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!

Happy New Year - 1 month of blogging

Having started the project blog at the end of November, now seems like the the ideal time to write a quick update about the blog, with the New Year only hours away.
To date we have had over 300 views with visitors from around the world following our progress.

Currently our most popular post is 'Infographic of baseline data on webinars' which has some great stats about students use of and access to technology and their knowledge (or lack of) about webinars, if you haven't seen it why not check it out!

Post by Emma Procter-Legg
Students4WebES Project Manager

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