Case study Organisation: Derbyshire Adult Community Education Service Type of FE provider: Adult and Community Learning Focus on: Technology Background Derbyshire Adult Community Education Service (DACE) is the largest provider of part-time adult learning across Derbyshire, offering around 3,000 courses with over 33,000 enrolments across 15 sector subject areas. 60 per cent of enrolments are on accredited courses. Teaching takes place within 22 main centres and 150 outreach venues. The service employs around 600+ part-time tutors. Maureen Frazer began working part-time as a sessional IT tutor ten years ago, working for several organisations including FE colleges and adult community education. Parttime work evolved into a full-time lecturing post at South East Derbyshire College, where, in addition to teaching, Maureen became involved in the information and learning technology (ILT) champions project. She returned to teaching in adult education five years ago and was subsequently appointed to her current role as e-learning programme manager for DACE Service with the aim of moving e-learning forward. Maureen trained as an e-guide and is now in the first cohort of candidates on the e-CPD programme.
Use of technology Four years ago, DACE introduced Moodle (Moodle is a free and open source web based e-learning software platform) as the organisation’s online learning platform. As the administration and use of Moodle grew, it became apparent that there was a need for one person to manage and develop the site, hence the need for an e-learning programme manager.
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Moodle has a range of tools and add ons, not all of which suit all curriculum areas and Maureen works with tutors helping them select the tools to suit their particular courses. Examples that illustrate this are: • A history tutor recently used one of Maureen’s training session to solve issues around providing materials for students. By putting her course on Moodle, together with her handouts and links to related sites for research, she can offer her students one central electronic point where they have everything they need to complement their weekly class. • A yoga teacher has developed a small course on Moodle which includes labelled photos of yoga positions so that the class can go home and remind themselves of the poses, the language and the historic background via links to related websites. At least half of the class access the course and it has proved beneficial for these learners. Maureen is steadily seeing more and more tutors engage with e-learning: “It felt like chipping away at a brick wall to start with but now tutors are coming to me proactively and asking about Moodle courses.”
Staff continuing professional development
Benefits of using ICT
Continuing professional development (CPD) needs are identified using several methods:
Maureen identifies numerous benefits of ICT. For example:
• An annual area/curriculum training needs analysis
• It opens more doors for learners, which helps with diversity and meeting different needs
• During the observation of teaching and learning process • During the self-assessment process • During individual staff supervision and in probation interviews. In addition to training sessions being run for specific staff groups, general information, training and updates are also disseminated at the annual tutor conferences.
• It’s about providing a tool that helps us reach out to the people of Derbyshire • It keeps all staff up to date and enables them to share ideas • It facilitates communication when people are dispersed geographically across a wide area.
In relation to CPD, Maureen works closely with the curriculum group leaders and the staff development and quality improvement manager to assess and introduce new technology tools and software. For example, all tutors now have to be registered with the Institute for Learning (IfL) – it is a requirement for CPD – and one method is via the IfL software programme, Reflect. DACE consequently provided training sessions to demonstrate the benefits of using Reflect.
Key lessons
As an e-guide and a personal development adviser, Maureen is also well placed to offer support and unify approaches, as she explains:
• After the initial training, it is essential to keep going back and providing support and move learning onto the next stage.
“Taking part in the e-CPD programme has helped me within my job role to focus on a couple of achievable goals by looking at the organisations strategic plans, identifying development gaps and create an action plan to bridge these gaps, which will benefit the organisation and the individual staff members.” Staff have varying ICT skills, so Maureen stresses the importance of matching the training to the particular need and focusing on how each tutor can get the most from e-learning and Moodle: “Some of our tutors teach one two hour session a week, so they are understandably reluctant to commit a lot of their spare time to learning about and using new technologies. However, by disseminating information, and putting them in touch with solutions that are really going to make a difference for them and their learners’, progress is being made. There are so many possibilities within e-learning, for example, tutors can chat online with other practitioners and have discussion groups and forums with their students. A Spanish tutor in the north of the county, for instance, might find a useful piece of information which they do not have time to follow up on, they can post it on Moodle and a Spanish teacher in the south can benefit from it. It’s a brilliant way of sparking and developing new ideas.”
The key lessons from the Derbyshire experience is that: • Find ways to overcome staff reluctance to use technology. Getting staff to work in teams can help counter this. It also helps ensure that they don’t waste time ‘reinventing the wheel’ • Using a common email domain makes it simple to keep staff informed
Future plans • The development of an e-gems course (a central point) on Moodle where tutors will be able to upload resources to Moodle and share ideas. There will be different sections according to curriculum area with links to good websites, new ideas, tools and techniques • The creation of an electronic Moodle newsletter to keep tutors up to speed with new ideas/developments, backed up by a paper-based version for those not able to view it online • Tweaking the staff development feedback form to include a section where staff can provide information on one gem (website/gadget/tool/software programme) that they thought was useful – this information can then be shared. Maureen sums up:
“Technology is fundamental to my working life and that of many other people. It allows people access to all kinds of information at different locations/times to suit the individual. I can’t imagine living without it now.” RW09/09/CS006
Contact Lifelong Learning UK 5th Floor St Andrew’s House 18-20 St Andrew Street London EC4A 3AY Ref: ACL/06 2009/03
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