End of year blog

We thought that as it's nearing the end of 2006 and the beginning of the New Year we'd have a mini review of what we've acheived so far with our project. We met with staff in our Project Support Office yesterday so that got us thinking about certain aspects of our project.

Creation of RLOs vs. liaison
I think we both started off with the idea that the creation of the RLOs would be the most time consuming section of the project. However, we now realise that it's the liaison, advocacy and promotion which has taken up most of our time and is the aspect least in our control. Even when we used new software and came across technical barriers we managed to create our RLOs on time and to a basic specification.

The difficulty came when trying to get academics on board and stay on board. This was partly due to the time of year that we chose to begin our project. The autumn term is busy enough without project work but trying to juggle usign BRUM RLOs with delivery of their curriculum proved too much for some of our academics. We would recommend anybody attempting something similar spend the spring/summer term heavily promoting and getting staff on board and then by the time the new academic year starts RLOs can already be embedded.

External response
We were really surprised and pleased to receive some great responses to an email we posted on the LIS-INFOLITERACY mailing list. I'm drafting an email to send out to respondees with suggestions for future collaboration and the possibility of arranging a mini-conference/symposium at which we can all discuss RLO issues and future projects.

Project management network
Internally we also discussed the possibility of an annual meeting of all project managers within the university. We feel as if we're on a steep learning curve and that we've already learned so much that we'd like to pass on or share with others. It would be really useful to get together with other project managers to get ideas about what's worked and what hasn't in their projects.

Looking ahead
We've thoroughly enjoyed the project so far and we're now looking to 2007 with focus groups in January and an end of project report in February. However, we've had so many ideas for post-project actions that we know our involvement in RLOs and BRUM won't end when we hand in the project report.

We also look forward to continued inspiration from colleagues in the university and further afield. See you in 2007!