The Reviews took place on 6 and 13 June 2006 and were attended by 45 people in total, mostly academic and administrative staff. The Reviews serve two purposes: to allow WebCT users to meet and exchange ideas, and to allow CLT staff to report on the use of WebCT over the past year, and look forward to next year.

Participants convened in groups and discussed issues arising from their use of WebCT over the past year. Detailed feedback from these groups is available in the Full Report, but the key points arising were as follows:

• What worked well: support for e-packs, self-registration system, use of discussions to share work and to link up with overseas students
• What worked less well: the failure of WebCT in first week of Michaelmas term, technical limitations of the discussions tool
• Ways to encourage student use of WebCT: use of compulsory assignments, introduction to WebCT in a computer classroom, giving students ‘ownership’ of the discussion forums, discussing in class what is happening online.
• Other topics: the feeling that teaching staff need to become more involved in using WebCT; suggestion that demonstrations by existing users would help generate interest; concerns about time limitations and how students could be used to do more of the work; suggestion that student seminar presentations could be filmed.

After the review, all participants were asked to complete an evaluation survey about the review. The results of the survey, completed by 88% of attendees, were extremely positive, with all participants rating the reviews as either ‘Excellent’ or ‘Good’. Furthermore, all participants agreed that they had learned something from the review and that it was pitched at the right level.

Respondents identified the key benefits of the review as being the chance to exchange ideas with other WebCT users and getting updates on new developments in learning technology.

Suggestions for improvements to the reviews included: allowing more time for demonstrations of new tools, getting a greater number of academics to attend, and demonstrations of good practice by other WebCT users.

These results are greatly encouraging and indicate that the reviews are worthwhile exercise. We will consider implementing the suggestions for improvement in next year’s reviews.

Please see the full report for further details.