A busy time...

As a project we received some really good news over the weekend. A paper we submitted has been accepted, a part from some edits we need to make from the reviewers comments. Of course when the paper is officially published I will provide the citation for it.

However, this news has impacted my already busy week some. I need to turn the edits around quickly. As on Wednesday I am in Oxford at a Netskills workshop, then Thursday and Friday I am at the ACED Conference. Both are representing the project. The Netskills workshop should be fun, I will be getting the participants to create a poster on a given topic and then mark themselves and their team mates using the WebPA tool. We will not be comparing different peer moderated marking techniques as we don't really have time in 1 hour.

Thursday and Friday, are very different though. I only have 20 minutes to provide an over view of WebPA. This time thought the focus is quite particular, civil engineering. So I will be providing two case studies, where WebPA is used at Loughborough. I am currently not aware of any other institution using WebPA in civil engineering, though it would be nice to compare.

Next week will also prove to be busy and interesting. At the moment I am attending another Netskills workshop but this time in Newcastle. Following this I am going to take some time out, but only if the paper has been submitted.

Landing on our feet again...

Next week will see the annual CAA (Computer Aided Assessment) Conference at Loughborough. Back in February when they where asking for abstracts, I did think of writing a paper and submitting. But then there where more pressing things staring me in the face, including all the work for the project and the IMS Learning Impact Awards. As a result the time to sit and write an abstract escaped.

Since the dark days of February, I never really thought much more about the CAA Conference until towards the end of May when some one mentioned that they might see me there. A general assumption that I would be attending as it is at Loughborough. But again this was soon forgotten.

However, everything changed on Tuesday this week. After a meeting related to another forth coming conference (Engineering Education 2008, again at Loughborough) it was mentioned to see if we could get our posh banners up during the CAA. Following this I duely emailed those organising the CAA, to receive the response of;

... as it happens we have a free slot in the programme on Wednesday at 11.30 a.m. if you'd like to present a demo, also we'd be happy to distribute your publicity material to the delegates.

Well I'm not one for turning offers like this down. So we have jumped in both feet first. This has resulted in an increase in work for a couple of days and I have to pull together a presentation for 45 minutes, but hey we have more than enough expertess and information on this project not to be able to do this. Also those at the CAA conference are also part of our community, well not directly the WebPA community, but the wider assessment community so it will be good for us to be there.