A very brief, pre-Christmas posting, following the second (Exeter) Pathfinder Group meeting held at the end of November. This was well attended, with representatives of all the Schools/Departments involved in the project present, as well as key members of Academic Services and – of course – the project team.
Staff and student data collection is in full swing, with the first three months of next year promising to be an even more hectic time. At the meeting, our Research Fellow Ruolan Wang gave an interesting presentation outlining some early findings, particularly concerning the perceptions of students about videoconferencing being used to deliver lectures before their experience of it. Ruolan intends to compare their responses with data collected from the same groups in February/March – by which time they will have experienced a series of videolinked lectures.
Our project involves a number of different Schools/Departments, and as such administration and organisation of activities requires careful timetabling. In addition, we’re encountering a ‘snowballing’ effect, with increasing numbers of staff being keen to get involved. By way of a brief summary, here’s some indication of the data collection alone that is taking place over the next three months:
•Ongoing academic staff interviews (N=15)
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• Ongoing VC/AV support staff interviews (N=2/3)
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• PCMD students interviews (N=20) (Nov 2007-Feb 2008)
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• Post-VC questionnaires (Feb-Mar 2008)
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• Post-VC focus groups (Feb-Mar 2008)
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• GeoVid Focus group and student interviews (N=8) (Jan-Feb 2008)
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• GeoVid Staff interviews (N=4) (Jan-Feb 2008)
• VC teaching observations
Our Critical Friend Betty Collis has been an enormous support over the past few months, and we’re looking forward to her visit for our next Steering Group, and a gathering of our F-cluster colleagues, in January. Already we’ve identified some interesting case studies, as well as opportunities for dissemination, and we look forward to discussing those as well as other project business in the New Year.
Thanks to everyone involved in our project here, particularly to Ruolan, Rachel and Sue, and to our cluster friends at Wolverhampton, Canterbury and Kingston. HELGA may not have taken off for us but we’ve really valued the additional funding provided by Pathfinder to share practice with colleagues from other institutions – which seems a good note to end on!
A very merry Christmas and a happy new year to everyone involved in Pathfinder.