CHEETAH

Rationale

The University of Leicester, a research-intensive institution, has topped the National Student Survey for mainstream universities for three consecutive years, hence is in a position to offer insight into effective learner-centred design. Leicester’s pilot Benchmarking exercise conducted in 2006 identified ‘Instructional design/Pedagogy’ and ‘Learning material’ as a the key areas that needed increased attention. The ADELIE Pathfinder project addressed those criteria, researched the processes that generated the desired change across departments and applied sustainable models for continuity. A second benchmarking exercise, conducted in the summer of 2007, has demonstrated that the ADELIE interventions have been successful and have increased the benchmarking scores for ‘Instructional design/Pedagogy’ and ‘Learning material’ by 2.0 and 1.0 respectively, on a scale of 1 (base level) through to 6 (excellence).

As a key intervention, CARPE DIEM is central to the processes of change. Subject teams, together with learning technologists and subject librarians, work to implement effective e-learning designs for both distance and on-campus courses. The main catalyst for change in the workshop is the design of e-tivities (Salmon, 2002 ). By the end of CARPE DIEM, participants have a set of e-tivities running on their own institutional virtual learning environment (VLE), a blueprint for their course and an action plan. Most importantly, ADELIE research demonstrates that attitudes and skills change very rapidly during the process and university teachers’ ability to design for learners’ actions online increases across all disciplines.

CHEETAH will deliver a minimum of one Carpe Diem workshop (including the pre and post meetings) at each of the six partner institutions.

The project will run over a ten-month period, between January and October 2008. The funded phase of the project will end in July 2008.