NEC's views as a supplier on the development of e-learning
Clarity of purpose
At an operational level, one challenge facing NEC is how to identify a way of helping college to answer the question - what are we doing this for? As a supplier they can articulate their experience as a practitioner and draw on examples. They are already doing this ad hoc but think would be useful to systemise it, and may they use the ICCA Toolkit as a means to do this.
According to Tim Burton, 'What needs to be part of the discourse is helping college articulate its needs. We need to work with the College to improve the level at which the needs are articulated - and formulate these needs into technology supported solutions. We also need to overcome a level of scepticism and weariness'.
He believes that 'it is realistic to say a provider can propose the agenda for discussion and anticipate in advance the expectations of customer and that NEC can operate at higher level in the college than many other providers because of their track record. They are seen as source of disinterested advice and support as well as a company selling products. They used to run regular workshops on implementation but do not do so at present.
Leadership
One of the issues facing suppliers to the FE sector and working in general materials development is the need for a person leading the initiative; an informed and influential innovator (could be principal) in the college is essential. An excellent example of leadership cited by Tim Burton is Newark and Sherwood College.
Technology
For the FE sector, Tim Burton considers that interoperability is a looming issue. This arose in work they did with Digital Brain on the re-development of NEC content for their LMS. There are wider interoperability considerations that need to be taken into account all the time between college and NEC systems. NEC has a representative go to the MEG network meetings but is not heavily involved. One reason is that NEC's approach is increasingly one of embedding mixed media content within highly interactive learning approach and he doesn't believe that to date, standards relating to collaboration/knowledge building feature highly on the agenda. At present, most electronic content is in pdf format and they are only starting on the pathway of content tagging and packaging.
Clarity of outcomes
Pedagogical requirements (use and re-use) and impact on content structure. According to Tim Burton, NEC and other suppliers need to work with colleges to understand the level of granularity they require and for what purpose, what for, how far they will use a total solution, or whether they envisage taking learning objects and re-deploying/re-using them and for what purposes. This means considering staff time and commitment.
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