IN DEPTH
The benefi ts of collaboration
When two adult education colleges set about fi nding a new host for their VLEs, they found that collaboration was the key to maximise their resources and get the results they wanted. In the fi rst of two articles, Hilary J. Oakley and Laurence Elliott explain the advantages of working together.
THE UK Adult Education sector is well known for its innovation in teach- ing and technology but funding and resources are always at a premium in comparison to the Higher Education and Further Education (FE) sectors. Hillcroft College and Morley College were independently trying to fi nd a new hoster for their Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) over summer 2013, so the hosting service could seamlessly migrate before the autumn term. Contacting Jisc seemed the best way to kick-start the projects and our account handlers introduced us to each other and set us on a track for change. Jisc’s knowledge of best practice across the educational sector and contacts also proved an invaluable way of saving time, eff ort and resources. Over two articles we will focus on how to collaborate on a project with another organisation and make the project work to the benefi t of each partner. In the second article we will look at the technology and customer consultation we undertook which made a diff erence to our users. We will also share tips and lessons from the project with you.
Why collaborate?
You are probably wondering why it is worth collaborating with another organisation on a project of this scale when it would be simpler to do it yourself. Our colleges are diff erent in size but what we have in
December-January 2017/18
Hilary J. Oakley (@HilaryOakley
HOakley@hillcroft.ac.uk) is Learning Resources Manager, Richmond and Hillcroft Adult and Community College (@HillcroftLRC).
Laurence Elliott (@morleyEdTech Laurence.Elliott@
morleycollege.ac.uk) is Digital Inclusion Development Coordinator, Morley College London.
common is that we have limited resources available to us, which includes the fact that we have small teams and budgets. For instance, at Hillcroft the Learning Resources Manager at that time was a team of 1.5 while at Morley, the Digital Inclusion Development Coordinator was the sole person with responsibility for eLearning. Both managed the VLE in their respective organisations and had only small IT teams to support them, requiring them to host VLE sites externally.
Hillcroft
Collaborating also meant we could pool our knowledge and expertise. We each have strengths in diff erent areas. For example, Hillcroft has more experience in customer service and developing surveys. This was from running a similar catalogue migration
INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 51
VLE Collaboration
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07/12/2017 13:22
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