Case study Organisation: Swarthmore Centre Type of FE provider: Voluntary and Community Service Organisation Focus on: Technology
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Background
Use of technology
Kathy is an ICT manager at Swarthmore Education Centre, a voluntary and community service organisation in Leeds. The centre receives funding from a multiple of sources including further education, subcontracted work from adult and community learning and personal and community development learning (PCDL). It also offers leisure courses on a full cost recovery basis. The centre runs a range of accredited and non-accredited courses both in the centre itself, and in the local community. ICT is delivered in a range of formats including Computer Literacy and Information Technology (CLAIT) and European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) roll-onroll-off workshops. They also offer 30 week open college style programmes based on the ICT Skills for Life approach from entry level to level two. Units from other accredited programmes are also offered in response to learner demand, for example a level two OCR i-media unit in digital graphics. In addition there is a range of nonaccredited short courses on offer such as introductory courses in computing, working with digital images, use of the internet and email, desk top publishing, and ‘fun stuff online’ which includes collaborative applications like Facebook, Twitter and Messenger.
Kathy asked tutors at the centre about their use of technology in classes, and got the following responses:
Kathy started off doing a secretarial course after university, and went into teaching after having a family. She began by taking over her husband’s CLAIT evening classes to gain teaching practice. Gaining her ICT skills was initially driven by need, and developed via a mix of being self-taught, attending formal classes such as ECDL and taking option modules on a business degree course.
• Drumming tutor using a laptop to enable learners to hear rhythms and display images of other drumming circles • Life drawing tutor creating virtual exhibitions of learners’ work using an online photo album to produce virtual exhibitions. He supports other tutors to do the same thing • Jewellery tutor using digital photos to record progress, and putting them on the internet using an online photo album • Stained glass tutor using digital images with a ‘stained glass’ effect to show how designs might look • Pottery classes looking at designers, artists and techniques on the internet • An English class looking at a myths and legends website and writing their own stories as a group using the site’s storyboard tools
• Music and singing LLDD class using video clips, and a music-writing CD on a laptop • A practical life skills class using an interactive whiteboard, building the confidence of the learners and using a range of visual aids which makes learning more inclusive • Counselling classes using video to review their proficiency as counsellors • Creative writing class using the BBC scriptwriters’ forum to compare written scripts with the actual film footage. Kathy offers regular in-house staff training sessions to support e-learning, but the very part time nature of the delivery staff, and the difficulties in paying staff to attend, often result in low numbers participating. Tutors are paid on a sessional basis, so there are no full time information and learning technology (ILT) champions. Staff training is often a matter of people sharing their skills informally. Staff development has also taken place via a project worker funded by the NIACE TrEACL initiative. The project worker was contracted to support arts tutors. Skills for Life tutors were so enthusiastic about engaging with technology at the time that they asked to be included in the project, and the worker’s hours were increased to accommodate this. There is at present no formal mechanism for measuring the impact of technology – Kathy get’s feedback from people by simply asking them. She says: “At the moment I am more interested in making sure people are using the equipment, finding out what they are doing with it and encouraging them to share their skills with others. I need to find out who is not using it, and start a more structured way of measuring the impact, but what I don’t want to do is put people off when they are just getting used to using it.”
Impact/key lessons The tutors are very enthusiastic about the use of technology and Kathy feels it has improved their level of motivation, and with regard to the learners she says: “It has improved the learner experience because there is now a variety of visual aids, learning styles and approaches – it is very inclusive. People can get instant results from things such as videos and photos. Computers can also help to give a professional finish to learners’ work, which gives them pride in their work.”
free and open source web based e-learning software platform) known to more people so that community groups can have their own space. Kathy quoted a tutor teaching 14-19 year olds who said: “My students have very little focus and concentration, but there is eagerness in them when they research online. They are motivated and enthusiastic and it promotes all kinds of other skills such as the use of memory sticks to save work, processing photographs to use in their projects, and work undertaken on their laptop means that their weaknesses in spelling and grammar are not highlighted so this promotes a sense of pride in their work.”
Future plans In future Kathy hopes to see a greater use of the virtual learning environment (VLE), and the use of ICT for staff support, peer support, sharing resources, communication and building communities for part-time staff. She also believes that smaller gadgets should enable more flexibility in where and how technology can be used in learning, and that it will encourage more spontaneous use of ICT among tutors. The difficulty with this is that people are still quite wary of technology, not just because of the skills required, but also that it is notorious for going wrong when there is no technical support available to help. Kathy pointed out there is a serious need for access to effective and affordable technical support in the third sector, especially in smaller organisations.
“My students have very little focus and concentration, but there is eagerness in them when they research online.”
There is also an impact in the community due to the tutors who work with local organisations and their client groups, training them in IT and building up their IT capacity. There is a plan to get Moodle (Moodle is a RW05/09/CS015
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