These are some personal suggestions, based on experiences at Staffordshire University and conversations with external partners and colleagues at other institutions.
Pedagogy and the Use of Resources
- Validation
- build identification of the staff development needs of staff into the validation process Ensure that staff development is made a condition where shortfall in expertise is revealed (too often, this type of thing is treated as a recommendation or merely "fudged"). Ensure validation events look for evidence of understanding if the educational aspects of elearning, as well as the technical ones. Also ensure that when aspects such as administration and support are examined, staff development is considered in these contexts too. (See Subsection 7.d - Administration Issues)
- Education Development
- ensure that any "certificate" for staff has the input of elearning and practice of activity built into it in a non-optional way.
- MLE/eLearning Development
- Make staff development a requirement for staff involvement in both development and delivery. For example make evidence of staff development a condition for issuing MLE component accounts to staff. Build pedagogic development into "elearning" development - experienced teaching staff have proved to be more willing to accept development in "teaching ad learning" if this is "wrapped up" in, for example a "how to use Blackboard" course.
At Staffordshire, staff development, including educational design and "eTutoring", is built into the integrative development process described in subsection 7e - Staff Development.
- Resources and eResources
- Again, build staff development in this area into the "e" course development process (and include in induction for new staff and any "certificate"). Involvement of Information Specialist staff in delivery of this area of staff development will also help overcome the known pedagogic weakness of many Information Specialist staff!
- Other Staff and Pedagogy
- See last point. Help Desk staff can be more involved by actively involving them in examining support requirements - for example by looking at help desk records and reflecting on students support needs in their light. This tends to encourage the development of how students use the MLE to learn. In addition most "library" and "IT" sections are themselves staff develment providers, why not encourage them to deliver their own courses "virtually"? (The need for pedagogic development will then be much more apparent). Use of technology
- Teaching staff
- Again integration of staff development into the development and delivery processes helps to maintain a "focus" for teaching staff. Experience has shown that breaking training into smaller, more focussed components, delivered close to the point (and time) or need is best.
- Support staff
- Involvement of support staff in developing the "support scripts" described in the resources for subsection 7f - Sustaining the MLE has proved to be an invaluable developmental process, as does involving them in an "integrative" approach to development and delivery. Training of help desk staff cannot be overstressed!
Management and administrative philosophy
The process for investigating embedding at Staffordshire, described in the resources for subsection 7a - Implementing change, has proved to be a major staff development activity in its own right as it has forced disparate groups of staff, and particularly managers and administrators to engage with both the issues and each other in the context of an emerging MLE.
