SWWHEP E-learning Project

This Collaboration will establish an E-learning Centre of Excellence for the three Institutions which will be based at Swansea University, Library and Information Services.  The centre will build upon the support centre already established at SU. The focus will be to work very closely with the academic staff in all three Institutions to develop and embed e-learning into the curriculum and culture of the three institutions.  As a result of initial planning involving all three partners and a consultant from Blackboard the project has evolved into three distinct phases documented below:

1.  Setting up and implementation of Blackboard Academic Suite v8 at all three institutions – this will facilitate easier collaborative working across the institutions at academic.  On the administrative side it will centralise the technical management, and enable  the establishment of shared training and support for Blackboard including the establishment of an on line knowledge base to provide greater support at points of need.

2.  Development of the Blackboard installations to take full advantage of new features in the Learning, Community and Content Systems. These three interlinked parts of the Academic suite will enable each institution to deliver services through Blackboard which better reflect the needs of learners.  The three components are powerful and complex and there will be a rolling programme of working groups to develop the most effective solutions. Many of these groups will be cross institutional to share experience and expertise and will comprise academics, students and administrative staff facilitated by eLearning Support staff.

3.  Establishment and development of virtual eLearning resource centre (centre of excellence). Work on establishing this will start early in the academic year 08/09 alongside the development of Blackboard.  The exact nature, operational structure and name of the centre has yet to be agreed by the partners but its overall aim will be to provide a shared eLearning resource and Community of Practice across the partner institutions. Essentially it will be a virtual centre supported by the project staff across the three institutions.  The remit will be to facilitate eLearning in its broadest sense and to help each institution embed eLearning into their local framework and culture