Location: United Kingdom, Maple House, Birmingham

Date: 25/6/2009

The workshop was based on the outcomes of the nine JISC funded Learner Experience projects, and the collation of the programme outputs of reports, videos, case studies and guides (https://mw.brookes.ac.uk/display/JISCLe2).

From a PiP perspective it was interesting and useful to discuss the various approaches and underlying philosophies that informed the LEx projects in the context of what the Curriculum Design and Delivery Projects are trying to achieve.  What struck me, as it always does when people from the projects get together, is both the diversity of the projects under these two programmes and more particularly the depth of expertise, experience and understanding that project participants are bringing to these projects.

There is a lot of material on the LEx site and much of the session was designed to highlight what was available there. to flesh out some of the key anecdotes, and give us a chance to react.  It was an interesting activity to “try out” some of the elicitation techniques and comment on them.

As is often the case, thought, it was the conversations with other participants that was almost more useful.  It was my first chance to meet folk from any of the Delivery projects, and it did seem that not all of the projects were represented, so it was interesting to talk to people from institutions I was not familiar with.  It was also good to catch up with people from other Design projects, particularly on their experiences of process mapping—there is quite a diversity of practice in this and I hope that we are able to maintain our different approaches rather than required to adopt a standardised methodology.