Case study Organisation: North Yorkshire County Council Type of provider: Adult and Community Learning Focus on: Technology
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Background
Use of technology
North Yorkshire County Council Adult Learning Service is an adult and community learning provider which welcomes over 18,000 enrolments each year to more than 2,000 courses at over 200 venues across the county. There is a vast range of courses on offer, from learning for leisure, to specialised and individually tailored business training courses. The county is divided into seven learning areas and Ann Featherstone heads up adult learning in the Selby area. As well as providing adult and community learning courses, the centre in Selby also provides FE courses where daytime, evening and weekend courses are on offer to the general public.
For the purpose of this case study, Ann focussed on a specific learner group at Selby and Thirsk currently using a range of technology, which is the two 7303 Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector (PTLLS) City and Guilds certificated course groups, although use of technology by the organisation as a whole was also discussed.
Ann has 15 years experience of working in adult learning services and for the last five years her work has focussed on staff development. Ann took part in the e-guides training programme run by the National Institute for Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) to help her cascade training on to other tutors. Ann is also a trainer on the e-guides programme delivered by NIACE. Ann has developed her ICT skills within her job and subsequently from attending the e-guides training course. More recently Ann has become an e-guide trainer, which means she constantly has to update her own skills to then pass this knowledge on. She feels that her ICT skills have developed very much through her own enthusiasm for the subject: “I am constantly on the lookout for new ideas to pass down to learners.”
The majority of the course is delivered in the classroom but because of the large geographical area covered, it is often difficult to get all learners and tutors together at the same time. Therefore learners are encouraged to use portfolios via the Moodle (Moodle is a free and open source web based e-learning software platform) website. All learners have an individual portfolio on Moodle with a password so that no one else can see what they’re doing except for Ann, the other tutors and the internal verifiers. Ann and her head of service attended the senior management training offered by NIACE about five years ago and found this together with the e-guides training has been successful for their organisation.
Ann has cascaded the knowledge and skills she gained during her e-guides training to other staff within the service. She is leading by best practice and is currently focussing on getting Moodle and e-learning very strongly embedded into other courses within other curriculum areas.
The main mechanisms in place within the organisation to monitor, and ensure staff are competent and confident in using technology, is through observations of teaching and learning and the sharing of best practice.
Impact/key lessons
“If anyone needed assistive technology, such as a large screen or special keyboard, we try and identify that before the class starts, for example at the time of enrolment.”
Organisation – the adult learning service’s management has very much supported the use of e-learning. Work on an e-learning strategy was started five years ago with implementation beginning four years ago. A working group put the e-learning strategy together and has been constantly updating it. A lot of time has been spent on e-learning training which many of staff have undertaken. The adult learning service also has a staff intranet where resources are uploaded for tutors to use and share. Any training being offered is also advertised on the intranet. As the service covers seven large geographic areas, it is not cost effective to provide e-learning training in each separate area. Instead when one area offers a training course, tutors from other areas are invited to attend. The service uses e-guides to cascade e-learning as their information and learning technology (ILT) champions. A couple of years ago, the focus was on cascading e-learning training across the organisation into curriculum areas. This has proved very successful and there are now a number of curriculum managers trained in e-learning, for example, the languages curriculum manager and the sports, leisure and recreation curriculum manager. All curriculum managers have taken part in the e-guides training and now cascade their knowledge and skills to their particular curriculum areas. Some of the training that they have offered their own staff has been in the use of interactive whiteboards, digital cameras, laptops and using the tablet PC. Ann is finding that staff are responding to training and using technology in their teaching and learning. However, one of the major challenges is the lack of time to devote to training, especially for part-time tutors: “Some of our tutors only work two or three hours a week and it’s not about bombarding them with loads of resources but making it fit for purpose. It’s about starting off slow, encouraging them and supporting them by saying, you can do it.” The e-learning training has had quite an impact on the organisation’s tutors and has helped them to improve their own confidence and competence in using technology in their teaching courses.
Assistive technology is made available by the service for those learners with particular needs:
7303 PTLLS course – learners, as well as the trainers on the teacher training course, are using resources such as PowerPoint, interactive whiteboards and are being encouraged to use the Moodle site. A couple of years ago before the Moodle site was initiated, two or three blogs were set up for learners to use so that they could understand the skills required to write a blog and see how useful it could be. Blogs are currently not being used on the course, as the course itself is only a short one and Ann does not want to overload learners by saying that they have to use a blog as well as Moodle. Moodle is now embedded as part of the 7303 course and is used throughout the teaching sessions. Learners are directed there to find lesson plans and handouts, which is especially useful for those learners who cannot attend a particular face to face session. Having the course on Moodle means that it can easily be tweaked and repurposed for subsequent deliveries of the 7303 course. Trainers on the 7303 course have not encountered any resistance from learners: “We invite learners to create an e-portfolio and no one to date has said that they don’t want to do it. We always say at the beginning, give it a go. It’s all about giving learners the support and confidence to use it.”
Future plans Future plans for technological development within the organisation all depend on budgets. Ann is confident that the service will continue to use a learning platform, such as Moodle. In an ideal world Ann would love to see everyone have access to laptops with Internet on them so that: “they are able to use them anywhere, anyplace, any time without having to have a dongle or log onto a network, but have the ability to switch the laptop on and get straight onto the internet.”
RW09/09/CS014
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