Travel arrangements begin

Today, we begin to make travel arrangements for the next project activity in Mauritius. A request was sent to Evonne Inia, the CEDT secretary to request for an initerary from the travel agent.

Review group setup & first meeting

Our identified area of concentration is Study Skills. Because this was going to be a resource that was to be used across the university, a review group was created to provide feedback on the work that we were carrying out. The first meeting was held today. The outcome of this meeting tasked us with the responsibility of coming up with a draft of the outline of the areas that we were to focuse on in as far as Study Skills is concerned.

Uploading photos to project website

Today we uploaded photos from the kick-off meeting to the project website.

Meeting up with Val Clifford

I met up with Valerie Clifford (former Director of CELT) during the Oxford trip in town. This is Val and Marten in the Oxford University Church.

Val and Marten sent their lolomas to Epeli (their favourite taxi driver) and everyone else who remember them.

Hansel and Gretel find their way home

On Friday afternoon, after sight-seeing and soaking up the cold London air, we trudged back home and :) lost our bearings. We walked around in circles for approximately half an hour. On one of those return trips, we discovered to our amazement, the shawl that I had been wearing on one of the fences.

Imagine our laughter when we discovered the 'find'.Talk about the Hansel and Gretel experience, leaving behind crumbs so that they could find their way back home! It just needed to be photographed as a reminder of that experience!

Namastey London!!

Couldn't resist the title being that it is one of my favourite Bollywood movies of 2007. Namastey London is a must see starring two of Bollywood's hottest actors at present; Akshay Kumar & Katrina Kaif. Check out the pics of our tour. Can you recognise the landmarks? By the way, the photos were taken under very cold conditions but we managed!!

Waiting for our ride to London

We took a taxi to Milton Keynes Central to catch the train but anticipated a delay given the current spate of delays being experienced on the Milton Keynes route. When our train finally came through at 11.23am, it was a full one. It wasn't a pleasant experience for me having to stand all the way to Euston train station in London with my heavy luggage. I guess the train shuttle is not designed for heavy laden travellers such as myself! Because we had a lot of luggage we opted to take a taxi to our hotel in Victoria; The Weindermere Hotel. This is not advisable to do given the hefty taxi fare price but given our circumstances we opted to do this.

Weindermere Hotel is a neat little hotel within walking distance of the Victoria train station in London. Buckingham Palace was also within walking distance!!



As soon as we arrived, we dumped our bags in our room and ventured off to catch one of the tours on open double decker buses. This was the best option for us given the time-frame that we had left in London.

Farewell Stony Stratford

On Friday, 16th May, we bade farewell to the cosy little town of Stony Stratford and headed off to Milton Keynes central to catch the train to Central London. Here are some of our memories of Stony Stratford!

Snapshots of the meeting

Farewell lunch @ the Ye Olde Swan, Woughton

We had our farewell lunch at the Ye Olde Swan and marking the end of our official engagements in as far as the kick-off meeting in the UK was concerned. Following that we were all dropped off at our respective hotels. Check out our OU minibus that was our main mode of transport throughout the course of the meeting. Many thanks & appreciation to our driver, Frank.

Project Key Dates

The Sidecappers group have set itself the task of repurposing learning materials and here are the key dates up until the next workshop to be held at University of Mauritius in December.

1. Content outline & list of OER materials to be used - by 1 August 2008
2. Ist draft of repurposed material - by early/mid November 2008

Moodle @ OU

We also received a presentation by Niall Sclater, Director VLE Program which looks after the Moodle system at OU. OU has dramatically customized Moodle to suit their context.
Some of the customized features are as follows:

• Combined study calendar for students across all courses that they are enrolled in
• Assessment information outlined outright on the homepage as per preference expressed by OU learners.
  
• EAssessment - a mention of an open-source plug-in for Math Symbols called Open Mark which is Java based.
• Reflective Assessment Rubric- this rubric is designed for reflective assessment. We would get a sample of this from Robin Mason.
• Blog module - This is quite a recent addition i.e. blogs has been integrated as a module rather than a separate entity under user profile as is the case in the current version. It is possible to create group blogs and this comes with RSS feed function and commenting facility.
• Wiki - OU has recognised the user-unfriendliness of the wiki tool in the current version. Changes have been made accordingly; lock feature - before/after certain date, online comments, list of user contributions, RSS/Atom feeds of changes and a wiki reporting tool
• HTML Editor - OU has indicated that the current HTML editor is insufficient for their use and it is working on having Tiny MCE to be built into the HTML editor.
• Web Conferencing tool - OU has embarked on a huge project with Elluminate to integrate this into their Moodle system
• LAMS - On recollection of the discussions to explore the use of LAMS (Learning Activity Management System) here at USP, I inquired if the OU was using it and what their experience with it was. We were then informed that currently LAMS was not integrated into their system. The interesting observation about LAMS shared by Niall was that it did not perform as required, rather it was found to overlap the Moodle system and it did not remain a separate module in the whole Moodle setup.

Support Offered: Niall indicated that we could contact him if we were interested in using any of the above features.

Day 4 @ OU

This was the last day of the meeting. The team revisited the issue of course design agreed to at the close of Wednesday's meeting. It was agreed that each institution would focus on re- purposing their own course.

This is a brief summary of each of our focus:

1. USP - Study Skills
2. UM - Research Methods
3. UWI - Instructional Design

In addition to working on our re-purposed learning materials, we agreed to also document the processes that each team would go through in re purposing the course materials. The outcomes for the project would therefore be twofold;

1. A repurposed course (80% reused, 20% new)
2. A Manual on How to Repurpose Materials which would be sourced from documented processes & "best practices" experienced by participants throughout the whole repurposing exercise.
   

A video post

I haven't tried this before. But there is always a first time for everything ay! Captured
this on our walk in the OU. Tell me what you think.

Walking along the OU trim trail

After a hefty lunch at the Beale Suite, Frank Rennie from UHI suggested that we take a walk. We took a walk along OU's trim trail. Check out the scenery!

Lunch @ the Beale Suite

After our morning session, we were treated to lunch at the OU Beale Suite. Nice & classy eatery by the way!

Presentation by OpenLearn Director

A presentation was made by Patrick McAndrew about Open Learn. It seems that it has added additional features to make it a user-friendly resource with a web conferencing application and most recently "Learning Clubs" which is a fairly new feature involving the formation of learning groups for courses that are available on Open Learn. This could very well be used in our context for the gaining of online teaching skills and experience by our teaching staff.

Day 3 back in OU

After an exciting tour of Oxford on Tuesday, it was back to serious business on Wednesday. Discussions began on how we were to repurpose materials and this took awhile to be agreed upon by the group. At the end of the day, it was decided that a course be repurposed by the whole group.

Phone Booth

You probably spotted this in English movies. That cute little red phone booth.

Covered Market

Pics from our tour of the covered market selling both cheap and expensive items.


Val Clifford and Marten buying fish for dinner.

Oxford University Press Bookshop

Can your recall all those textbooks used in high school spotting the Oxford University Press? Class 5 or 6 Stories of Famous People text comes to mind. Here is the bookshop associated with it.

1000 year old tower

Just next to the Tudor House is this tower which is said to be a 1000 years old

Tudor House

This is a house built in the Tudor era standing in the middle of the city centre in Oxford.

View from the Calfax Tower

Here we are on a high point in Oxford City Centre and check out the sights of the city.

Where John Wesley preached

This is Oxford University Church where John Wesley the founder of the Methodist Church ministered.

Dou Bula!

Strolling along the pedestrian walk in Oxford City centre, we spotted a group of boys who looked very much from home with their t-shirts, shorts and that unmistakable spot of flip flops. Louise did a cassava patch call, “Dou Bula” and heads suddenly turned. The 5 boys were serving in the British Army based in Newcastle. We found out that they were all from Suva; Caubati, Nadera, Namadi Hights, Nabua and Nakasi. They were on leave and doing a bit of shopping for family back home. It was the least of our expectations to meet fellow countrymen here in the UK.

Oxford City centre crowd

The pedestrian walk in the city centre was certainly a crowd too many!

At leisure in Oxford

After our visit to the OU regional centre, we were given the afternoon to explore the city centre of Oxford. What follows are some our experiences that afternoon.

Online communication for Sidecappers

Today, as per the requirements of the project, communication continued online through the group hub with reflections on what had transpired in the kick-off meeting.

Darling Buds of May

A sight for sore eyes! This is what you would probably see in the TV comedy series, The Darling Buds of May starring Catherine Zeta Jones or All Creatures Great and Small (not one of my favourites)

Tutor Orientation

They are given a f2f orientation and also have a Tutor Website which has the following:

• Tutor procedures and policies

What to do
How to do it

• They are each assigned a Tutor Mentor
• They receive online professional development
• They are also observed in their online and f2f teaching. For this tutors are given the criteria for their evaluation.
• DALS – evaluation of tutor support by students. (online and f2f).
• In the scenario where students do not approve the marks given on their assignments there is an appeals mechanism which students could use.
• Software being used for plagiarism are: “Copy catch” and “Turn it in”

Tutor Recruitment:

Tutor Managers – who deal with recruitment of tutors-, take applicants through a rigorous interview process. For example, interviewees are given a dummy assignment to mark, they are asked to share concrete examples of how they would teach a sample lesson or deal with a problem in their classroom.

Tutorial Support at Oxford regional centre

This section deals with management of part-time tutors. These tutors go through two phases for their employment with OU.

• 1^st phase – First two years probation
• Ongoing support.

Presenting to CEDT staff

Soon after we got back from the UK, one of the first things we had to do given the mountng interest from CEDT staff was to make presentations during our section staff meetings. Louise presenting during her section (CELT) staff meeting and I in our show & tell segment of our fortnightly OPS meeting (DFLSC).

Activities – Post Kick-off Meeting

Louise and I during the course of our attempt to begin work on repurposing OERs decided that we also use this blog as a means of documenting the steps that we went through that will assist us in making substantive contributions towards one of the project outputs i.e. a manual on how to repurpose OERs. The following blog entries are dedicated to this.

Learner Support at Oxford regional centre

This was an interesting aspect of this tour which involved the overview of learner support by the Student Services Manager, Elizabeth Mullet. To help with understanding and experiencing the nature of support given, the team was taken into the Learner Support section and connected to one each of the frontline staff. Current issues which were shared with the team included:

• The digital divide- the need to understand students’ increasingly online environment in order to offer credible information, advice and guidance and support students who are under confident using learning technologies. (They have found that 20% of OU students do not log into their student email accounts).
• Student Support Review-closer working between academic, educational and educational student support.
• The Learner Support Framework has proved useful in demonstrating to faculties the value of what they do.

Visit to the OU Oxford regional centre

The team visited the Oxford Regional office (Campus in Fiji terms) and was welcomed, given morning tea and then briefed by John Marshall, the Assistant Director about the operations of the office in supporting Distance Students around the Oxford locality. This centre caters for 10% of the 200,000 OU students.

Contractual Agreements

Each participating university will be given a contract to take back to their University to be signed by the Vice Chancellor of each university. In addition participants are required to account for all funds & time used to be documented on temp lated sheets supported by relevant receipts.

Workshop Schedule

The schedule of workshops to be conducted in each institution was discussed.

The schedule is as follows:

• University of Mauritius – 1^st week of December 2008
• University of Highlands and Islands (UHI) – May/June 2009
• University of the West Indies – Dec 2009
• USP – July 2010 (targeting semester break)

This will be discussed further in our meeting today (Wed 14 May, UK time)

Meeting kicks off

The meeting kicked off with a welcome speech from the Director of IET Services. This was following by a few housekeeping matters and overview of the project. We then kicked off the presentation of background reports from each counterparts followed by University of Mauritius and UWI. We had a delicious lunch spread followed by presentation by the project manager, Nigel Pigott on contractual responsibilities of each institution. Then it was off to our hotels.

Internet Access

We apologise for the delayanism (refer to earlier posting for explanation) of our blog postings. Due to difficulty in getting internet access we had to improvise and write up our postings offline in MS Word and waited until we arrive at the Open University to upload our entries!

Sidecappers first meeting

Our first engagement for the SideCap Project was attending a welcome dinner at the Cock Hotel courtyard restaurant. This was hosted by Robin and it was such a great feeling meeting our counterparts from the other institutions. We had a traditional English roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. Our initial conversations at this point made us feel so excited about potential exchanges between USP and other institutions and we sure look forward to the start of the meeting. We discovered as well that Dr. Roger Powell our counterpart from UWI had been offered the GCTT/Professional Development senior lecturer position at CELT but because of delayanism at HR opted to take on an offer from UWI as the Curriculum Specialist.

Going into Milton Keynes

After breakfast on Sunday morning, we decided to go into the Milton Keynes shopping centre. We got lost for several hours going through the shops at Milton Keynes and still have not covered them all. We realized that we needed to get back to the hotel at 4pm because we had dinner at 5pm with our Sidecappers team. We saved our empty stomachs and our need to get onto our blog and internet till this meeting!

The full English Breakfast

Its Saturday morning and we got ourselves over to the restaurant for breakfast. This is what I ate! Louise opted for something minus the bacon and pork sausages. We lazed around and caught up with rest as much as possible on Saturday.

Jetlag got the better of us!

We slept at 7pm but Jetlag got the better of us as we were wide awake at 12pm Fiji time, 1.20am UK time. We were struck by hunger but thankfully our leftovers were put to good use so we managed to finish it off!

Can I have some fish & chips please?!

In our exploration of the little town we discovered a fish & chips shop. This officially became our first meal in the UK and so rightfully so! We ordered for a large cod fish with chips seasoned with vinegar and salt and what was missing according to Louise was chilly and lemon. And check out the usual newsprint wrapping! It was sure a feast! And we discovered that 1 serve was sufficient for the two of us! But Javed, you were certainly on our mind and wish you were here to help us finish it off!

A pint at the pub

Nah! We were not at the pub but were certainly amused by this site whilst on our explorations. Outside the pub, the local townfolk were congregating in groups enjoying their beer something that would be considered illegal in Fiji.

Are those really 2nds?!

Another discovery we made in our exploration were the relief society shops on the street. We initially thought they were expensive boutiques and were hesitant to enter them thinking they would be beyond our budgetary allocations. Of course, we eventually found out they were second hand shops which operate to support the different world projects in immediate need of humanitarian assistance. Well we were convinced to support the Burma crisis by making purchases – and mind you, the shops were a far cry from our experiences back home!