[Bodington-developers] A Rum Do

[Brian P. C. <bm...@bm...>]

Sad tidings from Leeds, bodders.

Brian
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Subject:        	VLE Review:  announcement of outcome
Date sent:      	Thu, 8 Jun 2006 17:13:21 +0100
From:           	
To:             	<Tea...@le...>
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Senate is unanimous in supporting the move to a new VLE

Following strong support from Senate, yesterday, for the outcomes of the
VLE Review, work will begin immediately to put in place the business
planning process to purchase and implement a new VLE.  Plans will be
developed in the next few weeks to ensure that Bodington and the Student
Portal can provide effective support for learning and teaching until the
new VLE is in place (target 2008/9).  Regular updates on process and
timescales will be provided on the VLE Review website at:
http://www.ldu.leeds.ac.uk/restricted/vle.htm


Outcome of VLE Review
Senate yesterday considered a paper (see
http://www.ldu.leeds.ac.uk/restricted/vle.htm) from the VLE Steering
Group providing the outcome of the VLE Review.  The recommendations of
the paper, below, were fully supported.

Recommendation 1:  A detailed Business Case should be developed for the
implementation of a commercial VLE.  This will include consideration of
appropriate structures for both technical and user support and training.
The aim will be to have the new VLE fully in place across the University
for the start of academic year 2008/9, earlier if feasible.
Recommendation 2:  To cover the period until a commercial VLE can be
fully implemented, work should begin immediately to scope and implement
an interim solution based on the Luminis Student Portal (for course
management) and Bodington (for learning and teaching).  This will
include the limited upgrading of Bodington, within current resources, to
ease the integration with Luminis and to aid the migration of Bodington
content into the new VLE.  
Recommendation 3:  The opportunity should be taken to integrate within
the aims and objectives of the new Learning and Teaching Strategy the
benefits provided by the introduction of the new VLE.  This will include
consideration of the degree to which the use of the VLE can be
encouraged in the majority of teaching along with the resources and
structures needed to achieve this aim.


Background
Approval by Senate completes a major consultation exercise which has
included meetings with staff and students to develop a pedagogic
specification, a series of site visits to peer institutions (including
the universities of Sheffield, Nottingham, Birmingham, Liverpool, LMU,
Oxford, Southampton) and presentations and telephone conferences with
key suppliers.  In addition, an in-depth investigation by an independent
consultant familiar with the VLE market place and our in-house systems
has been conducted and the VLE Steering Group considered the findings
and concluded that:

*	there is a clear need for a new VLE which should contain
up-to-date facilities to allow the University to benefit from the new
techniques available to support a new L&T strategy that includes blended
learning at its core
*	the new VLE should be viewed as a core University system, and
supported to a similar level of service as other 'mission critical'
systems, such as SAP and Banner.
*	the most appropriate system to meet this need is a commercial
system.

These conclusions and the consequent recommendations, above, were
considered by FMG and LTB leading to the production of a paper to be
considered by Senate on 7th June.  Learning and Teaching Board welcomed
the conclusions and recommendations of the VLESG, underlining that the
VLE should be integrated with the Learning and Teaching Strategy at
University, Faculty and School levels and be used appropriately within
the curriculum, to complement other forms of delivery.

If you have any queries about the progress of the plans to introduce the
new VLE contact .......

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