LMS Panel

LMS convened a panel of teachers and team leaders to speak about their experiences - this included Kevin Donovan, Vicki Cleaver, Rob Prior, Robin Petterd, Andrew Richardson and Eric Ortman.

Questions asked of the panel were:
A) as a program/team how do you go about choosing and sourcing resources?
B) are you aware of STP, Aesharenet, TAFE Frontiers, WestOne, OTEN, OLI?
C) have you been involved in national resource development projects?
D) if you cannot find the resources you need what are the next steps you take?
E) have you used any online, including toolboxes?
F) return on investment from resource development exercises?

Things that stood out for me:
You can earn a lot of money from selling workbooks, but they take a lot of time and effort to develop, and you need to keep them up to date.
Because we tend to adopt new/revised training packages earlier, we often are the first to develop resources.
Resources that are available from other organisations [see above in Q2] can be pulled apart and reused, but no-one on the panel had done this.
Two approaches to resources - a) develop a resource that addresses a unit or cluster of units or b) find and accumulate a library of much smaller resources that can be recombined in different ways. Each approach takes time, and different kinds of effort to achieve.
Online resources - most student response from using the communication aspects of WebCT and making resources available through that platform - not an online course as such but a support site.
Toolboxes - treat a toolbox like a textbook - pull bits out, facilitate your course, use what's needed. more investigation into chunks that can be used across training packages needed - and also examples of a chunk that has been treated in this way.