Hi
I am disappointed that I hadn't heard about UKeU, until now. You see at a time when UKeU was in existence I enrolled with the OU for maths courses. Being a believer in the e-learning movement I would have benefited from the experience of studying on-line, I feel disappointed that I didn't have the opportunity to do so. When I discuss this with colleagues they generally look blank, which might indicate that they didn't know anything or much about UKeU either. Perhaps then marketing was very poor. I don't know anything about the platform, but it seems obvious to me that like all good systems it should have been thoroughly tested and developed in consultation with end users (i.e. tutors, administrators and learners) systems which are not developed in this way always fail (bold statement that). Perhaps then it should have been piloted and then developed on an ad hoc basis, perhaps it was, in which case the chosen platform was the wrong choice.
Regards
David
-----Original Message-----
From: Simon Fitzpatrick [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 09 June 2004 13:05
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [VLES] e-university lessons
Hello
My ten bob's worth:
I attended a couple of the early UKEU presentations, lead by Tim O'Shea and
Nick Winton, the interim CEO, where the concept was explained and they
invited interested parties to submit projects for funding.
I felt at the time that despite the great emphasis placed on 'robust
business planning', 'marketing strategies', there was very little evidence
of either. When challenged on the evidence for the existence of the
'market', I was firmly rebuffed - a lot of the people in the audience wanted
guidance on how UKEU would support them if they went ahead with
'E-degrees'/on-line courses etc etc - some hard data on the existence of
students wanting to study specific subject areas and study on-line, would
have convinced institutions that the investment in course design would have
been worthwhile.
I was disappointed at the time, as I felt that the project was being carried
along on a wave of hype rather than good business sense - I'm not surprised
John Slater bailed out.
Ho hum
rgds
simonf
>
> I'm not sure how much responsibility for UKEU's problems should be
> attributed to the learning platform, given that a lot of the talk about why
> UKEU was wound down was poor student numbers. I don't think that those
> students that did/didn't sign up for courses did so on the basis of
> technological decision (grin).
>
>> I'm sure there were other reasons too, possibly to do with marketing
>
> I'm sure you're right, and that poor marketing was probably a much bigger
> factor the eventual demise of UKEU. Regardless of the platform, technical
> specifications etc. if students don't know about it they can't sign up for
> it. Hence the low student numbers.
>
> As I understand it UKEU was to promote specific UK HE courses overseas, but
> in the end I believe that marketing support for these courses was lacking
> and the institutions ended up having to do a lot of it themselves in a short
> period of time.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Nick.
> ........................................................
> Nick Meara E-learning Experience Co-ordinator
> ICT-IDSG, Aston University, Birmingham
>
> 'A mind is a fire to be kindled,
> not a vessel to be filled.'
> -- Plutarch
>
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------------------------------------
Simon Fitzpatrick
LEARN2eLEARN Ltd.
WWW.LEARN2eLEARN.CO.UK
07742-223347
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