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Dissemination events

Now that our webinar project is drawing to a close, we are moving into the dissemination phase. We will be reporting on and sharing our experiences at a number of JISC events during the next few weeks.

The first event is the JISC RSC South East event 'Employability Skills and Technology: Improving Outcomes for Learners' on Monday 22nd April at the Witney Campus of Abingdon & Witney College. We will be presenting during the morning session and running a workshop in the afternoon session.

This is a free event, if you wish to join us, please click here to find out more details and to book your place. Please note booking for this event closes on Wednesday 17th April 2013.

The second event is the following day, Tuesday 23rd April, when we will be heading to Birmingham to be involved in the Learning and Teaching Practice Experts Group Meeting. We will be running a 30 minute session as part of the Members Showcase.

The third event is the JISC RSC South East Online Innovation Forum on Friday 10th May for further details about the session please click here.

Conference date and details

Students4webES Project will be taking part in and hosting the JISC RSC South East event 'Employability Skills and Technology: Improving Outcomes for Learners' on April 22nd at the Witney Campus of Abingdon & Witney College. Below is a brief overview of the event, as described on the JISC Advance website:

"Learning providers are increasingly being challenged to ensure that learners are equipped with a range of skills to prepare them for the world of work. This event will provide an opportunity to share ideas, solutions and best practice in the way technology can provide some innovative ways to develop employability skills." 


This is a free event, if you wish to join us, please click here to find out more details and to book your place.

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

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