Abstract accepted for the 2014 ALT Conference

Back in March, we submitted an abstract to present at this year's ALT Conference. We are really pleased to say that our abstract has been accepted and we will be presenting at this year's conference.

The 21st annual conference held by ALT (the Association for Learning Technology) will run from Monday 1st to Wednesday 3rd September 2014 in Warwick. The conference theme is "Riding Giants: How to innovate and educate ahead of the wave".

Cakes from last year's 20th ALT Conference

Below is a brief overview of our proposed session:

As we ride through (another) period of educational change, participants will have an opportunity to discuss and reflect on individual, sector and institutional positions of useful employment skills delivered within an educational setting.

Activities:

• Introduction to the project ('Students for Webinar Employability Skills: Students4Webes) background

• Demonstration of our pilot Moodle course 'Webinar skills for the 21st Century

• Key lessons learned about designing a blended course as an OER and supporting the staff who deliver it

• Discussion: How do we support staff who deliver a blended course they haven't designed? How to best assess a blended Level 3 course?

• Conclusion with Q and A

We are looking forward to presenting and hope to see you there!

The early bird conference rate is available until the 14th July, click here to find out more.

Help wanted! Webinar Skills Course Design Consultation

Last week, we attended the Jisc Learning and Teaching Practice Experts Group meeting in Bristol.

Ellen Lessner and I were invited to present as part of a session on projects from the Jisc FE and Skills Development and Resources Programme - Embedding Benefits strand. We used the opportunity to present our draft Webinar Skills Course and to gather feedback about the design and usability of it.

Draft Webinar Skills Course

We ran our session: 'Help wanted!  Webinar Skills Course Design Consultation' twice and received some really helpful and insightful feedback from the participants. Below are a number of initial changes we are planning on implementing in response to the feedback:

1. Produce a screencast showing how to navigate the course.
2. Merge the 'Resource' section into the other sections.
3. Highlight the importance of group work.
4. Include screenshots showing the 'tutor view' of each section and the 'student view' (the course is built in Moodle with some resources and sections hidden from student view).
5. Display brief instructions on how each resource/activity can be used.

We would like to thank all the participants who attended our session. We greatly appreciate all the help and feedback you have given us.

Emma Procter-Legg

Project Manager

Background Information - The Professional Futures Programme

About the Professional Futures Programme at Abingdon and Witney College

The Professional Futures Programme is a unique and innovative ‘Vocational Baccalaureate’ spanning all levels of the full-time curriculum at Abingdon and Witney College.

The programme is designed to foster entrepreneurialism, enterprise and work-ready skills, knowledge and understanding in learners through ‘live’ assignments and cross-curricular collaboration which reflects real-world, employer-driven demands.

‘Futures’ graduates will have more highly developed team working skills, be better prepared for their chosen careers and more employable than those students who have just completed an off-the-shelf vocational qualification.

The ‘added value’ of the futures programme will create ‘graduate attributes’ that are in line with key Government agendas to widen access to HE and to support economic growth through skills and training across industry sectors.

Fiona Morey, Assistant Principal (Curriculum) says: "We know that in these competitive times young people need to stand out from the rest when applying for jobs or university, and our innovative Professional Futures Programme is designed to ensure that they do just that."

The Programme has been very successfully piloted on our Abingdon Campus this year, and is being rolled out to all students based on the Witney Campus for the 2012/13 academic year.

As part of the Programme students will have the opportunity to gain hands-on work experience, learn to run their own business, get involved in community initiatives and build impressive curriculum vitae.

Skills Minister, John Hayes says: "By equipping young people with practical skills and workplace knowledge, Abingdon & Witney College are helping them on the path to rewarding careers in their chosen field."

From: www.abingdon-witney.ac.uk

First batch of letters are in the post!

As part of the Students4webES project, the core group of students have been compiling a list of employers that they would like to run webinars with. As the project is about employability skills, we tasked them with drafting a letter, initially written by one student and then reviewed by the rest of the core group. After a few tweaks here and there by the Project Manager and Project Lead, the first batch of letters were dropped in the post today.
The bulk of the letters will be sent out in early January, followed by phone calls to arrange dates for the webinars which will take place during January and February. We will keep you posted on our progress!

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 

Just getting started...

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Having started our project just over a month ago, on the 15^th October, we have recently recruited a volunteer group of students to work with us on our JISC Advance project – Students4WebES – here at Abingdon & Witney College. Our project is about Webinars and Employability skills and involves Level 3 students.

Our first session with the volunteer students and staff involved in the project, luckily coincided with the JISC online conference – Innovating e-Learning 2012: Shaping the future - which was so helpful when trying to explain what a webinar is and why they are becoming so popular.

We logged into a live session at the conference and briefly discussed what was happening and watched for a short period of time.  This made it so easy for the staff and students to gain a very quick overview of a webinar before attending one of the 3 introductory sessions being run on webinars for all the 2^nd year Level 3 students on our Professional Futures Programme. 

Post by Emma Procter-Legg
Students4WebES Project Manager