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The South West Wales Higher Education Partnership (SWWHEP) is a flagship collaboration project in Welsh Higher Education. Three higher education institutions (HEIs) in the South West Wales region are currently working closely together in an innovative partnership to integrate and enhance a range of services to students and staff.
£7.5 million has been awarded by the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) to Swansea University, Swansea Metropolitan University and Trinity University College to implement change in key administrative services under the SWWHEP Reconfiguration and Collaboration project.
The project is the first of its kind in the Welsh higher education sector. Funding was approved by the Welsh Assembly Government under its “Reaching Higher” agenda to support HEIs in Wales in their attempts to improve performance, enhance competitiveness, and improve value-for-money in public services.
The eLearning strand of the SWWHEP project – under whose auspices I am currently employed -aims to establish an eLearning Centre of Excellence for all partner institutions which will build upon the support centre that has already been established at Swansea University in the Library and Information Services Section. The focus is to work very closely with the academic staff in all participating Institutions to develop and embed eLearning into the curriculum and culture of all partner institutions. As a result of initial planning involving all current partners and a consultant from Blackboard, (the company who provide and licence the commercial online virtual learning platform used by the partnership) the project has evolved into three distinct phases as documented below:
1. Setting up and implementation of the Blackboard Academic Suite v8 and subsequent upgrading to Blackboard Learn Release 9 during the academic year 2009/2010 – this has a rather more web 2.0 flavour and should prove to be even more appealing and user-friendly to staff and students alike. This will facilitate easier collaborative working across the institutions at an academic level. On the administrative side it will centralise the technical management, and enable the establishment of shared training and support for Blackboard including the establishment of an online knowledge base to provide greater support at points of need.
2. Development of the Blackboard installations to take full advantage of new features in the Learning, Community and Content Systems. These three interlinked parts of the Academic suite will enable each institution to deliver services through Blackboard which better reflect the needs of learners. The three components are powerful and complex and there will be a rolling programme of working groups to develop the most effective solutions. Many of these groups will be cross institutional to share experience and expertise and will comprise academics, students and administrative staff facilitated by eLearning Support staff.
3. Establishment and development of a virtual eLearning resource centre (centre of excellence). Work on establishing this began early in the academic year 08/09 alongside the development of Blackboard. The exact nature, operational structure and name of the centre has yet to be agreed by the partners but its overall aim will be to provide a shared eLearning resource and Community of Practice across the partner institutions. Essentially it will be a virtual centre supported by the project staff across participating institutions. The remit will be to facilitate eLearning in its broadest sense and to help each institution embed eLearning into their local framework and culture.
A consultation and training exercise is currently underway across all three partner institutions and the eLearning Team is working with staff in each institution to build out a prototype of the new Blackboard Community Portal which will enrich and enhance the student online learning experience across all campuses. it is hoped to go live with these portal systems by September 2009.
