3.6. Staff development, training and support

• What are the current skill levels of staff and students in relation to using relevant parts of the new MLE?

• What training and support mechanisms need to be put in place to support effective implementation of your MLE development?

• How can staff development be used as part of the education and communication process in terms of demonstrating the role, relevance and importance of the MLE to different stakeholders?

• How can the support for your MLE development be integrated within existing staff development activities?

This is discussed in more detail later in this infoKit in the sections on implementation and embedding. See in particular the section on support in 'Implementation' and the section on staff development in 'Embedding'. This section gets you to begin thinking of staff development, training and support issues specifically with respect to understanding your organisational context, what types of support mechanisms and processes are already in existence and which might need to be developed.

It is important to identify and address the different training and support needs during and beyond the lifespan of the project. This will include a range of activities, from stakeholder engagement and education, through to specifics in terms of use of the MLE and potential pedagogical models. Support needs to be considered across all stakeholders and is likely to take a variety of forms, one-to-one discussions, group meetings, presentations, focus groups, workshops and guidelines. It is important to be sensitive to the needs of different stakeholders and match support appropriately. One key issue is to try and articulate what each of the different stakeholders actually need and require and how this best might be achieved.

Part of this process involves the identification of skills gaps and in particular ICT literacy needs and consideration of appropriate staff development and support mechanisms. This skills gap identification is one of the first activities which need to be undertaken as part of the development of a staff development and support plan to sit alongside the MLE implementation. Issues of support and reward mechanisms in the changing context also need to be considered. Students are a stakeholder group with particular needs. In particular there is a need to move to accommodating a more diverse, and flexible student population, with changing literacies and student expectations. Across stakeholders, but particularly for students, there is likely to be an increased demand for seamless integration and user focussed systems tailored to individual needs.