Education Day e-Learning@imperial: Structure & Strategy

1. Education Daye-Learning@imperial: Structure & Strategy http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/elearning/ Omar K. Matar Chair of e-LSC Tuesday 20 April 2010

2. Outline • Why ‘e-Learning@imperial’? • ELSC membership • Terms of reference • Structure • Strategy and implementation • Education Day: examples

3. Why e-learning@imperial? • The key drivers for e-learning are the evolving nature of • students and their needs • staff, their skills and roles • technology and its use in education • HE institutions • competition

4. Membership • Prof. Omar K. Matar (Chem. Eng., Chair) • Mr. Paul Allatt (ICT) • Dr. Steven Cook (Life Sciences) • Prof. Susan Eisenbach (Computing) • Ms. Ruth Harrison (Library) • Mr. David Lefevre (Business School) • Prof. Alan Spivey (Chemistry) • Dr. Maria Toro-Troconis (Medicine) • Mr. Jonathan Silver (Student Rep.)

5. Terms of Reference • To advise the Strategic Education Committee (SEC) on the College’s current use of educational technologies in learning, teaching and assessment. • To advise the SEC on recent trends and forthcoming developments in the use of technology within education. • To advise the SEC on the College’s strategic priorities in the planning, implementation and evaluation/research of educational technology, and administration thereof, including implications for internal funding, and theco-ordination or management of future developments. • To prioritise and approve College bids for the external funding of educational technology initiatives, for instance, bids for JISC funding, as appropriate. • To allocate funding for College-wide e-Learning technology initiatives.

6. Organisational structure

7. Strategy • To coordinate, support and promote e-learning activity across the College to further the aims of the College’s teaching and learning strategy: • To promote a blended approach to teaching and learning which incorporates use of e-learning into traditional teaching and learning methods • To promote innovation and creativity in the use of technology in teaching and learning • To promote the use of e-learning to enhance the quality, efficiency and flexibility of assessment and feedback • To ensure adequate capacity/capability of e-learning provision and associated supportacross the College • To encourage departments to develop ‘local’ strategies that mesh with the ELSC and College strategies • To work with those areas of the College  other than academic departments, eg SPD, AHSC, to encourage the use of E-learning tools where appropriate • 2. To promote Imperial College as a leader in worldwide education: • To encourage the development of an infrastructure to allow publication  of learning materials, where appropriate, to a worldwide audience through the use of tools such as Open Courseware and iTunes-U

8. Implementation • Secure internal and external funding for core e-learning activities • Continue to develop the role of Learning Technologists (LTs) • Continue to recruit LTs as appropriate • Ensure that the VLE remains up-to-date and suited to the strategic needs of the College by carrying out regular reviews

9. Implementation • Encourage departments to support e-learning and LTs • Encourage departments to develop an appropriate infrastructure for e-learning integration in teaching and learning • Encourage departments to integrate LTs into their teaching committees as appropriate

10. Implementation • Encourage LTs and academics to remain abreast of developments in e-learning via attendance of conferences, seminars, workshops • Incentivise and reward LTs and academics for the development of creative and novel e-learning tools • Provide advice on how to explore novel technologies that support e-learning

11. Implementation • Provide guidelines for and support the use of e-learning tools for formative and summative assessments • Support the design of courses (both blended and fully on-line) taking into account student support, special needs and accessibility, QAA codes • Raise student awareness of support provided by the VLE (for assessment, coursework submission, discussion groups etc) • Enhance student skill set in e-learning techniques

12. Implementation • Resolve issues related to IP • Set up framework (and associated support network) for development of open courseware e-learning tools: from content creation to publishing • Monitor the development of open courseware tools in other HE institutions world-wide

13. Implementation • Ensure penetration of e-learning into departments • Create discussion forums for academics and LTs, and disseminate best-practice across the College • Keep strategy under constant review

14. Examples of what’s on offer today • Workshop: 11.15: • A journey from PowerPoint to the Virtual Learning Environment

15. Examples of what’s on offer today • Workshop: 15.00: • Content Creation: Creating reusable digital course content