Hi Bill and Helen,

Bill - I really like your blog btw - I'm already planning on pointing 
some staff toward the Articulate entry.

We used to deliver e-learning training through a scheduled programme of 
courses. But we've changed our approach to e-learning training and 
development in the last couple of years. You'll find a spreadsheet 
attached which gives a list of the courses we advertise. It's mostly 
developmental work rather than training... but, due the nature of what 
we do, it does include practical training on various systems and 
software (e.g. a session on podcasting would cover *why* one might 
podcast but also *how* to actually do it). We have a scheduled list of 
courses but we do make every effort to deliver whatever training is 
required so we regularly add new courses to the list according to 
requests from colleagues.

We've found, in the last few years, numbers for our scheduled programme 
have dwindled but demand for bespoke sessions tailored to the needs of 
various teams has greatly increased. These have been in a variety of 
formats... workshops, hands-on IT training sessions, 'town hall' 
meetings, presentations, etc.

This year I'm trying to consider our training and development strategy 
as having three strands:

  1. Face-to-face sessions that are designed to:
         * cover complex ideas and processes
         * create and promote communities of practice
  2. Development and good practice on our website. These are articles
     we write in response to staff requests. For example -
     http://www.esddelu.org.uk/reviews/videohost/
  3. Self-directed support materials. These are small concise guides on
     how to do very specific things with our software systems. For
     example - http://www.esd.qmul.ac.uk/vle/staff/guides.htm

We advertise through a staff development handbook that goes to every 
member of staff and through our website but mostly through word of 
mouth.. which is perhaps our biggest challenge (internal University 
communications).

Hope that's of help,


Eoin McDonnell


Bill Mill wrote:
> Hi Helen, 
>
> Thanks for sharing your experience - I'm just involved with setting up 
> a new elearning service in the College of Arts and Law here at 
> Birmingham and it looks like you've pipped us to the post - exactly 
> what we've been planning! I'm chuffed actually, cos it makes me think 
> i'm on the right lines :-)
>
> We're still looking at advertising/marketing, so I'll give you a shout 
> when we've put a plan together...
>
> Running much of what we do around a blog and a wiki (thus 
> far): http://elearncal.wordpress.com/  https://sites.google.com/site/elearncalwiki/
>
> Cheers, Bill :-)
>
> Bill Miller
> Senior e-Learning Consultant
> College of Arts and Law
> 440 Arts Building
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 4:07 PM, Davies Helen.M. 
> <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> 
> wrote:
>
>     Hi all,
>
>     Here at Swansea, we are looking at reviewing our e-learning
>     training sessions for the coming academic year.  Historically, we
>     offer sessions specifically on our VLE (Blackboard) and also on a
>     wide variety of external tools/ content types (eg blogs, wikis,
>     podcasts, screencasts etc).
>
>     We have found that take up is usually fairly good for the new
>     areas (twitter was one of the highlights this year), but are
>     dwindling for others.  Some areas have very little take-up, yet we
>     think they could be important, for instance Social Bookmarking
>     (using Delicious).
>
>     The format that we run is a one hour training session (different
>     times, different days) followed by an optional hour if they want
>     to stay and play with the tools and/or ask questions.  We have a
>     website with an events calendar that we advertise on, with an RSS
>     Feed that links into Blackboard, as well as an all-staff email.
>
>     What I'd like to ask is, what format(s) do you run your training
>     sessions in, how do you advertise and promote them, and how
>     successful are they (rough % take up)?
>
>     Many thanks in advance for this information - please feel free to
>     reply on or off list.
>
>     Regards
>
>     Helen Davies
>     Swansea University
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