Pilot Phase Update

Conference call with Sharon, Susan, Ruth and Shani went well on 17 November, discussed various aspects of project, progress and concerns. Agreed that support on Service Design would be advantageous and a Case Study template would be beneficial.
Various stakeholder meetings at ICS have taken place to discuss the implementation of the chosen Pilots and the processes that will need to be in place to ensure they run according to our Project Plan. It is very encouraging that all parties from both Institutions are very enthusiastic and keen to contribute to making it a success - our Higher Education Student Experience Team, IT departments and Academics to name a few. The Steering Group have been updated regularly with project's progress. Visit to UEL early December to meet with IT Corporate Systems still to be confirmed. Susan will attend Service Design Event at Derby University on Friday 18th December.

Reporting Update

The Project Team completed a questionnaire to report progress to date to RM-SAS at the beginning of November. UEL and ICS worked together to ensure that the Project Team all contributed to the content of the report and have a shared understanding of progress against the Project Plan to date. The project is being delivered to budget and to agreed timescales.

Plans for the Evaluation of CABLE are currently underway to ensure that the valuable lessons learnt during this project can be captured and shared across the sector. We also plan to invite other SLRM projects to the CABLE Dissemination Event in April - more details to come on future blogs...

Phase 3 – Pilot Delivery

It’s been a busy few weeks….mini project plans now in place for the Pilot delivery stage. Further meetings to be confirmed for months of November and December with key stakeholders within each pilot to ensure the launch runs smoothly. A lot of planning has gone in to the pilot delivery and it will be crucial that all parties remain actively involved in the project as the chosen pilots are particularly challenging.
Attendance at the JISC CETIS conference on the 11th November proved to be invaluable, providing a great networking opportunity and to share good practice, compare progress and discuss concerns with the other SLRM projects. Personally it was nice to put a face to a name as I did not get the opportunity to meet the others at the start up event in July. It was agreed that it would be beneficial for the group to meet up again in a face to face environment in January allowing us to gather and disseminate best practice.

Phase 3 Prototype Evaluation

A successful Steering Group meeting on 27th October. The selected prototypes for pilots were agreed in line with workpackage 3 timescale.
ICS student survey results were presented to the group. The findings were very interesting and we received a good response rate of 21%.
The survey provided a good student sample from recently enrolled students through to those who have just graduated. The results assisted the group in making an informed decision on the selection of the prototypes to go forward to the pilot phase. The Steering Group selected 3 prototypes for the pilot phase. Mini project plans to be implemented early November.

Prototype Update

Criteria checklist used to evaluate all possible prototypes. Grading system allocated to all potential prototypes in line with JISC guidelines and Project Plan. Steering group in agreement with chosen prototypes, although the exercise has provided the foundations on which to test further prototypes outwith the timescale of this project - which again can be shared with the wider community.

Methodology used to test prototypes includes: On- campus evaluations, focus groups and student surveys

Steering Group meeting arranged for 27th October to disseminate the results of the prototype testing and to select the prototypes to go forward to the pilot phase.

Phase 2 - Development Update

Internal Process Mapping exercises were very successful. Two separate workshops were held to look at the 'As is' processes for Pre-enrolment and Post-enrolment. Stakeholder buy-in was very positive and several ' Ideal' processes were identified at this stage.
ICS visit to UEL was very productive where we met with the Director of Student Services and several Associate Directors from various departments within Student Services. The team were very enthusiastic about our CABLE project and shared ideas and processes surrounding the relevant stages of the student lifecycle - a lot of which were very innovative.
Stakeholders from UEL visited ICS offices on Friday 18th September to discuss progress of Project to date. Again, this was a successful meeting, diary dates confirmed for next phase of project.
Communication will continue with Student Services and UEL connect in order to make the necessary comparisons of learner experience. Susan will visit UEL again in the next few weeks to enable us to map the 'Ideal' processes to create our blueprints.

Project documents

I've made the project documentation available online now:

Cover sheet
Project plan
Workpackages

The Journey so far.........

Project Plan agreed by steering group and submitted to JISC on 14th August. Consortium Agreement in final stages. Internal launch of Project objectives to key ICS stakeholders delivered on Thursday 27 August. Process Mapping workshops scheduled for week beginning 31 August.

A new start

Welcome to our blog! This blog relates to our work on the JISC-funded CABLE project, which is a joint project between ICS Ltd and the Universty of East London.

The aim of the project is to explore ways in which we can improve the student satisfaction and achievement levels of our distance learners, to ensure that their learning experiences are comparable to the experiences of our on-campus students.

This blog will contain updates on our progress as we work on the project.