Get the Brokers involved

Yesterday I had a meeting with the college brokers team leader David Bullock (his job entails meeting local employers in order to explain what the college has to offer and persuading them to use the college FT- PT courses and work-based learning courses to enhance the skills of their employees as a route to improved business performance.

I went through the goals of the project with him and briefly demonstrated the lifeRay prototype to him; he was very interested in the portal and envisaged this gateway could potentially be an additional marketing tool for promoting the college courses and services. As he is in regular contact with employers, he is aware of the employers concerns and he has approved of most of the designed functions.

He pointed out that the college has not yet published a prospectus for work-based learning courses, but they do have various lists of courses available from the college faculties. He suggested that the employers should be able to search for work-based learning courses grouped by location/subject on the portal.

He mentioned that the portal should have a link where employers can suggest a course to SURF colleges.

The broker team leader agreed to alert more employers about WBL WAY portal in his future meetings.

Meeting with Complementary Therapy

Last week I attended a meeting at Staffs Uni with tutors from FD Complementary Therapy faculties and IT delegates from Cannock, Shrewsbury, Newcastle and Stoke colleges.

The tutors were interested in having an online system where they can share their learning materials, experiences and practices and collaborate effectively.

The following suggestions were made:

• Portal could be an ideal solution for their requests once implemented, however they were looking for a quick fix to support their students at the present time
• One of the colleges could host all the course materials and give outsiders access to their VLE
• Create a shared area on blackboard where they can upload their materials and exchange ideas and practices

Issues concerning the tutors:

• On how to use Blackboard properly
• The organisation of the materials on Blackboard
• Who would be responsible to decide which materials should be used?

In the end, it was decided that Blackboard could be the most appropriate solution, as every tutor/learner has theoretically a login account on it.

It was agreed that a meeting with an IT Staffs team member would be very useful. This will be arranged and we will have a demo of Blackboard at the next meeting.