Tertiary Accord New Zealand
Pamela Simpson, Keith Tyler-Smith, Phil Ker
Monday 8 September

Pamela Simpson has over 15 years in Senior Management positions across a range of industries including Tertiary Education, Agriculture, Health and Manufacturing and has been with TANZ as the first Director employed beginning 2002. Pamela has a range of health and business qualifications with most recent being a Masters in Business Administration (Dist.)

Keith Tyler-Smith is currently theeLearning projects manager for TANZ. He has worked in the ITP sector since 1993, after an eighteen year career as a TV Producer and Director for TVNZ. His academic career was initially as a programme leader in TV & Video Post Production at the NZ Broadcasting School at Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology. In 2000 he took up the role as Manager of eLearning & Web Support for CPIT and was responsible for the roll out of Blackboard, staff development in eLearning and the development of a variety of eLearning projects. In 2004 he was seconded to TANZ to project manage a series of eCDF contracts.  

Phil Ker is the CEO of Otago Polytechnic, a founding member of TANZ.

TANZ Experience – successes and challenges

This session will present from various perspective
(project manager, executive director, ceo) the
successes and challenges of working a collaborative
network of ITPs. TANZ (The Tertiary Accord of New Zealand) launched in early 2000 is to ‘work collaboratively as an Accord to identify, design, develop, deliver and evaluate applied vocational quality products and initiatives for tertiary learners’. The ultimate focus of TANZ is to improve educational opportunities and support services for those who wish to learn and/or the promotion of a learning environment.

The six institutions that are members of the Tertiary Accord of New Zealand (TANZ) are Northland Polytechnic (NorthTec), Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT), Universal College of Learning (UCOL), Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT), Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology and Otago Polytechnic. 

All of the TANZ members are independent Institutes set up under the Education Amendment Act 1990, and their Chief Executive Officers report to an elected council.  Each institution’s council is responsible to the Ministry of Education for the governance of the institute.  Some examples of previous TANZ collaborative activities:

• Liaising with national and regional groups to deliver educational requirements for business and industry. 
• Development of collaborative models to support viable, sustainable and results focused Accord.
• Development of successful collaborative programme development processes.
• Successful collaborative development of  a range of curricula including National Certificate in First Line Management (level 4), National Diploma in Business, Graduate Certificate in Applied eLearning (level 7), Health and Safety
• Successful collaborative delivery of curriculum from TANZ and other institutions
• Research for example ‘student performance monitoring’ with reports provided to Minister of Education and sector
• Sharing of policies, procedures and protocols such as risk management, human resources, assessment of prior learning

Update: TANZ website, myLearn Project, Phil Ker's Blog

Alexandra Pickett
SUNY Learning Network (US)
Tuesday 9 September

Alexandra M. Pickett is the Associate Director of the SUNY Learning Network (SLN), the asynchronous learning network for the State University of New York under the offices of the Provost and Learning Environments. Ms. Pickett has since 1994 led the development of the instructional design methods, support services, and technical resources used by SLN to support the development and delivery of full web online courses by SUNY campuses and faculty. She spent the past 14 years conceptualizing, implementing, and refining scaleable, replicable, and sustainable institutionalized faculty development and course design and delivery processes that in the 2005-2006 academic year resulted in the delivery of 4,000+ fully asynchronous online courses, 107 degree and certificate programs, with 100,000+ student enrollments.

In June 2006 a SUNY preferred course management system was selected and SLN began migration to ANGEL Learning from the home-grown Lotus Notes/Domino-based platform. One of the largest technical and programmatic migrations of its kind, there are currently 25 SUNY institutions in the process of migrating to ANGEL. This three and a half year project will be completed in June 2009. Ms. Pickett’s  comprehensive approach to online faculty development includes an online faculty resource and information gateway, an online conference for all faculty with the opportunity to observe a wide variety of online courses, a series of workshops for new faculty, instructional design sessions for returning faculty looking to improve their courses, a developer's handbook, course templates, a faculty HelpDesk, online mechanisms for faculty evaluation of SLN services, and an assigned instructional design partner. Her leadership and direction of this area of the program were recognized when in 2001 SLN was honored to receive the first Sloan Consortium Award for Excellence in ALN Faculty Development. In 2002 SLN received the Sloan-C award for Excellence in Institution-Wide ALN Programming, and the Educause award for Systematic Progress in Teaching and Learning for 2001.

Most recently SLN was honored with the 2006 USDLA 21st Century Award for Best Practices in Distance Leaning. Working with 50+ of the 64 SUNY institutions, she has directly supported or coordinated the development of more than 3,000 SUNY faculty and their fully online courses.

Update: Presentation slides

Owen O'Neill
e-Works / Australian Flexible Learning Framework (Australia)
Wednesday 10 September

Owen ONeill is the Manager of the Australian Flexible Learning Framework’s E-standards for Training Business Activity and has been closely involved in the establishment of the Australian vocational education and training sector’s new national e-portfolio initiative.

He is based at e-Works in Melbourne, an organisation that provides a range of e-learning consultancy and development services for the Australian vocational education and training sector and has worked on a range of systemic e-learning projects over the last 7 years in Australia and Europe.

Taking the long view: towards a national e-portfolio strategy for Australian vocational education and training.

From 2008, the Australian Flexible Learning Framework is funding a major new national initiative on e-portfolios for the Australian vocational education and training (VET) sector. This activity is developing a cohesive national approach to the implementation and use of e-portfolios across the VET sector. A number of research and trial activities are currently underway exploring issues including support for recognition of prior learning, security and privacy issues around storing and accessing personal information, verification of e-portfolio content, and the use of Web 2.0 tools with e-portfolios.