Building and testing a virtual university
Introduction
The Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC) under its Use of the MANs Initiative (UMI) has so far funded Clyde Virtual University (CVU). In June 1995 SHEFC announced that UMI phase 1 would fund projects that exploited the recently established Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs). CVU is a collaborative project between Glasgow, Glasgow Caledonian, Paisley and Strathclyde Universities and is leading the way in the collaborative development of learning technology delivered across high-speed networks. This paper is a report on the phase of the project that ran from Autumn 1995 until Summer 1996. As intended, an infrastructure has been put in place which is proving to be a stimulus for further developments in a range of technologies enhancing aspects of teaching, learning, assessment, evaluation and administration.
Further information and CVU itself can be found at http://cvu.strath.ac.uk/.
Section snippets
Personnel
Funding was initially requested for a part-time project manager and a full-time multimedia specialist to work on the project. The part-time project manager position was split between two individuals with complementary skills. Their main roles have been as follows:
Conclusions and future plans
CVU has successfully converted courseware in a number of subject areas for delivery to any student or staff member with access to ClydeNet. This material has been installed on the CVU server and will remain available for years to come. As anticipated, other projects and individuals have expressed the desire to make use of CVU expertise and hardware in the development and archiving of further materials.
The assessment engine has enabled interactive elements to be added to courseware modules as
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