Developing the staff

The reputation of a university depends largely on its ability to recruit and retain qualified staff. A British university has implemented software from Docent to help meet its staff training and development needs.

The University of Sheffield has selected Docent's Learning Management System (LMS) to deliver online learning, manage the registration and attendance records for instructor-led training and track the use of development resources such as books and videos.

The software will power the university's Staff Training, Development Recording and Administration System, which has received funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England through an initiative for "rewarding and developing staff in higher education." The system will be available to the university's 5,400 academic and support staff.

"We want to encourage our staff to take a more individual approach to learning," says John Behagg, deputy director of human resource management with the university. "The Docent LMS will enable individuals to keep a personal development record and will facilitate learning any time, anywhere, which is essential to our multisite organization.

"We are also having to become increasingly accountable for the training and resources we offer to our staff, and the ability to keep precise training records at a managerial level is essential. We needed a technology that had the scope to offer the fully integrated staff development, recording and administration system we required."

The LMS is being integrated with the university existing Oracle- HR system. Online content, currently dispersed across various existing learning systems, will be centralized on the LMS. The project will pull together the HR department's data and resources to streamline its activities to extend the staff development program