Welcome

Do I welcome myself to my own blog or is this a welcome for the reader? Please forgive my lack of blog-etiquette (blotiquette?) - this is the first time I intend to maintain a blog (though I have set up others to demo!).

Yesterday (Wednesday), I was out and about in Bloomsbury. I met Magdalena Jara at the IOE and had a good chat about how the Learning & Teaching Unit (LTU) is supporting staff with Blackboard. Need to meet up with Juliette (MIS) and the Helpdesk to see how the whole thing fits together. After that, I hung out in the Knowledge Lab, connected to the wireless (new laptop arrived last week - a lovely HP tablet) and did some work there.

In the afternoon, I attended the Bloomsbury Staff Development Group meeting, where I introduced myself , raised the issue of e-learning training provisions across the colleges and brought up possible joint Bb training across the Bloomsbury Colleges. Currently, the RVC, SOAS and LSHTM SD depts each coordinate e-learning training, which is managed by their respective learning technology teams. The IOE SD Manager leaves training completely to the LTU. BBK and SoP were not in attendance.

In terms of sharing training, the model of opening up institutional training to other Bloomsbury Colleges (as offered by the RVC at no cost if led by the eMedia Unit) was thought to be problematic. Firstly, staff based in Bloomsbury may not want to travel to Camden. Secondly, the training be need to be generic enough to be applied to other colleges. Thirdly, the fact that the RVC's offer to external participants would only be confirmed 24 hours before the training was not thought to be useful and may discourage staff from attending.

The issues of joint Bb and e-learning training was viewed as positive by the group but, again, problematic. If, for example, the RVC eMedia Unit provided training, there would be the costs associated with their time that would need to be accounted for. The notion of "free training" is great, but may reduce commitment of attendees; SD depts may be more willing to pay £50, for example, to send staff to sessions.

I came away from the meeting feeling a little disappointed that the task of setting up shared training would not be as straight-forward as I thought. The SD group recommended I now approach the respective e-learning teams in the colleges; if they are willing to share training, then the SD group will be happy to support it by promotion.

I finished off the day purchasing a laptop case on Tottenham Court Road, which cheered me up! Today (Thursday), I am at the RVC's Hawkshead campus in Potters Bar doing some admin work and waiting for Ana and Fiona to alert me to any Bb emails - I am currently learning to be a Bb administrator!