UWIDEC APC P. 5d

2003/4

THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES

Issues from DEC St. Augustine campus

Need for student data

1 All aspects of the delivery modes depend on data on student registration. Before the start of the semester the campus coordinator’s office needs to have data on the number of students per course by site in order to ship materials in time for the start of the semester.

2 Course co-ordinators need to have class lists of students for their courses in order to properly manage the delivery of the course. Course co-ordinators also need contact information for tutors.

3 Information on registered students is required to build the user accounts in WebCT online course environment.

4 The Examination section also need to know the numbers of students per course by site in order to manage the mid semester examinations, coursework marks and final examinations.

5 For UWIDEC to centrally plan its activities it will need to have student data by course and by site for all sites.

6 The current campus’ student information systems do not identify students by site and therefore does not provide useful data for UWIDEC operations.

7 There is a very high level of expectation that the new Banner Student Administration System (SAS) would provide the needs of UWIDEC for student data. The implementation of this system is eagerly anticipated to have a positive impact on all UWIDEC operations.

Campus Pipeline

8 The campuses have recognized the importance of communications to students and each one has implemented a portal using Campus Pipeline to keep students informed of campus life. One of the useful tools of Campus Pipeline is that every registered student has an email account and is grouped into class mailing lists which tutors, lecturers and administration can use to maintain official communication with the students.

9 The downside of the three current implementation of Campus Pipeline is that just like the current student information systems the students are not categorized by site or categorized by UWIDEC. Therefore if a UWIDEC Course Coordinator at one campus sends email to a class such as FD10A using campus pipeline two problems would occur: 1) the email intended for UWIDEC students would reach the mailboxes of all face to face students as well. 2) the email would not reach the mailboxes of UWIDEC students on the Campus Pipeline servers on the other two campuses.

10 One possible solution to this is to move all the three Campus Pipeline implementations into single one like the Banner SAS. Another solution is that UWIDEC implements its separate Campus Pipeline server.

Online course development and delivery

11 Online course development and delivery is currently an ad hoc activity which is secondary to the current primary delivery mode of self instructional printed materials, tutorials and teleconferences. Only about 9 courses of the approximately 80 courses delivered in an academic year contains some online content over the past two years.

12 It is proposed that a temporary development team of instructional designers at the three campuses be formed whose focus is to transform the printed materials for an asynchronous web based environment. It is proposed that UWIDEC adopt a new model of creating instructional materials – a single source publishing model. In the single source publishing model, a single source of materials is used to produce the final materials in any media – print, CDROM and the Web.

Delivery of electronic materials to students

13 Currently materials in electronic format are being transmitted via email from campuses to sites with the final destination being a student or a tutor. Also MP3 recordings of teleconferences are made available to sites for download for students and tutors to replay in the computer labs.

14 As we move to a fully asynchronous web based delivery students would expect to receive electronic materials directly. This has been the request over the past two years from students who can afford computer, printer and Internet access and also have the necessary skills.

15 The future cohort of students would be Internet savvy and expect digital media and UWIDEC must address all the barriers which currently prevent this as a primary delivery mode. Some of the barriers are copyright, IT infrastructure and current materials creation modes.

The choice of Learning Management System (LMS)

16 Currently UWIDEC uses the WebCT server based at St. Augustine campus to delivery online content.

17 This academic year the other two campuses have also implemented WebCT servers. This scenario can, if not controlled, can lead to UWIDEC courses hosted on three separate servers with students and tutors having to login to three separate servers. This situation should be avoided and it is recommended that all UWIDEC courses should be hosted at the St. Augustine WebCT server.

18 The selection of WebCT as the LMS for UWI has not been finalized. Other LMS that are being considered include Blackboard, Bodington VLE, MIT dotLRN and the OAS Virtual Classroom. UWIDEC has to participate in the campuses’ decision process of the choice of LMS.

Distance Education Centre, St. Augustine

October 21st, 2003