Dear TLT officers.

Three years ago we set this list up to help us stay in touch with each
other. So far, many good discussions have taken place over this list, and
several meetings were organised. The feedback that I get about this is
overal very positive. Slowly we seem to have formed a pretty impressive
network of people who are responsible for implementing TLT in their
institutions.

This makes us an interesting group for organisations and bodies to liaise
with. Initialy we said we were not going to join ALT, CTISS or TLTSN (for
those who were at the Manchester meeting, you may remember this discussion
well). So far costs involved with meeting have been carried by visitors,
kind hosts in several HEIs and my own 'pet projects' budget.
This works well.

Less well is the provision of meetings nationwide. There have been
repeated requests for more meetings all over Britain, and we have only
rarely been able to organise those. Also, we do not have a regular
information outlet, like a journal or such.

The Association for Learning Technology (well known as ALT) now offers us
a 'home'. We are invited to join them as a special interest group (SIG),
which will give us a yearly meeting place at their ALT conference, a place
for a website, support in organising meetings and even the possibility of
organising workshops. I know the list has been discussing this already,
but no decision was made.

The reservation we had with this in the past, was that ALT is a memberhsip
organisation, and fees for workshops are high (relatively). On discussing
this with Rhonda (ALT), there is now the following offer:

1. The TLT officers join ALT as a Special Interest Group
2. We get a column in the ALT journal, support for organising events and a
yearly SIG meeting at the ALT conference (which takes us out of the
breakfast slot!)
3. We can use their website for advertising and information
4. If we set up workshops, they will go as normal ALT workshops and this
involves fees, BUT
5. Our normal network meetings continue as usual, (no fees) but ALT helps
organise them.

Although I was one of the people involved in the organisation of the TLT
officers forum, I don't feel this is my decision to make, which is why I
am asking you to send me an email: [log in to unmask] before next
week Friday 11 February, stating whether you want me to go ahead and sign
us up to the ALT under the conditions above, or not.. 

So please, vote now:

Yes, let's join the ALT
       or
No, let's stay 'simply ourselves'

Thanks for your vote.

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Gwen van der Velden
List owner
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