JISC Online Innovation Forum

Tomorrow (Friday 10th May) is the JISC Online Innovation Forum. We will be presenting during one of the sessions, talking about the role of web conferencing to boost employability.  Myself and three students involved in the project will be presenting. To find out more about the event and details on how to log into the forum click on the link below.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2013/05/rscinnovationforum.aspx

We will be in the Green Room presenting from 1:00pm, hope to see you there!

Post by:
Emma Procter-Legg
Project Manager

Science & Technology Facilities Council webinar

Just over a week ago we completed our eighth student run webinar, with Rosie Sherry, from the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) at Harwell Campus. Below is a recording of the webinar, which was recorded on the Abingdon Campus of Abingdon & Witney College.

This is the final webinar we are going to produce and is an important outcome of the Students4webES project. We have now turned our attention to the other outcomes of the project, a student produced guide to webinars and a conference. Watch this space for more news on both of these very soon!

Wenn Townsend Webinar

Last Monday we held our seventh student run webinar with Lee Baker from Wenn Townsend Chartered Accountants. He spoke to a group of AAT Accountancy students from Abingdon & Witney college, via BlackBoard Collaborate, giving very helpful advice on applying for a position as an accountant.

Below is a recording of the webinar.

Morgan Cole Webinar

Andrew Leadbitter, from Morgan Cole solicitors, very kindly joined us at the Abingdon Campus to take part in our sixth student run webinar on employability skills.

Below is a recording of it, you will see as you watch it that we had to move Andrew to a different location in the room because of a problem with the blind and too much light. The students running the webinar were able to use the moderator chat window to inform Andrew of the problem before repositioning the computer.

Active Nation webinar

Dave Rolls, Centre Manager at the Whitehorse Leisure and Tennis Centre which is run by Active Nation, took part in our fifth student-run webinar.
This webinar was produced using Webex, our previous webinars have so far been recorded using BlackBoard Collaborate. For technical reasons, at short notice, we had to switch to using Webex to run the webinar.

The two students that ran the webinar had previously only been trained in using Blackboard Collaborate so it was a great test of their general understanding of webinars to run it using Webex for the first time. I hope you will agree that they did a great job!

NUS webinar

Last week Jesse Scharf, from the National Union of Students (NUS), spoke to students at Abingdon and Witney College via Blackboard Collaborate.

Jesse Scharf, Student Switch Off Project Officer, NUS

This webinar had an extra layer of complexity for both Jesse and the students involved, as it was the first time we had run a webinar where the guest speaker wasn't supported 'in person'. This meant the student moderators had to explain clearly how everything way going to work. Having completed the Waitrose webinar earlier that morning, all the students felt well prepared for the additional level of complexity. To find out more about the running of this webinar do check out our other blog post, by clicking here.

Do watch the webinar, we hope you will agree with us that it was a very successful event, thanks for watching!

Waitrose webinar

Last week Linda Phillips, HR manager at Waitrose Abingdon, participated in a webinar with students from Abingdon and Witney College.

Linda Phillips, HR manager, Waitrose Abingdon

Linda and her colleague Gen Allen visited the Abingdon campus to take part in the webinar and to meet staff and students involved in the project.

Gen Allen

Linda was supported by Ben during the webinar, one of three students involved in running the webinar.

To see more about the 'behind the scenes' running of this webinar check out our other blog post by clicking here and do watch the recording of the webinar below!

Two more webinars completed!

Today we completed another two webinars, the first with Waitrose and the second with the NUS (National Union of Students). This was the first time we had run sessions back to back, which worked very well giving the students involved a chance to try out the different roles involved in running a webinar.

During the Waitrose webinar Abi took the role of Moderator, uploading the presentation, starting and stopping the recording, as well as assigning participant privileges. She listened in via an iPad and ran the moderator settings via the computer because of last minute audio issues (the iPad app doesn't include moderator settings).

 

Aaron took the role of Speaker, welcoming the first guest presenter - Linda Phillips, HR manager at Waitrose Abingdon. He explained how the webinar would run, took questions from the audience and thanked Linda for her participation.

Ben took the role of Speaker during second session with guest presenter Jesse Scharf, from the NUS, whilst Aaron and Abi moderated.

All three students gave up the first day of their half term holiday to come in and run the webinars and did so with true professionalism!

Recordings of both webinars will be made available soon and will be posted here on the blog when they are ready.


Post by Emma Procter-Legg
Project Manager

Guest post: Ellen Lessner Students4webES Project Leader

Since it’s over half way through our project, I thought I’d spend a little bit of time reflecting on how it’s going. One thing that stands out is the difference between writing a bid and running a project. For those of you who have run projects, this won’t be a surprise. I thought I had enough experience to write a realistic bid but I hadn’t appreciated how much time it takes to coordinate the timetables of several diverse groups; students, employers, rooms, project managers and leaders. A 6 month project like ours needs to get going very quickly and if I was going to do it again, I would have extended the project timetable to take that into account.

We have had interest and support from a number of employers and we will have some good webinar recordings on employability skills to show for it. I realise that many employers don’t know what a webinar is, not just the 94% of our student sample! Some of the people we approached don’t have the ability to run the software on their work network nor do they have guest wifi access so that we could bring our laptop to them to record the session. We can overcome this by offering to host them at the college. Of course, some employers are using webinars regularly and they will have something to say to students that will be particularly useful. It does appear that having the skill to set up and run a webinar is as valuable (and rare) an employability skill to have on a CV as we thought when we put the project together.

I am pleased that our Professional Futures programme is now offering the ’Introduction to webinar’ session as part of the Core Tutorial programme for first year students. It gives all the students an opportunity to get ahead with their understanding of how useful the technology can be in their future. We should be able to train those who are interested in learning how to moderate a webinar session as well. Our JISC RSC SE (many thanks to Owen Hanmer) has put together such good training for us, that the recording of the ‘Introduction’ and the ‘Advanced’ sessions make it easy for us (Core Student group and staff) to teach others – when we have completed our employer webinars.

If you want to know how we did, keep 22 April free and look for information on this blog about the JISC RSC SE Employment Conference which will be held on our Witney Campus. The planning has begun and there will be a session with students, staff and maybe an employer, who have worked on this project reporting in.

Ellen Lessner
Project Leader, Students4WebES

A Tweet about our Project

We had a tweet from Donna Christopher, an e-learning marketing executive @ Blackboard Collaborate, see screenshot below!

We couldn't agree more!

Webinar booked in with Head Therapist at the Spa at Lygon Arms

We have just confirmed another employer for a webinar this week! On Thursday 7th February students will be running a webinar with Alice Walker, Head Therapist at the Spa at the Lygon Arms, Broadway (part of the Puma Hotel group), she will be talking to students about employability skills for beauty therapists.
We will keep you posted on how it goes!

Steering Group Meeting - On and Offline

On Monday we had our Steering Group meeting and with lots of snow still on the ground we went with a mixture of plan A and B. Those of us that were local and able to get to college easily met in the small meeting room at Abingdon and Witney College and those that weren't able to travel joined us online via Blackboard Collaborate.

Those that made it to the meeting in person got to enjoy a lovely selection of cakes made by Ellen Lessner (Project Leader) - they were delicious! 

The meeting room was set up with a computer, conference speaker phone, webcam, projector and an iPad plus a couple of phones just in case. You can never have too much technology available!

With the webcam set up Artie, Eddie and Nigel were able to see everyone in the meeting including three students from the core group who attended the first half of the meeting.

We made use of some of the features of Blackboard Collaborate including using it to show the project website and blog and used the tick feature to confirm that everyone could see it.


Post by Emma Procter-Legg
Students4WebES Project Manager

And the snow keeps falling!

Before the snow arrived on Friday morning we made a back up plan for our Project Steering Committee Meeting which is scheduled for tomorrow at Abingdon and Witney College. Our plan is that if people attending the meeting get snowed in, rather than letting our meeting be snowed off we will meet online instead in a webinar.

We have a Blackboard Collaborate session set up should we need to use it for some or all of the attendees - the agenda, project leader's report and project manager's report have all been sent out by email so we are fully ready for more snow! If we do have to go with plan B the only thing that will have to be put on ice is the cake - it might have to be a case of BYOC (Bring Your Own Cake) tomorrow!

View of my garden... and the snow keeps falling!


Post by Emma Procter-Legg
Students4WebES Project Manager

First webinar completed!

On Monday we successfully ran our first webinar with an employer. Head of Staff Services at Abingdon and Witney College, Kelly Boast, gave a short presentation and took questions from students via Blackboard Collaborate.

The session was introduced and moderated by students from the core group and Kelly was supported in her office by another student from the core group. This was the first time that the students had put into practice their knowledge gained from the advanced webinar training session.

Below is a recording of the webinar, this is a screen capture recording of it as we had an issue with the Blackboard Collaborate recording not capturing the slide transitions. We only had a couple of minor technical issues during the recording, one when students posed questions via a speaker phone which caused an echo, however this was quickly resolved. The second issue was again with the sound, but this time a voice was slightly muffled towards the end of the recording, this was due to the microphone on a headset slipping.

We think our first employability webinar was a great success, we learnt a number of important lessons and feel confident that the following ones will be equally successful too!


Post by Emma Procter-Legg
Students4WebES Project Manager

Advanced webinar training

During the last two weeks of term, we ran two sessions on advanced training on Webinars for the core students involved in the Students4webES project. The first session was run live with the presenter, Owen Hanmer from the JISC RSC SE in Kent, presenting to the group using Blackboard Collaborate. The session covered how to run a webinar via Collaborate including moderator settings and the chance for students to moderate a practice webinar. The whole session was recorded and used during the second session to train the other half of the core group. 

Students participating in the advanced webinar training session

All the students who attended the three hour training session received a certificate of participation. We are now ready to put our new knowledge into action and get started with our first webinar with an employer.... watch this space!

Post by Emma Procter-Legg
Students4WebES Project Manager

Introduction to Webinar sessions

There are many challenges to running a JISC project in a FE college. For one thing, it's difficult to find a common time for people to meet. Unlike a university, where many/most students can get transport back to their halls or flats fairly easily, our students are dependent on parents, friends, buses to get home and often work as well as study.

We are using Moodle, SMS and email to communicate and we have weekly meetings during a 45 minute lunch break.

The good news is that we have had 3 weeks of an Introduction to Webinars for L3 students in the second year of the Professional Futures programme. The presenter, Owen Hanmer from the JISC RSC SE, along with an 'employer', Phil Robinson, also from the RSC, were in Kent, presenting to 3 groups in 3 different rooms while I did the introduction and summary in a 4th room, using Blackboard Collaborate. This gave the students a demonstration of a webinar platform, its use as a skill that might increase employability and useful information on what an employer looks for when hiring new staff. That reduces the number of students who didn't know what a webinar was!

Post by Ellen Lessner
Students4WebES Project Lead