Week One: Enrolment process heating up

Well here we are at the end of the first real week of the new CantaNet cluster

It’s been a busy week with enrolments coming thick and fast, both from within  and outside the cluster. One of the big changes this year is expectation that schools will enrol students themselves. The new vln site allow this which is great. With nineteen schools and twentyone courses it is simply not realistic for me to do everything for schools (as has happened in the past). While this might create a certain amount of angst amongst some of our eDeans, it is very good in the long term. By cutting out the middle man and making schools more involved in the enrolment process we develop a cluster in which schools are more self sufficient. I don’t believe the reliance on a lone figure to do all this is the way forward for our cluster. Leadership has to become more distributed, with all schools taking some ownership of the process. It means I tend to oversee and guide what is happening and in the long run, will allow the Director of eLearning to focus more of his/her time on the learning. Which is what it is all about in the end.

It has been interesting to see how the eDeans have coped with the VLN site. While Trevor and I have created a lot of help resources for them, some have still really struggled. We needed to give some hands on training at the end of last year, but we just simply ran out of time. I have done enrolling for some schools, where they were very stuck and I have also given a fair amount of support to those eDeans who were giving it a go. The work now will pay off then end of this and the beginning of next year. The site itself is nice and has some great features, but like any new sites in development it is a bit glitchy. There are probably a few too many clicks to get to where you want to be sometimes. I’m sure things will become more streamlined as time goes by.

Also picking up on some subtle differences between the two original clusters (now merged of course). While not significant it has highlighted the need for all our principals to have a good sit down and discussion about things. I will be distributing a new policies and procedures manual Monday and this will highlight some of the issues that need to be resolved. As I said, nothing major, but still things to be worked on. Which is to be expected in an amalgamation like this.