The 3 in 1 SIG meeting (Assessment,Enterprise,Portfolio) was held at the University of Strathclyde on the 22nd of May.It was a good teamwork with the Assessment and Portfolio SIG co-ordinators.We did have six presentations,four in the morning session and two in the afternoon one.
Turning Education Skills and Policy into Practice is not an easy one.A commercial consultancy with a group of well qualified and educated consultants, Alphaplus consultancy does really a very good job.John Winkley, working in the area of assessment with the JISC opened the meeting and gave us a good outline of the upcoming tenders in early june 2008.The deadline for the completion of projects will be march 2009.The main scope of these will be on the e-assessment techniques (like online surveys ) and then integrate with the eportfolio services.
The next interesting session was the award winning WebPA project.A good introduction by Nicola Wilkinson from Loughborough University.The JISC funded project is a moderated open source system.The most interesting fact is the qualitative and quantitative student and tutor evaluation system and their response.The online demonstration was really amazing. Hats off to WebPA.
The next presentation in the morning session included the TAG Learning.The main objective is to establish an open standard for the work done by the students in the schools to awarding bodies. (i.e) the submission of digital evidence. The standards consisits of an xml schema to describe the relationship between various components and this combined with the Application Programming Interface (API) is used to submit the digital evidence and marks to the awarding body.This work to create the standard is now undertaken by the British Standards Institute (BSI) .Based on the current success in school sector,it does largely have a positive impact if tried in HE/FE ones.
The last presentation in the morning session focussed on the admissions perspective.( i.e) ADOM and DELIA project by Alan Paull from APS ltd.The key fact, structured entry profile, improves the quality of the admission process by highlighting the role of the IT staff in it.This maps a relationship between the students and the University or Institution.
The afternoon session started up with the student retention stuff.Simon Grant from JISC CETIS lead the discussion.,”the right person for the right course” .The students choose a particular course out of personal interest,passion,natural attitude,need a degree,due to economic factors,parental advice and so on.The various issues and the outcomes were discussed.The retaining perspective of the students was led Helen Richardson, from JISC CETIS.The strategies of the STAR project and the findings from the National Audit report were presented.Also,the effective and early induction for the students before they join the University were highlighted.
We are thankful to our all the people who attended the meeting and hoping to look froward in the next one.