© Banff and Buchan College 2002 Banff and Buchan College SWaNI Project Engaging with Skillnet ]

© Banff and Buchan College 2002 Aim of project To promote the use of e-learning by developing interoperability between, B-net (the College Intranet system), SITs (MIS) and Skillnet (VLE). To provide a cost effective solution that can be applied to all colleges,

© Banff and Buchan College 2002 Objectives Link the student record system in SITS to the user accounts system in Skillnet and the college Intranet To automate enrolments for online courses and share access to support materials Enable transfer of data between components to create a synchronous lifelong learning log Exchange content between repositories of the systems Use IMS standards to achieve the above.

© Banff and Buchan College 2002 Why this project? College keen to develop a cost effective MLE College needed support of partners with skills and experience College keen to support the development of SUfI (Learndirect) College keen to develop its own intranet to current standards

© Banff and Buchan College 2002 Main activities Working with the VLE vendor to propagate student enrolments across all of the necessary domains via a central staging point for student records (central database server). System user information stored as XML data that conforms to LIP standard.

© Banff and Buchan College 2002 Main activities Converted our existing Intranet content repository to a system that is capable of handling legacy documents and learning objects that conform approximately to the Dublin Core spec for learning objects.

© Banff and Buchan College 2002 Main activities Working towards publishing content to the VLE environment. Attempting automatic propagation of VLE access from student enrolment process.

© Banff and Buchan College 2002 Benefits Accelerated our understanding of the complex issues surrounding interoperability Increased our commitment to the development of a functional MLE.

© Banff and Buchan College 2002 Challenges Original scope of the project was probably too ambitious – leading to; tension in workloads lack of staff expertise and resources massive learning curve maintaining effective project management (especially given our remoteness)

© Banff and Buchan College 2002 Results/outputs/findings The project was of great benefit to the college, as it developed skills knowledge and competence previously lacking within the college staff. The development of interoperability between systems creates a need for a detailed overview of all college processes.

© Banff and Buchan College 2002 The project has shown that interoperability is achievable between the SRS and B-net and from B-net to the Skillnet VLE. - after a lot of development The partnership approach has been successful. Both organisations have benefited from the project,

© Banff and Buchan College 2002 Contact details Graeme Watt ICT Manager / Project Manager at BBCFE1 Tel: (01346) ext: David Herd Lecturer and Intranet / Web Developer at BBCFE Tel: (01346) ext: Paul Sherrington Depute Principal / Project Director at BBCFE Tel: (01346) ext:

© Banff and Buchan College 2002 Henderson Road, Fraserburgh, AB43 9GA Tel: (01346) Fax: (01346)