Evaluation of the Swiss Virtual Campus - Schweizerische ...

SVC Final Evaluation. Background Report Lepori and Probst
Title
Technical support mandates
Responsible Funding
National
training)
server for on-line courses (incl. SWITCH-EDUTECH 777,616.-
Edutech
CCSP and project support
Jacques
Fribourg
Monnard, University of 1,453,000.-
GIRAFE Daniel Peraya, University of Geneva 195,000.-
Forum New Learning Andreas Ninck, Berner Fachhochschule 93,100.-
A manual for projects and programme Theo Wehner, ETH Zurich 181,800.evaluation
CRITIQUEST Nadia Spang-Bovey, University of 15,367.-
Lausanne
Programme support
Guide of e-learning good practices Maia Wentland, University of Lausanne 48,420.-
SVC status reports and projects monitoring Jürgen Oelkers, University of Zurich 339,085.-
Sustainable implementation of elearning
Others
Sabine Seufert, University of St. Gallen 161,400.-
SVC measures initiatives and support 40,000.-
Salon de l,étudiant 2004 37,000.-
Final evaluation programme 132,000.-
MEDIDA-Prix 2006 312,000.-
Payments for Impulse Programme mandates 117,784.-
Total 3,896,742.-
Table 14. List of mandates for the Consolidation Programme
From the table, the strong focus on technological support is evident, since EDUTECH and the
national content server make about half of the total funding volume; most of the remaining funds
has been used for mandates to support the SVC programme as a whole and for monitoring
purposes, while mandates devoted to the direct support to projects and CCSPs took a limited
role.
5.2.1 Technical support and services
The technical support mandates and services include the long term EDUTECH mandate, as
well as the set-up and maintenance of the national server for on-line courses.
EDUTECH is a long term service created before the beginning of the SVC programme itself with
the following aims:
• supporting the SVC projects in their technical development;
• provide consultancy and monitoring in general concerning elearning technologies (for
example evaluation of open source LMS); and
• provide support service to the SVC coordination itself, for the management of the website
and for diffusion of information about news and events concerning elearning.
With the Impulse Programme, the activities of EDUTECH have progressively shifted from
project support to more general services and, in particular, to the development of a national
elearning infrastructure in close collaboration with Switch.
The main activity in this respect has been the set-up and maintenance of a national LMS (Web
CT Vista, now Blackboard Vista), which is hosted by Switch from the year 2003, based on the
strategy and decision of the SVC-SC. Further, EDUTECH has been involved in the integration
of WebCT in the AAI project, which allows students and teachers in Swiss HEIs to access online
services through an unique account.
In October 2006, the CRUS decided to evaluate a second LMS based on an open source
solution; after an evaluation of the different open source LMS available performed by
EDUTECH, a working group concluded that there was little interest in the universities in this
service since most of them were already on the way to establishing their internal LMS.
However, there was a considerable interest in developing a Learning Object Repository at
national level which would allow easy exchanges of learning materials between different LMS
(see http://www.switch.ch/cms/services/els/LOR/index.html). After evaluation of different
solutions, a LOR pilot project started in summer 2007.
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