2005-04-06 Birmingham
First of all, many thanks to all those who helped sharpen XCRI's project plan and workpackages. The revised Project Plan, Work Packages and Budget were emailed to the JISC Programme Manager before the April 5 deadline.
The JISC Programme Meeting for the Distributed E-Learning (DeL) and Framework and Tools strands provided a useful opportunity to catch up with JISC strategy, see interesting demos from the DeL Tools projects and (thanks to Mr McKenna's powers of suggestion - and you can guess which one I'm talking about) I ended-up facilitating a spontaneous workshop for ELF Reference Models and Regional Pilots themed around curriculum specification and pathways. The session was attended by:
- Balbir Barn and Jim Petch from the COVARM ELF Reference Model project, looking at validation of Foundation Degrees
- Ben Ryan and Charlie Cordeaux from the Pathways4Progression Regional Pilot, modelling curriculum for student progression
- Sally Raby, developing an e-learning personal development access module on the Enhanced Learner Progression Regional Pilot involving Bradford, Leeds and Leeds Metropolitan Universities
- Paul Rowley of the G4L Regional Pilot looking at distributed work-based learning in the East Midlands
- George Magoulas, leading the Lifelong Learning in London for All Regional Pilot, which has a particular focus on identifying and advising on pathways available to learners
- Alex Little, Martin Weller and Will Woods from the Open University
Progress was developed further through the evening activities - this time at the bottle-of-wine-per-person 'Chez Jules summit' between XCRI and Ben and Charlie's Pathways4Progression Regional Pilot. Common ground was mapped out on the obligatory paper napkin and a commitment to meet within the month was established.
In the following morning's sessions Tish and Bill set out some expectations for what an ELF Reference Model might deliver, which raised plenty of questions:
- An understandable name
- The domain of use (from some shared vocabulary)
- Textual description of the purpose addressed by the model
- Human context: text + UML diagrams
- Machine context: UML deployment diagram + identified links to other ELF services
- Web service orchestration: UML activity diagrams
- Spec, standards and application profile used
- Spec bindings adopted
