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Comment by Carole McCulloch on March 28, 2009 at 12:41pm

Okay and the wheel turns .... more potential work than I can shake a stick at .... just would like to get 'into it' now.
Lynne, I think you have a real champion there in Leanne - how fortunate for Coonara to have both of you. :-)
Having just finished a stint of facilitating for the Online Facilitation course at GippsTAFE I'm really keen to identify further opportunities for mentoring the new breed of champions in community centres.
What we really need is an up-to-date modern e-learning facilitator course - maybe the new one being developed in Queensland will be the one.
However I do think that there are some differences in the way community centre champions practice and there really should be a special e-learning certificate course for them. Is there one?
Would value some insight into to this from anyone?
CC

Comment by Lynne Gibb on March 28, 2009 at 8:57am

Hi Colleen,

I see I have not replied to your post yet so apologies for that. At Coonara, we are very fortunate in having a Team Leader, Leanne Fitzgerald, who has incredible vision and talent and it is she who handles all our submissions for funding. I think she bases it around projects that look as though we might have some hope of success. For instance, she is quite happy to go for smaller projects instead of a big one if the field looks too big. On the other hand, she has also gone for big ones and been funded for those as well! She includes the staff in her explorations around what funding we will go for and canvasses our ideas. She also does this with our committee of management and keeps them on-side all the time.

One way we identify ideas for our projects is by looking at our strategic plan which clearly identifies (this time) the desire of the organisation to foster a variety of learning methods especially elearning or blended learning. From there, it is quite easy to think about ways we can do this. We also have been slowly developing tutor technology capabilities over the past four years to the stage where nearly everyone is happy to have a go at some kind of blended delivery, even if it is just by uploading asessments onto the wiki and facilitating the odd discussion. Therefore, tutor PD has been a bit of a focus for us. We also look at our student demogrphic and work out what we can realistically expect of them. We did a survey last year and were surprised to find out that over 60% of them had access to a computer and internet access! That was a big jump from our previous survey about 4 years ago when we only had about 30% or less.

Another way leanne gets ideas is by trying to think outside the square and going for something that no-one else has thought of! This is just her creative mind at work! When she runs her ideas by us we often go OMG - we couldn't possible do that but after further discussion we catch up to what is in her head and can see the possibilities. She is such a "stretcher of minds!" You also have to be careful what you say to her because if you go to her with a germ of an idea, in no time at all she has fleshed it out and it is in a submission and you are doing it! She's pretty incredible at finding judt the right funding source for whatever project!

I don't know if this is what you wanted to discuss Colleen but its what we do! Clearly, compliance does not play a big part in our decisions on funding although we always have an underlying understanding that what we do will be compliant.

We have recently submitted for a big elearning (big by our standards!) project but with these types of projects you are not allowed to let people know if you have been successful or not until you get official word so no official word yet!

Cheers
Lynne

Comment by Carole McCulloch on March 5, 2009 at 12:22pm

Hi Lynne and Colleen,
I too have been deeply focussed on the application process for funded projects and have volunteered my time for this in the hope that new ementoring work will arise out of them. There is a fine balance between payment and gratis activities and I find that I choose the gratis where opportunities may arise.
Identifying potential collaborative projects takes quite a bit of time and in my previous employment at a TAFE we had a team who focussed on exactly that, seeking, identifying, creating a feasability study on each, proposing our involvement, gaining approval from a committee, then getting down to the task of doing the collaboration and getting the proposal written.

Once all that flurry of activity is over, then there is the wait, will we - won't we get approval. OMG what if we get them all? OR What if we get none?

Working within an organisation that has a vision and a strategic direction towards collaborative projects and a history of success in managing them the taks gets easier and more streamlined.

What I'm finding in smaller community centres is that very difficult barrier to success - no runs on the board and no scope for the lengthy process involved, written into their strategic directions. So providing a helping hand to get their first successful project is something I see as vital, especially where there is reticence and lack of confidence in applying.
Here in Victoria, Lynne and I are part of a group of Ementors covering nine ACE regions and we're hoping that we will once more be funded to provide these services on a payment basis rather than gratis.
Recent experiences in collaborating on the writing of applications using Google docs has not been successful, but it is a process that I would like to promote as a way of preventing the curse of 'version control' when documents fly backwards and forwards in emails and the team become confused on which is the current one. This can amount to chaos if not carefully managed. So that's my first time for project management.
Note: Sue Waters and myself will be running some workshops soon on 'Productivity Improvement' using Google Power, so if you're groups are interested in one or more of these online Elluminate, please let me know.
It would indeed be valuable to tag our delicious and our diigo accounts with items of interest - I suggest that be tagged ementoring.

Comment by Colleen Hodgins on March 4, 2009 at 8:36am

Hi Lynne and Carol my current perspective around projects is managing my frustration in the identification of project opportunities and application processes that need to be managed in organisations to get the best chance of success. I am interested in how organisations effectively identify and collaboratively develop project applications so that they can be supportive and proactive in managing staff learning and innovation. Staff learning programs in my organisation has been focused on compliance issues over the last few years and as we know ( research reports have stated number one reason for e-learning innovation is limited time and opportunity) I'd like to hear how organisations strategically identify projects and then manage the application implementation and evaluation process.

I would also like to see in this mentoring group some creative ideas about project management/faciltation application writing/presentations. Maybe samples of this type of work/links to applications would assist others.
Maybe if we tag in our delicious accounts things of interest in this topic?

Comment by Lynne Gibb on March 3, 2009 at 5:33pm

That has happened to me too Carole. Projects that I was going to be Project Leader last year were turned down. After initial disappointment I was delighted to find that suddenly I had four projects that I had forgotten that my team leader had applied for! In the end, I also got the ementor project and was nearly keeling over with too much work! Funny how it goes isn't it? Sometimes its feast or famine - usually first term is slow because projects have not been secured yet but this term I have been offered teaching all over the place, conferences to present at and am again slumped over a hot computer trying to keep up!

Comment by Carole McCulloch on March 3, 2009 at 3:54pm

Interesting the way that project work comes and goes - opportunity doors open and close. Only recently I had a disappointment - a no go for an application - and thought to myself I could get upset or just move on. Decided to just move on and found that the very next day another opportunity arose - straight out of the blue. I wonder if you had similar experiences yourselves or if you'd had to mentor someone who has?

Come on in and tell us about that.

CC