Onwards!

Firstly, let me say how good it is to have Fleur back in action!

Since my last blog entry a number of things worth commenting on have happened:

Firstly our Technology Supported Learning Strategic Plan 2010-2014 has been approved by committee and is now in place. The work and goals of ENABLE are embedded in this and this will allow these to be sustained beyond the end of the funded period of ENABLE. The TSL Plan has informed the University's Teaching Learning and Assessment Strategy (nearing publication) and will also guide current work on the emerging Information Strategy.

Work on our external examiner mini-project, the TransAPEL project and the "Change Heap" are all progressing well, and the first two will demonstrated to the ENABLE Senior Management Working Group next week. Neil Witt visited us in November to progress the Pineapple benefits realisation work that links to TransAPEL and had a series of good meetings with staff engaged in our current APEL processes. Ultimately, the work on APEL will link to the University's CRM initiative as well.

Michael Gunn, our new VC, is now in place, and I have meeting with him in early February which I am looking forward to.

I had a useful meeting with our Partnerships Team in November and went through the feed back from the ENABLE partner colleges with them. The team has reorganised and each partner college now has their own designated Partnership Manager. This will go a long way towards addressing some of the concerns expressed by college partners earlier in ENABLE's work.

Sam's work on Enterprise Architecture has resulted in him being engaged to provide consultancy to the Bracken project in Wales (led by Professor Tony Toole, ENABLE's Critical Friend).

Helen Walmsley is working with our Quality Team to embed her work on eLearning Models in the curriculum development/validation process. We plan to link this to Ben Scoble's work on Role/Competence based approaches to staff development to enable courses to identify their requirements in delivering chosen approaches and aid capacity planning.

Our interim report to JISC has been well received and looks like it will result in a range of valuable dissemination opportunities and further engagement with other projects.

As I noted in previous blogs, I have been chairing a group looking at the need for document management in the University (an issue ENABLE picked up on early in our EA work). The position paper produced by the group was accepted by our Information Strategy Group and our Information Services are now charged with carrying out a full feasibility study and producing a business case for consideration by Business Development Group.

Lastly, it is becoming increasingly clear that the ENABLE message that we need to take an organisational view of our information and move towards ensuring that information can be used and shared flexibly and easily has not fallen on deaf ears and senior colleagues have begun to express similar views in committees...