New Project Administrator appointed

Sharon McCaffrey has just been appointed to Viewpoints as the Project Administrator while the current administrator is on sabbatical.

Sharon has nine years of experience in the University of Ulster, working in administrative roles across a range of schools, research institutes and central departments. She is currently working o a part-time Masters in Human Rights Law.

Sharon's interests include social rights issues, civil society engagement and advocacy and human rights issues. She is also a keen animal lover.

Project Planning Day - the first cut

With the expanded team in place, four members of Viewpoints - Alan Masson, Fiona Doherty, James Gheel and Karen Virapen - got together for an intensive project planning day.

The point of the day was to clarify some key areas for the project, as well as creating a draft project plan mapping out the process of creating each 'tool'.

We started by brainstorming as many ideas as possible onto a series of Post-Its - then grouped these on a whiteboard, as distinct themes began to emerge.

In Stage 2, we described four important areas -

• People (i.e. internal and external groups who could be key to the project)
• Outputs (tools and services that we plan to create)
• Project Memory (ways to capture plans and record project activities)
• Evaluation and Feedback (gauging if Viewpoints has been successful)

After lunch, we created a draft workplan, taking in all the stages of scoping and creating the planned Viewpoints tools and services. It was a productive - if somewhat exhausting - day! No doubt this plan will continue to evolve, but we have a useful starting point for the work to follow.

Two Instructional Technologists appointed

Viewpoints have just recruited two new full-time staff to the project. Fiona Doherty and Karen Virapen have been appointed as Instructional Technologists, to work on the multimedia tools and services to help staff think about their curriculum design.

Fiona and Karen have both worked for three years in the University of Ulster in the CETL Institutional E-learning Services (CIES) centre.

They bring a variety of experience in the fields of multimedia design and development, visual storyboarding, online writing and editing, and delivering workshops and educational training. Both are looking forward to taking up their new posts at this key point in the project.