1. Jon Rowett E-Registers at Brockenhurst College CETIS Enterprise / Pedagogy Joint SIG Meeting, Oct 2005

2. Jon Rowett Agenda E-Registers – Further Education context Two Projects –Emily (internal) –BeRT (JISC funded / open source)

3. Jon Rowett Further Education After the VLE… –Electronic registration: a common next step Why not more e-learning? –FE Students do less “independent” learning –Transitioning from school Often still need close pastoral support & monitoring Parental concern Funding, funding, funding

4. Jon Rowett E-Registers Survey Quick, unscientific questionnaire (http://www.freesurveysonline.com/fso/ViewQuestionsResults.fso?QuestionID=48419) Sent to various JISC mailing lists 19 responses –16 From FE –12 already using e-registers –6 “would pilot them” –1 had no interest Mixture of systems in use –Mainly web, but also: –Optical Mark Recognition –Smart Cards –Desktop software

5. Jon Rowett Emily

6. Jon Rowett What? Our First E-Registers project: –To use web registers for all 6 th Form lessons –From Sept 2002 As well as registers: –Attendance reports –Red/amber/green alerts –Contracts –Timetables –Student records / ILPs –Tutor messaging –Integration points

7. Jon Rowett Why? Lack of timely information to support decision making –Weekly paper reports –Could be some time before tutor notices problem Improve Attendance –“Electronic attendance systems have a positive effect on student attendance” (65%)

8. Jon Rowett Why? Provide a foundation for other applications –MIS “closed to the outside world” –Enable up-to-date student data to be incorporated into other tools –E.g. Student Progress Reviews Because we could! –Idea came from discussions in our technical team –Demos –More demos –Momentum

9. Jon Rowett How? Project managed by MLE Strategy Group –Principal –SMT –IT –MIS –Academic –E-Learning 1 x developer (me) 1 x designer (www.edmerritt.com)

10. Jon Rowett Registers…

11. Jon Rowett Messaging…

12. Jon Rowett Registers & Messaging

13. Jon Rowett Parents’ Portal

14. Jon Rowett Impact Real-time data is invaluable to personal tutors EMA payments and queries take much less time Messaging turned into a huge feature New applications –Text messaging Great feedback –“It is a wonderful tool and will be most helpful…thank you again.” (Parent) –“The college is using, and further developing, a progressive electronic information system to support regular and comprehensive monitoring and assessment of students” (OFSTED)

15. Jon Rowett Issues Strain on IT infrastructure –A PC in every classroom… –200 Tablet PCs… –Web usage through the roof –Security –Routing of support requests

16. Jon Rowett Issues Application has become a monolith –Unrelated functionality lumped together –Harder to change & maintain

17. Jon Rowett Brockenhurst E-Registers Toolkit (BeRT)

18. Jon Rowett Overview A software toolkit for institutions wishing to pilot e-registers A toolkit for developers working with attendance systems A prototypical interoperability spec? Funded by JISC Frameworks & Tools

19. Jon Rowett Why? To share our work with others Replace Emily –Make technical improvements –Divide functionality between smaller components

20. Jon Rowett What? A functional web registers application –Registers –Reporting –Administration A domain model –Mapping the data and interactions –Developing a schema for interoperability A service oriented software component

21. Jon Rowett Domain Model

22. Jon Rowett Service Oriented JISC E-Learning Programme Interoperable software components (and people) collaborate via messaging to complete a business process BeRT Web Services can form one component in a service-oriented MLE

23. Jon Rowett

25. BeRT Availability JISC / CETIS Conference (Edinburgh, Nov 14 th ) http://www.brock.ac.uk/bert http://sourceforge.net/projects/bert

26. Jon Rowett Why Enterprise? The IMS Enterprise (+Web Services) spec –Useful when moving around data about students, classes, teachers and timetables It’s about system integration to support learning