Victorian Directors of Information Technology eLearning Forum

Associate Professor Richard Constantine, Chief Information Officer and Director, Information Technology Services and Matthew Smith, Associate Director, IT Governance Strategy and Planning

For many years Swinburne has used separate and independent LMS’s in our TAFE and Higher Education sectors. In response to a management directive that all Student and Staff should use a single, unified LMS, Swinburne looked to Blackboard Hosting as a way to deliver this project. In addition to financial benefits, Swinburne’s use of a hosted solution delivers significant non-financial benefits. These benefits include outcomes such as resource flexibility, service level improvements and removing the distraction of managing technical issues allowing staff to remain focused on the main challenge of implementing a single LMS solution.

This presentation will outline Swinburne’s progress to date including the decision making process, key benefits and risk considerations, the experience to date and way forward as Swinburne progresses towards a single hosted LMS.

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Dr Enrico (Ric) Canale, Associate Director for Flexible Teaching & Learning, Curriculum,
Teaching & Learning Centre La Trobe University

La Trobe recently completed an evaluation of Blackboard Learn 9.1 and Moodle 1.9.7 that took into account a number of different LMS perspectives. Ric will cover the different evaluation perspectives in terms of the main issues that are common to all institutions and summarise the specific findings as they apply in the La Trobe context by way of example. The La Trobe LMS evaluation included:

System functions and features, assessed as software capabilities, Usability or ease of use, Accessibility, assessed by Vision Australia, Content migration, assessed in the interest of minimising staff time on migration of existing LMS subjects, Comparative costs, including in-house and externally hosted options for both Blackboard and Moodle, Technical fit with La Trobe IT infrastructure and future directions, Vendor responsiveness and support levels, including evidence of their capacity to support the Design for Learning Project (or replace DFL with your institution’s major T&L strategy). These and other considerations supporting La Trobe’s rationale for adopting Moodle in 2011 will be discussed.

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Michelle Selinger, Director Internet Business Solutions, Cisco and Glenn McPherson, Solutions Sales Manager, Cisco

Cisco will present their new Connected Learning Environment solution. Cisco will provide an overview of the relevance of this Connected Learning Technology for Universities, with a specific focus on how this solution:

Adds rich interactivity to the curriculum Encourages student-produced multimedia content Enables collaboration within the university, and with other universities & industry Supports virtual classroom – both on campus & remotely Supports the goals of increasing enrolment without building new classrooms And aids with 21st century teaching and learning techniques.

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Dr Gary Williams, Co-Head, Centre for the Advancement of Teaching & Learning

Mr John Parry, Director, Information Technology Resources, University of Tasmania

UTAS has over the past 12 months considered its virtual learning environment from various angles including consultation with staff through an enterprise ‘Your voice’ (staff satisfaction) survey, and consultation around, and development of, an eLearning strategy. Additionally UTAS has operated the Blackboard WebCT product since 2001, and with the emergence of the Learn 9.1 integrated product, is now considering LMS options through an environmental scan process. The presentation will summarise the overall key elements of UTAS’s strategy and direction of our virtual learning environment, including major service developments, our overall product suite, and the current review process around the LMS refresh.

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Dr Garry Allen, Principal Advisor Academic ICT Integration, RMIT

At the end of 2010 RMIT will complete a three year program addressing strategic development in its elearning capability. The program, which is described at: www.rmit.edu.au/reap has been undertaken in three phases across

1. Minimum online presence,
2. Enhanced learning environments and
3. Active learning.

This presentation will cover the outcomes from REAP that are relevant to other University contexts, along with trend directions for learning technologies that influence university-level planning.

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