Transcript The PAL³ project the good, the bad and the ugly Sherry Jeary, Suzy Atfield-Cutts, Heather Mayes and Natalie Bates The PAL³ project overview The.

The PAL³ project
the good, the bad and the ugly
Sherry Jeary, Suzy Atfield-Cutts, Heather Mayes and Natalie Bates
The PAL³ project overview
The PAL³ project is designed to enhance the student learning experience by providing a knowledge base
and resource to the Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) community within BU.
With the increase in the use of social networking sites, the use of a portal that will enhance
communication and discussion at the three different levels of PAL mentoring is both timely and innovative.
It will give students, PAL student tutors and PAL staff tutors suitable fora in which to record knowledge and
experience.
The use of the portal can be monitored using web usage statistics which will enable detailed records to be
made for evaluation purposes which when enhanced by questionnaires and focus group outputs will give
a rich seam of data.
Expectation
Achievements
• Link with the National Centre for Peer
Assisted Student Support and doing work
they are interested in collaborating with.
• BU are implementing our style of system into
the myBU VLE.
• Paper accepted at the Software Quality and
Education Conference.
• The project won a BU Award for
Outstanding Contribution to Student
Learning.
• Journal article and further publications
planned.
The students would like and use the system
Reality of Student Opinion
Implementation O
Concept P
Separate system O Integrate into VLE P
Additional features O Central information P
The PAL knowledge base was a project in itself and
not as simple as it appeared.
Software Development Problems
A retrospective on
the proposal
• LearnHigher gave a sum of money
to help us solve a problem. We
knew that we would spend more
time on the project than the funding
allowed but we seriously
underestimated the amount of time
we would spend.
• The collection of data using
statistics was not possible to the
extent we envisaged because the
students did not want the system.
• The PAL Leader ownership was
hindered due to a lack of the
functionality they required
• Some PAL Leaders didn’t buy into
the concept.
•Completing the Requirements, Design and Implementation
in < 3 months was a tall order and we made light of it. Most
things that could have gone wrong did.
• We tried to fit our requirements to an existing system.
• The developer got a job.
• Web hosting of the system at the university would not work.
• The developer didn’t know enough (which was why he was
cheap).
Data collection and analysis
• Trying to fit data collection into a full teaching load created a
headache in scheduling.
• Data collection by the use of focus groups was a good idea and the
use of a recorder was good… BUT
• Remember to switch on the recorder!
• Don’t put the recorder next to a computer fan!