Vivian Neal

Hi Alice,

I'm glad to see that you've found your way into SCoPE and thanks for sharing your notes about TAG at UBC. You're clearly very enthusiastic about TAG, and since I've attended several of your workshops and events I can see why. It's interesting that student fees help to support your unit - I haven't seen this done elsewhere. 

When I first read your desriptions of CoP's I was thinking of online communities, but I realized that you might be talking about in-person or blended type communities - please tell me more!  At LIDC, we have built the online infrastructure for a few online communities, SCoPE being one of them.

Alice,

Thanks for the notes about Kwantlen and the new staffing arrangement.  Does the college have only these positions that support teaching and learning, and no physical office?  What kinds of support is provided?

Vivian

Welcome E.A.

I'm in Dundee now (was in Taunton on the weekend), Sussex last week, so I missed you.  Great to see you virtually in SCoPE, though, and I see already there is a lot of interesting pieces in this discussion, so dig in.

My computer stopped working on Sunday, and so I'm using a borrowed computer and using an unidentified wireless right now at a restaurant. So please forgive me if I'm a bit slower than usual at responding to your postings that might be directly for me. Gosh, this technology is quite amazing.

Perhaps we could start this discussion with some introductions by saying a little about ourselves and why we are interested in teaching and learning (T&L) centres.   

I work with the Educational Support and Innovation division of the Learning and Instructional Development Centre at SFU, and I've been here for almost 3 years.  I'm currently visiting the T&L centres at several universities in the UK. Last week I visited the University of Sussex and will soon be visiting the Universities of Dundee, Strathclyde and Glasgow. I hope to learn about each of these centres and the types of work that they do. 

In this seminar, I hope you'll share information about your centres/units and learn about centres eslewhere and what they do and how they do it.

Please introduce yourself, and once we've done that I'd like to look at three elements in particular:

1.  The phlosophical foundations, or learning theories, that underlying and shape the activities of T&L centres.

2.  The sort of faculty development activities in T&L centres.

3.  The kinds of programs or projects that are offered in T&L centres.

Please feel free to contribute a brief about your own T&L centre - if you would like to do this, I suggest that you start of new discussion thread - just like Norm did.

Sylvia and Others,

Under one roof?

I'm visiting the University of Dundee today, the third UK university of my trip.  Dundee has several small T&L units that are responsible for different support functions, but the staff communicate with one another frequently.  Also, there is one staff position that is half time in The Learning Centre and half time in Information and Communication Technology. I believe that a the key ingredient to providing effective services is good communication - a large number of services under one roof doesn't necessarily guarantee this.

Other thoughts?