Pathfinder phase 1 – preparing the ground
by Derek Morrison, 17 April 2007
We are not alone! In May 2007, the 9 Pathfinder pilot phase institutions will be joined by the 28 institutions who will enter phase 1 of the Pathfinder Programme fresh from their phase 1 benchmarking of e-learning exercise. Although the two day residential start-up meeting for phase 1 of Pathfinder isn’t until 22-23 May, some useful ’tilling of the ground’ should be done beforehand. Here is a brief list of useful preparatory work that can take place before you begin.
- Identify your delegates for the 22-23 May residential start-up meeting at Park Inn, York. Attendance at the start-up meeting is not optional. The capacity of the venue is 110 and so Pathfinder phase 1 institutions will be expected to send three delegates; one delegate of the three should be the institution’s Pathfinder team leader. Institutions may optionally, offer a fourth person who will be placed on a reserve list. We will try to accommodate the reserves if places are available. Registration details will be published shortly
- Read the blog postings relating to Pathfinder phase 1 by the Evaluation and Dissemination Support Team (EDSuT). I’ve copied the Pathfinder-related postings from the benchmarking blog to this one to make it slightly easier. The EDSuT is led by Professor Terry Mayes and it has a key capacity-enhancement role in the Pathfinder Programme.
- Start identifyng potential members of, and recruiting to, your institution’s Pathfinder project steering group. Establish a provisional schedule of meetings. It should be chaired by a senior member of your institution’s staff. A place should be reserved on this steering group for an Academy designated ‘critical friend’ whose brief will be to offer strategic level support and guidance to your project.
- You will require a Pathfinder blog. This can either be a continuation of your benchmarking blog, or a new instance specifically for your Pathfinder project. If it is a continuation of your existing blog the name and other metadata of your blog may need to be adapted to reflect its extended role so that RSS metadata remain accurate. Institutions that are currently using external hosts for their blog should reflect on whether this is appropriate for what is after all now about to become a high-profile Pathfinder project. Veronica Adamson and Jane Plenderleith of the EDSuT have indicated in their blog posting Support for Pathfinder Phase 1 Projects (20 March 2007) that they “…will devise a method to facilitate ongoing reporting (via a blog) through a series of specific but open prompt questions from time to time.”
- Think project evaluation from the start and don’t consider it as something that happens after it’s all over. The Academy has a relatively simple conceptual model of evaluation for Pathfinder. At the centre of this model sits ‘capacity-enhancement’ and from this nodes springs two branches. The first branch is ‘evidenced-by’ from which appears a multiplicity of potential branches by which the Pathfinder project demonstrates and illustrates its activities, events, deliverables and outcomes. The second branch is ’supported-by’ from which branches all the activities, events, resources, processes and people that help the Pathfinder project develop its ‘evidenced-by’ branch. Internal project evaluators will be expected to establish a good working relationship with the Academy’s EDSuT.
- Think project dissemination from the start and don’t consider it as something that happens after it’s all over. It’s reasonable for the heterogeneous entity known as the Higher Education sector, as well as the other Pathfinder institutions, to expect some information about your projects right from the beginning of your project timeline. You are expected, therefore, to prepare a project summary for your blog as well as let the Academy have a copy at the earliest possible opportunity (email them to ellie {dot} spillman {at} heacademy {dot} ac {dot} uk). A useful reference model is provided by the project summaries for the Pathfinder pilot projects although this could be usefully enhanced by the inclusion of a ‘keyword’ list and indication of what you consider are the key theme(s) of the project at the top of the summary. The inclusion of keywords and themes will make searching or further processing of the aggregated data easier and would help other Pathfinder phase 1 institutions identify potential synergies with their own proposals.
- If you haven’t already done so, and you are intending to appoint new staff to support your projects, then start preparing role specification and profiles now. The grant letters from the Academy are currently being prepared and so, on receipt of these, you should be in a position to implement your recruitment plan without delay. However, because the Pathfinder programme only lasts 12 months, with no possibility of over-runs, your workplan is expected to run from May; this may require interim arrangements on your part prior to new staff taking up their posts.
- The Academy will a multi-channel approach to communicating with you. The two most important mechanisms, however, for day-to-day communications will be this Pathfinder blog in combination a new JISCMail list ELPATHFINDERPHASE1 which will be activated shortly. We are in the process of copying phase 1 benchmarking JISCMail members that are taking part in Pathfinder phase 1 over to the new list, but it is very important that each institution has several members registered on the new list so that communications from us still get disseminated if someone is on holiday, sick etc. So, when this list is active, do register any new members as soon as possible.
So hopefully you will see from the above there is a lot that can be done before the formal start. The more you are able to do now, the less you will have to do later and so that means that we can all get on with our respective ‘evidenced-by’ and ’supported-by’ branches as quickly as possible.
We are all looking forward to working with you.