Meta-Post: Browser Problems

We've been having a few problems with this blog of late - namely that attempts to access this page in Internet Explorer (specifically, version 6) seemed to bring up a download box. Basically, it is as if the browser were interpreting this address as a file with the extension ".blogspot"... This happened yesterday.

It all seems to be working okay now but we'd really appreciate it if you could leave a comment to let us know whether you are having any problems viewing this page or if it seems to be working okay. If you're using IE6 and you're reading this, please let us know that you've been successful. On the other hand, if you are using Firefox or any other browser, perhaps you could check this blog in IE6 to see if it the page looks different... Or if it comes up at all.

Many thanks in advance,
Guy

Second meeting of the e-benchmarking Steering Group

We held our second meeting of the e-benchmarking Steering Group on 22 November, with John Fielden (HEA consultant) in attendance again. Prior to this all members of the Steering Group had answered as many parts of the IRD as they could and these had been collated in a single document. We considered this at the meeting, together with the summary of responses to the institutional drivers ranking question. We also looked at the proposed questionnaire, designed for distribution to School Directors of Teaching (SDTLs) & Learning and School Learning Technology Co-ordinators (SLTCs). This latter document is intended to collect in missing information, as well as seeing what picture emerges at School level with regard to e-learning.

In the summary of the Steering Group responses to the institutional drivers question, ‘Generally enhancing the quality of teaching and learning’ and ‘Improved flexibility of delivery for on-campus students’ emerged as the top two drivers. It was felt that this was an accurate reflection of what we felt to be the main institutional drivers for e-learning.

Some of the themes which emerged from our discussion of the Steering Group responses to the IRD prompt questions were:

• the relationship between the Teaching and Learning strategy and the e-learning strategy
• the aspirational nature of the e-learning strategy, in contrast to implementation plans

The following points also emerged:

• e-learning is seen as just one aspect of the overall enhancement agenda
• the e-learning push often comes from students and quality management processes are in place to ensure those requests are responded to
• e-learning is monitored and evaluated as part of the overall process of teaching and learning

We agreed to refine the draft questionnaire for the SDTLs / SLTCs and confirmed our action plan, which is on schedule.

The questionnaire was subsequently sent out, with a deadline for completion of 8^th December.