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.