Some former members of the Pineapple team were able to take part in a symposium entitles “extending opportunities for life-long learning in a digital age” at ALT C 2012. It seems that APEL is an area with which many institutions and subject areas continue to wrestle. The message we stressed was that APEL is just another form of assessment and that deciding on a clear role for APEL is fundamental. When it comes to actual implementation, understanding and dovetailing with existing processes and work flows is time consuming and challenging. Being able to refer back to the business case for its implementation in the first place can be a great help.
Prof Mark Stiles has just given a seminar on Staffordshire University’s experiences of developing the Pineapple Tool. The software has been adapted to manage their curriculum design processes bringing together the JISC funded Pineapple and Enable projects through Pineapple Benefits Realisation funding.
It was interesting to hear that the issues they encountered so closely mirrored those we found during our APEL mapping. I particularly liked Mark’s use of the phrase ‘people glue’ to describe how such processess are made to work by those who must implement them.
Mark Stone, Associate Dean of UPC faculty, attended a meeting to discuss Plymouth University’s APEL and APCL regulations this morning. Changes are now in process that build on the recommendations of the Pineapple Project.
This video provides a concise demonstration of how to create a simple process using the Pineapple tool created by the JISC funded Pineapple Project. The example process used is intentionally simple – doing an office tea run.
It demonstrates the simplicity and flexibility of the tool and its potential to be used for other purposes. This video is probably best viewed full screen.
The project has now finished but the work continues. You can find links to all of our outputs on the Project Deliverables tab at the top of this page and in the next week or so we will be linking to a video that explains the functioning of Pineapple.
If you have any questions or comments you can email us – details are on the Contact tab.
Well after a couple of months bringing everything together we are finally at the end of the project. The final and completion reports are just finished and will be submitted later today. You can view the final report here: http://hdl.handle.net/10293/1077
To celebrate we have a lovely PINEAPPLE cake made by mrs s last night
We’ve just made a version of the tool available for you to try.
It is worth noting the admin and process designer side of the tool isn’t part of this sandbox but we will have a version of the software available shortly if you wish to download and try all the functionality locally.
Have a play with the sandbox here using the usernames “test1″, “test2″ or “test3″ with the password “temp123″.
Neil, Anne and Rob were at the JISC Conference 2011 in Liverpool earlier this week. We presented a workshop discussing the project and the many issues we faced along the way. We were pleased to meet people keen to have a go with the tool and also pleased that the project was met with positive feedback.
