SouthWest London Academic Network,
St George's University of London,
Cranmer Terrace,
London.
SW17 ORE

Collaboration & Learning Environments (CLE)

The Collaboration and Learning Environments (CLE) project is part of the Student Experience strand within SWan. The CLE has now successfully achieved its objectives of co-ordinating the establishment of procedures for the following activities:

· exchange of student records

· access to library and IT resources across all three institutions for staff and
students, and

· provision of large-scale video conferencing to enable lectures to be interactive across all three sites.

The main work of the CLE project was completed in time for commencement of academic year 2009/10 and enrolment of students in modules across institutions.

If you have any questions about the CLE or its work, please contact Celia Cornwell, SWan Strategic Partnership Programme Manager.

Updated: 11th Feb 2010

Collaboration Tools

The SWan alliance has invested in several key pieces of technology to facilitate cross-site collaboration. Aside from the video-conferencing systems which are now in place to enable delivery of Biomedical Science(s) module across SWan's Institutions, the alliance has also taken out licences for a desktop webconferencing system (NEFSIS) and the online learning tool, WIMBA.

About NEFSIS. This desktop webconferencing system enables users to participate in, and hold meetings at their own desks. Up to 20 people can 'meet' via webcams, as well as share documents and applications. The system, which is free to use, can be accessed by anyone working in SWan's member Universities. If you'd like to find out more, please contact the SWan office (020 8725 0259).

About Wimba. This collaborative tool has been licenced by SWan for 2007-2010 to support eLearning. It has three components: Wimba Create - an enhancement to Word, which makes it easy to create content for Moodle or Blackboard; Wimba Voice - allows recorded voice to be used in place of text in elearning content; Wimba Classroom - a desktop web conferencing tool designed for a teaching environment.