Meeting the first objective has been exciting. We have (as of 14/11/2008) run 35 workshops with over 200 people attending. This includes 10 workshops at BRIT's whole of institute staff development day (Foundation Day - 13/11/08) which were very popular. The workshops have focussed on the tools outlined above.

As well as this, there has a been a range of 1-1 support with individual staff as and when its required. This has included not only the tools above but also the TafeVC and Elluminate. We are also moving to a new SMS (Short Message Service - not Student Management System!) system as part of our communication with students and clients, and we have provided some support for this, as well as for the implementation of SharePoint and Office 2007.

The impact on the staff has been tremendous. Just about everyone knows we are running workshops, the main issue has been running them at times that suit staff (particularly teaching staff). Those that attend the workshops have a better understanding of new tools and methods. They have been enthused to try new things, and are keen to tell others. Some staff have been disappointed that they havent been able to attend workshops, and keenly look forward to the next available round.

It has also increased the ICT skills of many staff, and given them the confidence to do other things beyond the workshops. One staff member attended one of the 'Blogs and Wiki's' workshops, and was heading overseas for a holiday the following week. He created a blog and kept family and friends up to date about where they were and what they were doing. As he found the exercise beneficial, the staff member is now looking at using a blog as part of his delivery in 2009.

Changing teaching practice is a long term goal. We take the 'one degree' approach, if we can help people make a relatively small one degree change now, it can lead to larger changes down the track.

The first step in helping people make changes is to ensure they have the information they need. If staff get excited about a new tool or method, and then cannot find what they need to keep it going, they will quickly lose interest. As part of the process of moving to a new staff portal on SharePoint, we have taken the opportunity to build up a 'resource library' for e-learning.

The resource library contains a range of documents designed to provide information, examples and manuals in relation to each of the available tools and methods we have avialable. It includes not only documents (in Word and PDF formats) and powerPoint files, but also a blog and wiki's which we can use to show staff how things actually work. As we get more information, we will continue to build up the library as we go.

Having the blog and wiki's live on SharePoint has been valuable. As these tools are only visible to staff, it gives them a bit more confidence in exploring the tools. It also has been useful for the E-learning team to build up their skills, and to be able to 'walk the talk'.

See the attached file for some relevant statistics.

Outcomes for this objective have been hard to measure, in part because we are dealing with small changes. However, SharePoint can provide limited information on who accesses the pages, and it is encouraging to see a wide range of staff appear in the 'top 30 users', and anecdotal eveidence indicates that the content of the library is quite valuable.

Some staff are using the tools and methods with their delivery, and so having a site where they can access relevant information has been useful to these ones. Having the content on SharePoint has also enabled us to use it as a 'promotional' tool for the use of SharePoint - it now gives people a reason to go to the site and explore it. As the intent is to have SharePoint eventually used as the staff intranet, student portal and linked the external website, the more staff get to use SharePoint the quicker the uptake of the platform will be.

As a result of the workshops, several staff have more confidence in using tools such as Movie Maker to develop content for their students/clients. We have been using SMS to communicate with selected student groups, and will be expanding this into 2009 with a new system. Several of the staff who have attended some of the Web 2.0 sessions (Blogs and Wiki's and Facebook) are looking at how they might use this in their deleivery next year. One suggestion has been to create a blog about field trips and get the students to comment. Because of this need, we have drafted some guidelines for the use of Blogs at BRIT, and these will be refined as the tools are implemented into delivery.

Objective 3 has had some issues. Everyone agrees that an internal 'digital repository' for BRIT-developed content is a good idea, and it will save time and effort involved in re-creating something that already exists. However, at this point 'we don't know what we don't know'. The issues relate mainly to the technical apsects of building SharePoint and a repository, as well as the cultural issues associated with sharing content and whether staff are happy to let others see their work!

Technical issues have related to the planning of how BRIT will use SharePoint. How do you plan for something you 'don't know' much about!? We have been working on an effective structure for where on SharePoint everything will go, as well as the metadata required which outlines how things will be seen. We will base the BRIT metadata on the Vetadata standards listed on the AFLF site.

We want the resources in such a digital repository to be easily found, otherwise staff will give up and re-create their own, hence it is very important that we are clear on the metadata and structure we want. These issues are taking some time, as we want to get it right before people start uploading data to SharePoint. We feel it is better to spend the extra time now to do this than to upload a large amount of content and then sort it later. (For example, none of the content in the e-learning libraries have any metadata, so this will have to be done at a later date)

As well as this, we are discussing what internal processes we should use to add content to the digital repository. Ideally, they will all be checked for quality, accuracy, compliance, etc. before being added? Who will do this? How will it work? How onerous will it be? These and other questions need to be answered. We are looking at what others are doing, and will then need to get all the data and make some decisions relevant to BRIT.

Cultural issues will take a while to change (see Objective 2). While we expect that most staff will be happy to contribute to the repository, there seems to be a reluctance on the part of some staff to share anything with their peers, let alone sharing content! (We also have problems getting staff to do external surveys benchmarking surveys.) It may be that there is a fear of criticism, or perhaps there is a lack of confidence in their skills. While this is a bigger issue than e-learning content, we feel that some of this may be overcome by getting those willing to share to add their content to the repository,  and then promoting the benefits of sharing content and ideas, including saving time for staff and better outcomes for students.

A related issue is that if staff can't find exactly what they want, they tend not to use other content, whether internal or not. We have had some issues in getting some staff to use Framework resources such as Toolboxes and Learning Objects, as its 'not exactly what they want'. We have highlighted how much time these resources can save, and the fact that some can be customised, but the message takes a while to get through.

For 2009 and beyond, an approach we are exploring is to target a sector that needs either resources developed or flexible learning methodologies implemented, and go through with them about where to get appropriate content/information from. Once they see the need and are provided with some technical support, it may be easier to get them to look at using and/or adapting other content, whether internal or external. This may help change cultures and improve the sharing, while it will take some time, its part of the 'one degree' approach mentioned above.