2007 to allow the provision of staff development and to ensure teachers have time to familiarise themselves and build courses by September 2007.

In order to build a Moodle system for the college, the steps to be taken are;

1. Choose an appropriate sequence for which departments will be built into the system. The proposed sequence is;
1. Tourism, Hospitality and Sport Department
   
2. Basic and Key Skills Department
   
3. IT and Computing Department
   
4. Business Department
   
5. Engineering Department
   
6. General Education Department
   
7. Caring, Art and Design Department
8. Construction Department
   
9. Foundation Skils Department
   
10. ICAT Aerospace Department
11. Hair, Beauty and Holistic Therapies Department
    
12. Earshot
2. Meet with each departments' ILT Champion and/or department head and discuss;
   
• which courses they would like to put onto Moodle,
• how they would like each of those courses structured,
• which tutors would want rights to adjust and adapt these courses,
• what else they would like Moodle to be able to do for them.
3. Build the elected courses and structures into Moodle using;
• meta-courses - these courses auto-enrol students, are hidden from students not enrolled on a main course (Btec National Diploma etc.) and act as course units (Unit 1 - Introduction to the British Legal System)
• HTML blocks - these will be used to create hyperlinks around the course and meta-courses (units) for easier navigation by the students. Many students at other colleges have complained that Moodle can appear complicated and difficult to navigate, particularly on first log-in. We are attempting to make it as simple to navigate as possible for the students by attempting to replicate a website structure and format to every course.
4. Staff develop throughout each department, firstly the departmental ILT champion, then later all stafff to be able to upload materials, edit the course format, include learning outcomes, use the plethora of activities built into Moodle (quizzes, glossaries, lessons etc.)
   

The story so far......

I am currently the ILT (Information and Learning Technology) at Barry College in South Wales. I am covering the post for Liz Hallett who is on maternity leave, although there really is a big job to do here as we are rolling out Moodle as our VLE accross the college.

The Role

Since the launch of the ILT Champion programme (2001), learning technologies have developed, improved, and expanded, and the role of ILT within colleges has also changed over time.

Although the key tasks and responsibilities of an ILT Champion may essentially remain the same, the role of ILT within colleges has broadened and some colleges have established new ILT posts.

ILT Champions are normally on the management scale and are responsible for developing the college’s ILT strategy, and co-ordinating the team of curriculum ILT Champions (if there any).

Typical tasks in an ILT Champion job description:

• Develop ILT strategy
• Advise SMT
• Line manage e-learning teams/ILT Champions
• Represent the college at ILT events
• Manage/develop VLE/Intranet/website
• Monitor and bid for ILT funding
• Evaluate hardware and software that may benefit teaching and learning
• Monitor, review and evaluate the impact of ILT on teaching and learning within the college, and make recommendations based on this
• Develop/support/deliver ILT staff development programmes

Another Model: E-learning Teams

Other colleges have full-time E-learning/ILT teams. Some colleges are lucky enough to have both an e-learning team AND a team of Champions, and in this case the two teams tend to work closely together. E-learning teams focus on managing and supporting VLEs/intranets/websites etc, and the Champions focus on encouraging staff to develop resources for the VLE.

There are a variety of job titles in e-learning/ILT teams, including:

• ILT Technical Development Officer
• E-learning Manager
• E-learning Technologist
• Learning Technologist

To find out more about ILT and E-learning roles within FE, visit the Ferl ILT Champions area at http://ferl.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?page=145 .