ALT-C reflections so far

The ALT-C conference has been interesting so far but as always with large conferences like these, you often wonder whether you're getting the most relevant information, or whether you should have chosen a different group of presentations.

My experience on the whole so far, has been mixed. I've tried to attend a variety of presentation styles; short papers, syposiums and workshops and have found bits of relevant information in all of them, but also large clumps of irrelevant info too. My experience from networking with others is that they have found the same.

One of the main things I can take from this conference is that as a University, we are doing many of the same things other Universities are doing; electronic assignment submission, podcasting, video learning objects, audio feedback, development of richer content and so on. The main issue is that we do not seem to be doing this strategically in any way and I don't think we're alone here. I think we are attempting to address this though, by working strategically with faculties and with our plan to re-write the e-Learning strategy.

The niggling questions at the back of my mind though, which have been stimulated by the conference presentations, are more to do with our students. What are their expectations of technology? Do they want a more blended learning approach or are they happy with a document repository? Would they like to see richer media such as audio and video content available to them within the VLE and do they even know that this is possible - do our academic staff? How do we get this information from our students and correlate that with the current practices of our academic staff, so that they are aware of the needs and drivers? How can we evaluate and monitor the effectiveness and quality of our e-Learning within the institution?