Educational Development

Met with Helen Lindsay from The Learning Centre this morning, to talk about ways to support her work with an online presence. Helen explained briefly what the Learning Centre aims to do, quoting from their website:

The Learning Centre offers a free learning support service to all students enrolled at Otago Polytechnic. One-to-one appointments, workshops and facilitated study groups are available in the following areas:

• General study skills for your course
• Test and exam preparation
• Essays and assignments
• Maths and Science
• English grammar and literacy development

Helen explained her initial ideas in using Black Board to deliver supporting materials for these services. And then explained her objectives in doing this:

1. Making support resources for students available for finding and reusing across subject areas.
2. Building collaborative relations amongst staff to provide and co develop resources to support introductory levels in their fields

In consideration of these objectives I proposed that Helen consider developing up the Learning Centre website more, and look for digital resources where she has rights for copy, and make them available on that website. To compliment this, the Black Board communication features could be used to offer private communication and assessment to support learning with those resource if need be, as well as for the distribution of further resources where copyrights are unclear or restrictive.

I hope that by expanding the function and resources on the Learning Centre's website, we may improve access to their resources and chances for collaboration with both internal and external projects.

Helen stated that she understood some but by no means all of what I was talking about. I cannot be certain if my suggestions are what Helen was originally looking for. I left the meeting with the impression that she would:

1. Consider what I proposed and investigate the possibilities of expanding the Learning Centre's website.
2. Gather up resources from within the Polytech and clarify copy rights
3. Arrange her Black Board shell to more closely reflect the LC's services (menu bar listing subject support areas, and improving the welcome announcement).
4. Attend Networked Learning workshops for eGroups, Finding and Reusing Digital Resources, Tagging and Open Office.

We will meet again in 3 weeks time to check up on the progress of this, and revisit the proposal. In the meantime I have advised Helen that I am available to contact should she have any questions or need help in any way, as well as through the workshops.