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Arthur, I think you are entirely correct. In my recent investigations for my smarties model I would suggest that the views of academic staff can often be summarised by 'having little real time available for personal elearning development'. Worryingly, I also found - even amongst staff I perceived to be good users - that many have little motivation for personal elearning development, or motivation to make time available for it. With the other pressures of teaching, administration and research, a good number of them feel that it is one more thing to do, rather than one thing to invest in which could bring down time needed for course administration etc. That is partly why with new staff I feel a need to emphasise some of the time-saving features - not the way I would like to be encouraging elearning development. I suspect some of the problem is ignorance - how long things really take, where to find resources, how to know whether an elearning resource page has been updated without going to the page to check every day. Building on experience, I'm hoping to move this coming term to a model of more individual help/guidance, offering each member of staff a couple of hours at elbow, where their ideas can be talked through specifically; where relevant examples and resource locations can be shown to them and bookmarked. I believe that this will be much more efficient in the long run to encouraging individuals to take elearning development seriously, and thereby also their personal elearning development. Luckily, as we have the portal here, we can provide a tab for instructors which highlights tips and tricks, and quick links to resources either on the LTT webpages or elsewhere at e.g. LTSNs. This is proving a good start point, but it is still not being used massively yet. I should be very much more despondent if I had created the amount of materials that I know you have. Looking forward to hearing how to do it successfully if someone has the magic formula... and a happy new year to you too! Kate ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Kate Boardman Learning Technologies Team IT Service University of Durham t. 0191 334 2778 e. [log in to unmask] w. http://www.dur.ac.uk/k.l.boardman duo: http://duo.dur.ac.uk BbUK: http://www.dur.ac.uk/ltteam/bbuk IT Service: http://www.dur.ac.uk/its/lt/duo/ -----Original Message----- From: Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Arthur Loughran Sent: 05 January 2004 14:15 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Elearning and Staff Development Web Sites Hi, One of the points I raised at the recent Blackboard Users Conference in Durham was the use that is made of our respective elearning resource websites. There are some wonderful examples of elearning and staff development websites which no doubt would be a great boon to academics if they use them. They have been to me in my searches for "good ideas" and thanks to all who have built them. However my gut feeling, to some extent supported by a quick straw poll at Durham, is that academic staff do not use these resources, many of which have taken a fair amount of effort and cost to develop. I feel that it is important to have these types of resource available so that they can be used as and when required but it seems as though many of us are working away, spending good time and money, developing resources that appear to be almost superficial to our constituents. There are many reasons for this seeming condition and I suspect the main one is that academic staff have little "real time" available to them for personal elearning development work. Is this an erronous assumption? Are there examples of high utilisation of institutional online elearning resources out there? Answers on an email to the group would be appreciated. Happy New year to one and all. Arthur Loughran University of Paisley. Legal disclaimer -------------------------- The information transmitted is the property of the University of Paisley and is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Statements and opinions expressed in this e-mail may not represent those of the company. Any review, retransmission, dissemination and other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender immediately and delete the material from any computer. --------------------------