People Plan Programme - "I want to enable the sharing of knowledge with the wider community"

Monday, 22 October 2018

A new learning management system is being developed by the University with an external partner. Three companies have presented their systems to the working group and one will be chosen to develop a made-to-measure system incorporating many new and updated features. Final scoring sessions are being held and it is hoped that a decision will be made on the preferred supplier within the next few weeks.

Project group members have volunteered for the various workstreams to inform how the system will be set up and used. If you are interested in finding more about these workstreams (which include Change Management, Data Migration, Social Learning, IMPS Portal and Third Party Access) with a view to getting involved please email LMS@reading.ac.uk.

This work involves colleagues from many different groups within the University and we caught up with Eva Van Herel of the Executive Support Community of Practice, who has been involved in the project, to find out more:

“To me, this is a fascinating project. I understand and occasionally share, the frustration of not having a current learning management system. Often when we ask someone to undertake training the information and courses may be found in four or five different places. I feel responsible for staff happiness and if the training were easy and accessible this not only makes my job easier but benefits other colleagues too. I’m interested in the process of how a large project like this is implemented, so this is also a chance for self-development.

“The Executive Support Community of Practice has allowed me to meet and work with people from all over campus and it is good to meet more people from all backgrounds through the learning management system project. The discussions included all stakeholders to make sure that all points of view were heard. It’s clear that for the new system to be a success there must be good uptake among the end user. It’s important, therefore, for the learning management system to be accessible: the benefits will have to outweigh the frustration of learning a new system and of not having a centralised system.

“I can see lots of opportunities to create e.g. content management system training for executive support and share this through a community of practice on the new system. Going forward I’ll be involved in testing and soft roll out as well as being an ambassador for the new system. From what I’ve seen so far, we are on track to creating a useful tool that will make our lives easier.”

Eva Van Herel is an Executive Administrative Officer for the School of Humanities. 

During October, we have been publishing updates from different projects in the People Plan Programme. You can read about the other projects:

2018 Staff Survey - People Plan Programme: "I'm determined to improve communication in every way we can" - 15/10/2018

Wellbeing - People Plan Programme - "I want people to be happy and flourish at work" - 10/10/2018

Change management - People Plan Programme - "Sharing my passion for working at the University" - 08/10/2018

Leadership and management behaviours - People Plan Programme: "I saw this as an opportunity to make positive change" - 01/10/2018