Jisc Change Agent's Network Event

We are really pleased to be attending tomorrow's Jisc Change agent's network event in Birmingham. The event is held over two days and is a chance to hear about projects and meet people that are working on staff/student partnerships to improve innovation in curriculum.

The 2 day networking event showcases examples of change projects from across both the higher education and further education sectors. Our project will be represented on Wednesday 18th March in the session entitled "Market Place- showcasing student innovation".

If you are attending the event, we look forward to seeing you there!

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

Top tips for getting a job: 8 employers speak!

One of the aims of our Jisc embedding project was to build on the positive outcomes and outputs of our original webinar project and to highlight the key employability skills identified in webinars by the employers who took part.

Below is a short video that contains some top tips for applying for a job, CVs and participating in an interview. It would be a useful starter for a tutorial on CVs or interviews. The clips are taken from the original 8 student run webinars we recorded during our first phase of the project.

 

We hope you like the video, please do share and let us know if you have found it useful!

Designing a webinar course

We recently had our second course planning meeting with Owen Hanmer from Jisc. We met online via BlackBoard Collaborate, which was an ideal opportunity to review the functions and features available within the software.

Our aim is to create a Moodle course that contains all the resources, activities and assessment required to run the webinar course, as well as resources to support staff delivering it. By creating the course in Moodle it will enable a proportion of it to be delivered and assessed online. This aspect of the course design fits in with one of the recommendations from the recent FELTAG report (the Further Education Learning Technology Action Group). FELTAG recommends that courses include 'a 10% wholly-online component' (pg. 23), it goes onto recommend an increase in e-assessment and the use of 'open badges' to accredit digital skills.

We are currently reviewing the options for incorporating open badges into our course design as well as a certificate of completion. We will be posting further updates on our course development very soon, so watch this space!

Let the planning begin!

Earlier this week we were in London for a meeting with Owen Hanmer, from Jisc.  The purpose of the meeting was to start planning our course on learning to set up and run a webinar. Owen ran a number of training sessions on webinar skills during the original Students4webES project and was an obvious choice to help us in the planning of this course.

We arrived in London for our meeting and the first thing that struck me about the meeting room  was that it was all set up perfectly for webinars and teleconferencing.

In the middle of the room, suspended above the table was a microphone, perfectly placed for capturing everything being discussed and on one wall a set of screens and a video camera again perfectly arranged to capture the meeting and fully support 'virtual participation'.

Fuelled by a number of cups of coffee we managed to put together a draft outline of the course. It is clear that it will continue to evolve over the coming weeks, but it is great to have a first draft down on paper (well actually on a shared Google Doc)!

The course will be built as a downloadable Moodle course with resources and activities for a blended learning delivery. We estimate the course will be about 20 hours of learning, but this could well change once we start to investigate getting the course accredited for funding.

Next stop: another meeting, this time with a video editor to look at improving the webinar recordings and to produce a more polished version of the top tips student produced video.

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.

Student Produced Video

Students4WebES update, below is a student produced video about the key points on employability skills from the employers involved in our project.

Video produced by Ben Robb, a media student at Abingdon and Witney College in 2013. Although a bit rough, it shows that employers had similar ideas about what employers think are key employability skills.

Slides from Elesig 2013 webinar on Evolving Digital literacies: inductions to employment skills

Elesig 2013 webinar on Evolving Digital literacies: inductions to employment skills from lessner

ELESIG webinar: Evolving Digital Literacies – inductions to employment skills

We will be talking about the Students4webES Project on Thursday 20th June 2013 from 1-2 pm in an ELESIG webinar.

The webinar will be presented by Ellen Lessner and Emma Procter-Legg and will focus on our experiences of running 2 student centred projects in FE which aimed to have students shape the content and structure of the project. 

To find out more about ELESIG (Evaluation of Learners' Experiences of e-learning Special Interest Group) click here.

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.

Update on the Pizza Hut 140 second interview

A few posts back I wrote about Pizza Hut running 140 second interviews at a recruitment event to find a new social media director. My understanding was that they would then run a second round of interviews via Google Hangout to get to know the candidates a bit better, it turns out I was wrong.

They did run interviews via Google Hangout, but only for people who weren't able to make it to the face to face interviews held on the 10th March. These Google Hangout interviews took the same format as the original interviews - to sell yourself to the panel in 140 seconds! This really does require an additional level of skill, not only requiring a level of confidence that the technology is going to work, but the skills to set it up right. It is crucial that the audio levels are right so that your 140 second pitch can actually be heard!

During our webinar project, we found that although it might seem easier to run a webinar (or Skype, Google Hangout etc) without wearing a head set, using the built-in microphone and speakers, the audio does really suffer and often leads to people having to repeat themselves - if you only have 140 seconds your certainly don't have time to do that!

To read the article in full about the Google Hangout Interviews, click here.

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.

The Spa at the Lygon Arms Webinar

Alice Walker, Head Therapist at the Spa at the Lygon Arms, Broadway part of the Puma Hotel Group, participated in our second student run webinar. Alice took part in the webinar by logging onto a computer at the Witney campus of Abingdon & Witney College, whilst the students running it were at the Abingdon campus.  A group of beauty students and their lecturers from the college also participated in the webinar from another room, asking a number of questions via the chat window.

Alice Walker, Head Therapist at the Spa at the Lygon Arms

Abey took the role of speaker which involved introducing and thanking Alice for her participation in the webinar.

Whilst Armna took the role of moderator.

Although this was our second student run webinar it was the first time either student had been involved in running one with an employer.

Below is a recording of the webinar, which proved to be a great success not only for the core students running the webinar but also for the beauty students participating in it. The beauty students had so many questions to ask that we stopped the recording and allowed them to continue their conversation with Alice.

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!

Coverage on JACKfm radio station today!

The Students4webES project is being featured today (Thursday 7th February) on JACK fm in the Oxfordshire business reports. The report is aired every hour and rolls around three different stories so listen out at 11 to see if we feature then or in the next slot at 12 on 106JACKfm today!

Update: Students4webES project was mentioned at 12:04, so we expected it will be featured again around  3pm and then again around 6pm and 9pm tonight. Do listen out for it if you get a chance!