Supporting VLP's

[steele_uk]

I was wondering how ICT support teams have handled the support of chosen VLP's.

When you had decided which solution to go with, did you discuss with your Bursar/HeadTeacher, how the supporting of such a system would be managed?

We are a team of two here and we support the students, teachers all admin and support teams as well as SIMS.

I think we would struggle to take on any new projects without increasing the numbers in the support team.

Did anyone find themselves in similar positions or did your solution just kind of 'evolve'?

[Ric_]

Whenever increasing the workload, the effect on staffing should be discussed. You are obviously concerned about the increase to your workload so you should raise this with your line manager.

You should also be a key stakeholder within the decision-making process anyway.

[beeswax]

There are a couple of points to raise initially, will your chosen VLP be hosted in house or externally? If the latter is the case, then there's a pretty good chance that support is part of the package your school/LEA will have bought into. If you are hosting it yourself there's a chance that you've bought into a package which has a third party coming in to install and configure the server/software for you. If that isn't the case then it'll probably be down to you.
Whichever of the above options are chosen, you may then be asked to assist teachers in uploading work, and even producing work to populate the site. When SMT have decided on a VLP, find out if the winning company have any examples with which to populate the site, as it could look bare for an awfully long time before staff come up with anything.
This may not be what you want to hear, but it might help you to formulate some questions before any decisions are taken.
*EDIT* Find out where "the buck stops", who is ultimately responsible for getting all this together.

[steele_uk]

Thanks for the pointers.

I think i could present a case for needed another support person in our department, to support users and manage the data on the VLP.

Is there an existing job description for search a person, or would it be Web Technician?

It is always much easier here if the Job description exists, or can be made to 'fit'.

Has anyone employed a person predominately for VLP management?

How did you go about it?

[kennysarmy]

We have a designated "data manager" here who looks after various databases and sorts pupil movements between groups/classes/set etc. We believe that role will have to encompass making changes to the VLE data also.

We are likely to go for a hosted Moodle solution and I really can't see it impacting on my teams time. Teachers will be taking responsibility for their own courses so I really don't see what "extra" we would need to do....

Or am I being too nieve about it all?