Using Existing Infrastructure

• Having experience of using the tools in a different context e.g. learning and teaching, can decrease the cost involved
• License agreements may already be in place or additional numbers easily negotiated
• Staff development can be minimised
• Use instructions are already available
• Time that would have been required for familiarisation can be used, for instance, to focus on meta-level questions of how to establish and build a community online

'Negotiating a new contract with Elluminate for the trial meant that use of this commercial product was feasible.'

University of Huddersfield - They had experience of using Elluminate in a learning and teaching context

'Early discussions confirmed that the repository and chat/discussion forum would be Moodle. This was considered a reliable platform that some of the project team were already familiar with but a major factor was that there was a Moodle developer in the team.'

Birmingham Metropolitan College

'Many of our conclusions are 'platform agnostic' as well in the sense that most web conferencing and social networking platforms are essentially similar, with the decision to use one over another often determined by forces outside of the control of an individual project (e.g. institutional adoption)... or matching against what partners were already using.'

University of the Arts