New term and student numbers

The CEP team have been working hard to prepare the learning environment, course materials and supporting documentation for new students, and they have made a good start to their studies. The new Moodle learning environment is standing up well to the large influx of students- the following students are currently registered for course units:

IS01 Well-being Island
8 students at NSPC, UK
25 students at University of Sheffield, UK
22 students at University of Leuven, Belgium
25 students at University of Masaryk, Czech Republic

IS04 Therapy Island
19 students at University of Sheffield, UK
11 students at University of Masaryk, Czech Republic

So we have a total of 110 students currently studying on the units, with some more Sheffield students due to start a new IS08 Research Methods module in the next weeks, and the students at the University of Bordeaux, France, due to commence in January 2010.

Monitoring call and start of term

Chris Blackmore had a monitoring telephone call today with Helen Metcalfe of ECOTEC to discuss progress on the project. It was useful to be reminded of the action points from July's partner meeting and to receive advice on how to progress on various issues.

The NSPC students have begun this week, although the process of getting students registered for their courses has taken longer than usual. Students in Leuven and Sheffield are due to start this coming Monday, 28th September 2009.

YouTube

We now have a YouTube channel and there are several videos online of interviews (in English) with project staff and a dialogue (in Flemish/Dutch) between project partners Mia Leijssen and Emmy van Deurzen, recorded at the University of Sheffield in July 2009.

Research Associates' meeting in Leuven, Belgium

The CEP Research Associates- Susan Iacovou, Jean-Marc Alexandre, Claude Missiaen and Chris
Blackmore- met in Leuven, Belgium on 31st August, along with the Belgian partner, Mia Leijssen. It was a very useful day, going over the administrative requirements of the project and exploring together how Moodle will be used in each partner country to deliver the SEPTIMUS course materials to students. It was also a great opportunity to get to know one another better and to explore the lovely city of Leuven.

Bordeaux meeting

Digby and Emmy met with the French team in Bordeaux in July, including Marc Auriacombe, Gregory Michel, the new Research Associate Jean-Marc Alexandre and the tutor Melina Fatseas. It was excellent to meet with new colleagues, and also very helpful to have an update on recruitment in Bordeaux and their preparations for teaching students in January 2010.

New media

As well as our CEP Twitter account and CEP Facebook group, we have set up a CEP YouTube channel for posting up interesting video content online. There is nothing there just yet, but in due course, we will edit some of the interviews from the Sheffield partner meeting and post them online.

A student's experience of e-learning

Unbeknownst to us, Karen Gunn, a student on the MSc in Psychotherapy Studies in Sheffield (although based in Belgium!) has posted an article to an online magazine published by the University on the topic of "Inquiry-based learning". Click here to view the article.

First partner meeting

The first CEP partner meeting was held on Friday 17th July in Sheffield. Mia and Claude from Leuven and Marc from Bordeaux arrived the night before, and we enjoyed a lovely meal at the "Plough Inn" in a rather rainy Hathersage along with Emmy, Susan, Digby and Chris.

The next day in ScHARR, Digby led the meeting and discussed the various work packages which partners are committed to providing. We were also able to do some interviews with project staff using a camcorder which will be edited and put online, both here and via other related webpages, to aid in the dissemination of the CEP project.

It was excellent to all come together in one place to meet for the first time, and everyone agreed that it was very useful in mapping out the work which we will be doing together over the coming months.

ECOTEC monitoring visit

Today we had a visit by Helen Metcalfe, the CEP project officer from ECOTEC in Birmingham. Digby and Chris discussed progress on the project in the morning, and showed Helen the work already undertaken on the Moodle site, available via Dilemma training

Helen phoned Emmy at lunchtime to ask her some questions about Dilemma's work. In the afternoon, she met with Steve Preston from the finance department in ScHARR.

Helen reported that the visit had been very helpful in outlining the aims and objectives of the project, ahead of the first partner meeting on July 17th 2009.

CEP Researchers

The CEP project is very pleased to welcome two new staff- Claude Missiaen, the Researcher for the University of Leuven, and Susan Iacovou, the Researcher for Dilemma Consultancy (shown in the photograph). Both will be attending the forthcoming partner meeting in Sheffield on Friday 17th July. We await news about how recruitment has been going for the Bordeaux partner.

Partner meeting in Bordeaux, France

On Saturday 14th March, Digby and Emmy travelled to France to meet with our French partners Jack Doron, Marc Auriacombe and Gregory Michel at the University of Bordeaux.

Digby and Emmy gave a powerpoint presentation about the previous grants we had worked on in the UK, and found out more about the considerable experience in European projects of our French colleagues. Digby demonstrated the work already undertaken on the Moodle pages. The meeting also covered the following issues:

• the translation that the French partners will undertake
• research outcomes about E-learning in psychotherapy
• the expertise in internet-based learning in France
• the different ways of defining psychotherapy in different countries, specifically France and the UK
• French and English language issues
• the ongoing work the English department (which is part of the School that Jack Doron is Dean of)
• the best way of teaching the teachers (a training package will be made available for the visit to Sheffield of all partners)
• the appointment in France of a research assistant and admin support
• recruitment of students for the new course in October 2009, including ideas on which student groups might be targeted (e.g. clinical psychology students, psychiatrists in training and established therapists)
• the aim of recruiting 30+ students over the lifetime of the project
• ways of recording any dissemination activities such as talks, papers or other CEP related activities- the blog was demonstrated and agreement reached to set up a Facebook group
• issues aound Accreditation or Prior Learning- the French already do this in the form of VAE: Validation d'acquis experientielle
• the need for partners to have clear instructions on the tasks they need to do and the dates by which to do them
• evaluation forms, which Chris will design and circulate for translation

The partners enjoyed a very nice lunch together, and at the end of the meeting, it was proposed that partners will meet in Sheffield on 3rd and 4th July 2009 (to be confirmed).

Content management system

On February 4th 2009, Chris met with a colleague from the Learning and Teaching Services at the University of Sheffield to discuss Moodle, the Content Management System that the CEP project is using. Chris' colleague informed him that in 2010, the University is going to review its current Learning Environment, called MOLE (which is based on WebCT, now run by Blackboard), and it is very likely to either update to the latest version of Blackboard, which operates as a portal, or to switch over to Moodle.

This is great news for the CEP project, as either of these outcomes will vindicate the choice of Moodle as the preferred CMS. If the University of Sheffield opts for the new version of Blackboard, it should be possible to add in course modules either via feeds to the front page, or to formally port the Moodle materials across into MOLE (so long as SCORM compatability issues are observed). If the University opts for using Moodle, it should be even easier to link the newly developed Moodle learning materials into the University's new Moodle system.

Partner meeeting in Leuven, Belgium

Emmy (Dilemma Partner) and Digby (Sheffield Co-ordinator) spent a day with our new colleagues (Mia Leijssen and Mathias Dekeyser) recently in Leuven discussing our new partnership in CEP. It was a special day in many ways. It was our first visit to Leuven, the seat of the oldest University in the Low Countries. Leuven itself—only about 10 miles from Brussels—was badly damaged in the first world war, but many of the mediaeval buildings in the city centre and some of the oldest University buildings have been rebuilt. The loss of these buildings was so much deprecated that the rebuilding was a specific requirement of the German peace deal negotiated at Versailles. Parts of the old church, much of the University, and a wonderfully atmospheric beguinage are all original. So walking around the city is like revisiting the middle ages but with the advantage of good sanitation, mobile phones, and a lack of crime and overt medical pathology. We happened, too, to come when there was a Kerstfeest, a Christmas fare at which serious drinking (genever, beer, and mulled wine) and serious eating were both being done. Great! On the subject of beer, it should be noted that Leuven’s first brewery was already a big success in the 14th. century but its most famous owner was a Mr. Artois whose family much later developed the barley Pils ‘Stella’ Artois. The Horn brewery is now the European headquarters of the world’s biggest brewer, a conglomerate based in Brazil. If this sounds to the English reader like industrial beer, the Flemish love of beer and the continued involvement of monasteries in its brewing means that great brews, including what the Americans would call micro-brews, are still plentiful.

Our gracious hosts took us on a tour of the University, founded as a Catholic University in 1425 by Pope Martin V. Erasmus was an early star on the faculty, having come there from one of my current Universities, the University of Cambridge. The University was closed down in 1797 when Leuven was in the territories annexed to France but reopened at Mechelen in 1834, moving back shortly after to Leuven. The University hived off its French speaking part, L’Université catholique de Louvain, to buildings in the Louvain new town in 1968, and so the University we were visiting, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, was entirely Dutch, and increasingly, English speaking. We were visiting the psychology department, but first we went just down the road to the philosophy department where we were allowed to wander in to the senior common room, and admire the baroque architecture. To Emmy’s great joy, we were also able to visit the Husserl archives, smuggled here during the Nazi era to preserve them. The staff of the archives very kindly interrupted their lunch to give us access.

But all of this was secondary to the main purpose of the visit, which was to begin our new partnership in CEP. Mia is a professor of psychology and the director of teaching and learning for her faculty. So she is in a strong position to implement new courses, and once she saw the potential of our materials proved to be keen to do so. Mathias, our likely other collaborator, had spent some time looking at the Moodle site already and had a well organized list of ways that he could assist in developing the CEP project.

It was agreed that the course should remain in English for the purposes of teaching in Leuven. The University was keen to develop English language courses anyway; more students would be more comfortable being taught in English than in French; and both Mia and Mattias had excellent English themselves.

It was also agreed that a new course would be proposed within the Faculty to build on the learning materials, and that the best way forward would be to incorporate them into a taught Doctorate, a fairly new development within the University—as it is in UK Universities—but one that would fit well with the University’s teaching and learning strategy. Mia’s workload is already very high, partly as a consequence of senior posts that she holds in the University beyond her other teaching and administrative duties. Mathias, who is currently working as psychologist in the health service would be employed part-time on the grant and become the main point of contact with the other partners, and the person who would be furthering the project on a day to day basis.

Our meeting was greatly assisted by the state of the art audio-visual facilities in the meeting room were using, and we got through all of our business in an afternoon. We ended the formal part of the day, before visiting an authentic Flemish restaurant, with a mutual exchange of books—Emmy gave her latest to Mia, and Mia returned the compliment.