Funding History and Service Developments
The idea to create a Virtual Training Suite was born at The Institute for Learning and Research Technology at the University of Bristol.
In 1998 we had created one of the first ever Web-based tutorials, Internet Detective (now relaunched in June 2006). The tutorial was a surprise hit: it got very high levels of use nationally and internationally and got lots of positive feedback from lecturers, librarians and students who seemed to enjoy the light-hearted approach to Internet training. The National Libraries of France and the Netherlands asked if they could translate it to extend it to a wider audience and INASP translated it into Portuguese, Spanish and Russian - the number of users soared. It was this success that encouraged us to develop more online tutorials, and we started writing funding proposals to develop a virtual training suite full of them.
There followed a chequered history of funding and development, as we tried to juggle contracts and deliver a useful resource. New tutorials were developed for Further and Higher Education and Adult and Community Learners, with funding awards from various JISC development programmes and the Higher Education Academy Subject Centres. Between 2002 and 2005 we were gradually established as part of the Resource Discovery Network.
The Virtual Training Suite now comprises over 60 online tutorials.
Partners
A critical success factor for us has been the involvement of over 100 lecturers and librarians from universities and colleges UK-wide in authoring and editing the tutorial content. We wanted the service to be built by the community for the community - in the true spirit of the Internet, and thankfully people rose to the challenge and we have been able to work with some great people from leading-edge organisations.
See a full list of our authors and our alumni and advisory boards
The core team is just 1.5 staff (FTE), working on managing content development and editing, publicity and technical support. Staff from the Intute subject groups play a crucial role, working with authors and updating and quality assuring the tutorial content.
The Virtual Training Suite has developed a successful model for collaborative and distributed authoring of eLearning materials. We use the Web and email to enable people to work with us remotely, using standard templates and a content management system that enables remote editing of tutorials. This system has enabled us to tap into expertise nationwide to share resources nationally - a key aim of the service.
Service Developments
The suite has developed incrementally, with new tutorials being added for new subjects or new audiences in response to demand:
- July 2000: The first 11 tutorials went live (funded under the JISC Learning and Teaching Programme)
- May 2001: 29 more tutorials went live (funded under the JISC DNER Programme)
- April 2002: We become an official service of the RDN (with 3 years maintenance funding from the RDN)
- June 2002: 11 new tutorials designed especially for Further Education (FE) students go live (funded by the RDN)
- June 2002: 4 new tutorials go live that fill subject gaps (funded by LTSNs - now the HE Academy - and the RDN)
- Autumn 2002: Work on methods for integrating these tutorials into taught courses and VLEs begins (funded under the JISC X4L Programme).
- August 2004 - June 2005: 5 new tutorials for Adult and Community Learners go live.
- July 2002 - July 2006: we become a formal part of the Resource Discover Network - with funding to ensure all the tutorials are link-checked, updated and maintained by distributed authors and RDN staff
- July 2006 - July 2010: service re-launched as part of Intute - with funding to enable a full overhaul of all the tutorials to bring them up to date with new Internet developments and to give them a new tutorial design.
- June 2010 - final round of tutorials launched as part of Intute - finally updating all tutorials to the new design and learning objectives.
- August 2010 with changes in JISC funding, the Virtual Training Suite ceased to be part of Intute and sole management of the service reverted to the Institute for Learning and Research Technology at the University of Bristol.