Laurels

Right. Back in the land of the living.

It's great having a blog, I feel very cutting-edge, but they tend to fall into disrepair very quickly if left unattended, as this has been for a while now. Two large projects, and a growing series of smaller ones, have prevented me -- or rather, I have let them prevent me -- from updating this blog with what's current and underway with Registry, with my half at least.

First we had a(nother) HEFCE audit, swiftly followed by a year end Exam Board. The former involved a lot of running around with various lists making sure all the records in our central student database match with reality, as experienced by module tutors and students and the like, whilst the latter involved a lot of running around with various lists making sure all the records in our central student database match with reality, as experienced by module tutors and students and the like. Another way of looking at it would be to say the former checks the data that becomes the information that becomes the money, and the latter checks the data that becomes the information that becomes the awards. Both equally important, both dependent on the other. Either way, both were dealt with very successfully, thanks to the great work put in by the team.

But sadly there's no time to rest on our laurels (do any of us ever get the chance to do that?), as we're straight into the next set of projects: publication of results, enrolment, graduation, module evaluation, collaborative provision processing, HESA etc etc etc.

Registry join in too

Corporate Systems Board -- a termly meeting of Exec and others charged with developing and implementing the University's information strategies -- were impressed when it last met that one of its papers was a blog post. elearning-ysju.blogspot.com is the address for the 'e-Learning @ York St John University' blog, "an informal place where the department will post information about what we're currently doing, advances in technologies, web 2.0, useful website links and general issues affecting the world of e-Learning and learning technology." (There's more about e-Learning at York St John on their website.)

We all thought it was a great idea, so I've set this Registry blog up to see if it can help things from our side too. As Mark describes in his blog, "Lots of people have heard of weblogs or blogs, but many are unsure of what they are or how they are used. This is a blog - a website where we can send messages which are posted in reverse chronological order, to which people can comment upon. Blogs can be on a variety of topics, a single topic or just a stream of consciousness, with the main aim of letting the world know what the blogger thinks and feels."

I suppose I should have a disclaimer at the foot of every page along the lines of "the views expressed here are those of the individual and not necessarily those of the University" blah blah blah. Anyway, I've made a start, let's see if I can keep this up.