Saturday, June 28, 2008

Week Thirteen: National and International support for flexible learning development

When it came to thinking about funding for this project I was initially confused about what the cost of this plan would be and if I would actually need any funding.

It took a minute but I soon realised funding is an important factor to be considered. The main funding opportunity, initially would be through the Otago Polytechnic Teaching Innovation Fund. An application here would be to cover the costs of the initial set up, such as:

Training - Of the librarians about the use of Blackboard, how to post announcements, add discussion threads and oversee the relevant areas.
Set Up - Time take by myself to meet with relevant personal to create log on and passwords for the librarians. To set the blackboard sites up for the courses and to ensure all the relevant information was available.
Running/Maintenance - Both the librarians and myself will be required to provide input into the blackboard sites while the students are enrolled in the courses. This is anticipated at being approximately 2-3 hours per week.

After looking at the other sites provided on the Designing of Flexible Learning Practice site I began to look at other possibilities also.

Ako Aotearoa provides funding for activity or research proposals which should align with their vision to create and support the best possible educational outcomes for learners in the tertiary sector. This would be an appropriate possibility for when I want to complete a research project about the success of the plan, as I think its going to be an important aspect to assess the success of this plan

1 comment:

Bronwyn hegarty said...

Pen it is good to see you have your sights on some funding to evaluate the success of your plan. I have put a link on the course blog summary to some information about evaluation. Steve at Flexible frying is looking to do the same so you might both benefit from having a chat about it.