A rare guest appearance from Duncan Reeder on the UG Flex blog! Finally!!!
Friday the 14th of January saw Dave Mutti and myself make the six hour (!!!) round trip to Durham, to present to the Sungard European User Group (SEUG) annual conference. SEUG brings together Banner institutions from around Europe, and we wanted to use the conference as a way of finalising our research into methods of configuring terms in Banner for flexibility.
Presenting on the final day of a three day conference, we were a bit worried no one would show up. We were even more concerned when we learned that some delegates were just getting in from the Gala dinner, while we were boarding the train from London!!
Luckily we had good representation from five different institutions. It was great to get some insight from other Banner institutions on how certain configurations can limit or enhance flexibility. We also learned that the configuration model we regard as being the most flexible is in use at Nottingham Trent University, which will lead us to get in contact with them soon.
So a good days work then. It was also a good opportunity to give some recognition to JISC, and point out that all our work would not have been possible without the framework the project provides.
And finally great to see Durham - just beautiful!
Here is an abstract of the paper
ReplyDelete‘Flexibility – Easy to demand but hard to deliver?'
‘Flexibility’ has long been a buzz word in HE, and in these challenging times, building flexibility in to the curriculum has now been placed high on the agenda. A JISC funded project at the University of Greenwich has been focusing on how Banner can help to deliver greater flexibility in curriculum design and delivery.
This “Birds of a Feather” session is aimed at users, administrators and managers of Banner, who are interested in building more flexibility into Banner systems and functions and at the same time are being driven to do more with less.
Come along and take part in a workshop where representatives from Greenwich University will share some initial findings from their investigations and analysis and invite comment and feedback from other Banner institutions across the European user group, which can be taken by back to your own institution.
Concept diagrams will be shared ahead of this session to assist discussion in the workshop.