Support, collaboration and discussion in the Post-16 community

A large part of the current project is putting together a blended learning course on Moodle which will provide post-16 institutions in the UK with a means to deliver an' Introduction to Webinar Skills'.  Building a course which can be delivered by unknown people in different institutions is a challenge.  Are we being overly ambitious? 

However, as the course is nearly complete, we knew that we needed some help from potential users to make it as 'usable' as possible within the time and financial constraints of this small project so we asked for reviewers from the post-16 community via e-mail lists; ILT Champions and the Association of Learning Technologists.  We were overwhelmed by offers from both groups and so grateful that people were willing to freely give their time to review our course and offer us helpful feedback.

This is a public thank you to those who replied and given us the opportunity to make the course as good as it can be.  We are realistic and of course, anyone downloading the course (eventually) can customise it to suit their institution and group.  The lesson for us is that the community of interested practitioners is a strong one and supportive with it.   The reviewers, and the participants at the ALT-C 2014 conference mentioned in a previous post,who have discussed the options and issues with us on course design and content have been very valuable.

Thank you.

Post by: Ellen Lessner, Project Lead

FELTAG Report and funding cuts

Having presented during the FE strand at ALT-C 2013 when the FELTAG open consultation session was run we were eager to read the Report that was published last Monday. FELTAG is the Further Education Learning Technology Action Group, convened by Minister of State for Skills and Enterprise, Matthew Hancock at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

Obviously a report that discusses the future use of technology in FE is highly relevant to our project. The timing of this report and the announcement that the government is cutting funding to ‘low value’ courses will allow us to reflect on both of these points whilst shaping the webinar employability course that we are designing for L2 and L3 students.

The aim of our course will be to teach a technology skill; the setting up and running of a webinar. We feel that the hard and soft skills needed to do this will help students be more successful in looking for employment both now and in the future. Our goal is to find a way to make the course fundable by validating the delivery through an awarding body accepted in the post-16 community. As the FELTAG report suggests, a proportion of the course will be delivered online and we are looking at putting the assessment online as well.

FELTAG recommends that “the funding system must fully support the adoption of new digital technology and learning methods….” (p. 23). This short course should tie in nicely with many of the recommendations for funding. We will keep you posted on how we get on.

A Conference Call in Real Life

Below is a funny video about conference calls, which highlights how difficult and confusing these types of meetings can be!

 

Many of these experiences are the same in webinars.

In fact during one recent webinar presentation, I found that I had dropped out of the webinar mid presentation! Luckily I was co-presenting with Ellen and she stepped in whilst I logged myself back into the session.

We are back - our extension bid was successful!

In January 2014, we received the good news that we had been successful in our bid for an extension of our original project via the Jisc FE and Skills Development and Resources Programme – Embedding Activity. We will be back blogging regularly about our activities, outputs and achievements over the next months.

The project officially starts again on Monday 3rd March so look out for more posts about our project aims and plans!

Prezi presentation from ALT-C

Below is the Prezi that Ellen and I presented during Nigel Ecclesfield's session 'A year of activity and innovation in the FE and Skills Sector: looking back to tomorrow' at the ALT-C conference.

Research in Further Education - Slides from our presentation at ALT C 2013

Research in Further Education - Presentation for ALT C 2013 from lessner