the termly newsletter produced by RSC East Midlands
Volume 4 • Issue 3
Summer 2006
Welcome from the Editor I N S I D E This summer, the Regional Support Centre will complete six years of supporting e-learning in the East Midlands. Many things have changed in that time – many teachers have added e-learning to their toolkit; managers have a better awareness of the strategic and operational place of e-learning; there is much more kit and it is now largely reliable. Significantly, expectations have changed too. Learners expect to use e-learning. It enthuses them and meets their individual needs and learning styles.
This issue Welcome Leicester City Adult Skills and Learning Service Inspiring and practical support Joining the RSC team
A recent review for JISC asked staff in different learning providers about the impact they considered the RSCs had had on their organisation - and RSC East Midlands had the highest level of any RSC. Our annual Survey shows consistently good levels of customer satisfaction. However, we are not complacent; the task is by far from complete. The support needs are changing but still challenging.
New services from your RSC
What about the future? Our funding has been confirmed for another year and discussions are taking place about the next three year Round from 2007. What we do will certainly evolve, but the core services will also continue - and you can read examples of both in this newsletter.
New build in the East Midlands
You can see and celebrate the continuing development of e-learning in the East Midlands at our second annual e-fair on June 22nd. See you there!
Focus on: Broxtowe College- Simple technology that benefits tutors and students
Chris Hill, Manager
e-portfolios - did you know...? This could change your life The second annual e-fair
Forthcoming Events
Hints and tips: Learning and Skills Web is live
Leicester City Adult Skills and Learning Service Inspiring and practical support Elaine Jenkins celebrates “Inspiring and practical” support from the RSC. Contact us if you would like us to do it for you - free. Since January 2006, Leicester City Adult Skills and Learning Service with the support of RSC East Midlands has run four successful training sessions as part of their e-guide cascade training programme. The sessions were well attended by tutors from a variety of curriculum areas including ESOL, Basic Skills, ICT, Visual and Performing Arts, Modern Foreign Languages and Community Languages. The four sessions comprised: • two workshops on using Moodle and its features. • an ILT training/awareness session that consisted of 3 workshops: • Accessing and using NLN materials. • The use of data projectors and laptops (incorporating the use of wireless mice and keyboards) • Interactive Word (using sounds and images in Microsoft Word to create interactive learning materials).
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• a session showing how to create WebQuests using Microsoft Word. Sharon Hutchings, RSC Advisor for Adult and Community Learning, played a key role in the success of this training, supporting both the ILT leader and e-guides in the planning and delivery of the sessions. Sharon was also the keynote speaker at the ILT awareness training event. In the opening session, she grabbed the interest of the tutors with her examples of interactive learning materials and uses of ILT. The zeal and commitment Sharon provided throughout the delivery of these training sessions has enthused our tutors who are now using their newly acquired skills to develop learning resources that support differentiation and add fun and interactivity to their sessions. Feedback from tutors is very encouraging; they are very committed to developing their use of ILT and are requesting further training and support in this area. Tutors who attended the training sessions said: “Excellent training - enjoyed all the workshops!”
ICT tutors planning a WebQuest Activity “It will help me improve my teaching resources and class presentation. I am now able to design more materials to help with differentiation.” “Inspiring and practical.” “I will now create more innovative resources to make learning more interesting and fun.” “The training made me aware of all the free resources available and different ways of creating new resources and sharing them with other tutors.” Elaine Jenkins, Leicester City Adult Skills and Learning Service
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Joining the RSC Team
Ben Williams
Diane Gardiner
The RSC team has three new members – Ben Williams who is our new Advisor and Diane Gardiner and Mark Andrews who are on short term secondments to the RSC. Diane, from Leicester College, will be both updating our staff development needs analysis and piloting our proposed placement service whilst Mark, from Grantham College, will be developing our use of Moodle. Details of these developments are below. Here Ben introduces himself. Hello, my name’s Ben Williams. I joined the RSC team in early March this year and am currently standing in for my colleague, Rachael Pearson, while she’s off on maternity leave. My background is varied, ranging from aerospace research to clinical psychology, but I’ve spent the last 15 years exploring how technology can be used to support and enhance the learning process. This has involved a number of years researching advanced learning technologies in H.E. and, prior to my joining the RSC, four years in F.E. as an ILT co-ordinator and
Mark Andrews
teacher. This background has given me an acute awareness of the challenge of matching rapidly evolving technological opportunities to the real-world needs of educational practitioners and their learners. This challenge is at the heart of the work of the RSCs, so I’m pleased now to be part of the team. I’m currently focussing on two key areas, Specialist Colleges and HE in FE, and have spent my first month making initial visits to the relevant providers in the East Midlands. I’m also working on a number of events to be held over the coming weeks, including a collaboration with Foundation Degree Forward, and a workshop to help colleges interested in bidding for forthcoming JISC project funding. As a previous customer of the RSC, I have been very encouraged by the quality of the service provided and look forward to contributing to this over the coming year.
Ben Williams, Advisor
New Services from your RSC In the RSC we strive continually to find new ways of supporting your e-learning development. Here are some of the new things we are doing. 1. This term we are piloting a scheme to broker short-term placements for staff working in post-16 learning providers within the region. It is open to everyone with an e-learning element within their current role and provides the opportunity to gain directly by exchanging ideas and effective practice. Staff on placements experience at first hand what works - and doesn’t work – elsewhere. They return better informed, enthused and ready to improve their own practice. A learning provider hosting a placement will benefit from the skills, knowledge and perspective of their visitor. It raises their profile and enables others to benefit from their experience and effective practice. If the pilot is successful, we will introduce it as a regular service. 2. We have been able to sponsor delegates from our learning providers to national events so they can cascade what they have learned to the community. Gaynor Norsworthy from Chesterfield College attended the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Road Show and Marek Barc (Whitegates) and Paul Drage (Hoemfield) attended UKERNA Networkshop. 3. We are starting to use our Moodle learning platform to make sure events, such as the recent Learning Journey at West Notts College, are more than just a day out. We make reading and activities available beforehand and afterwards we run discussions to give the chance to explore the ideas met on the day. And rather than evaluate at the end of the day to find out whether the car parking was any good, we evaluate a few weeks later to see whether there has been any impact on practice. To find out more about these or any of our services, contact support@rsc-em.ac.uk
e-portfolios - did you know...? You probably do not know that, of all the UK regions, the East Midlands has the highest percentage of the population who own a mobile phone. You may however know that the East Midlands is at the forefront of e-portfolio development. On May 8th 2006, the RSC, together with NILTA, Nottingham University and CETIS are organising an event for the post 16 community to bring you up
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to date with what is happening and help your organisation to ask the right questions about e-Portfolio at the right time. There will be opportunities to see a live demonstration of the new Nottinghamshire Passportfolio system and to find out more about the new UCAS admissions process. Visit www.rsc-em.ac.uk for more information and to book
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This could change your life Potentially the JORUM repository could allow all FE and HE institutions to share resources. It has been a long time coming, but now it is open for business. You can find out more about JORUM at our e-fair Further and Higher Education institutions in the UK can now register for the Jorum User Service. Jorum User allows staff from registered institutions to search, browse, preview, download, review, reuse and repurpose resources in Jorum. This free online repository service hosts a range of learning and teaching resources, covering a variety of subject areas and educational levels.
on the JISC Collections Website: Service http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=coll_jorum. A Site Rep and a Technical Rep must also be nominated, providing a local point of contact for staff within the institution and for the Jorum Team. The Jorum Contributor Service, allowing institutions and projects to donate resources to Jorum, was launched in November 2005. Since then an initial collection of resources has been submitted, from over 20 institutions who have signed up. The current collection reflects the projects and institutions which have contributed material so far. There are a number of sizeable collections including engineering and ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Language).
JISC views Jorum as a long term venture and as the service develops, the type, breadth and subject coverage of resources available in Jorum will depend on contributions made by the community. Jorum’s success will be built on the support surrounding the service by the team, the long term view taken by JISC and the commitment and enthusiasm of both Contributors and Users.
The newly updated Jorum Website (www.jorum.ac.uk) has a comprehensive new section on Jorum User (www.jorum.ac.uk/user) offering support in registering and logging in, as well as a useful selection of support, training and promotional materials.
Institutions must register first before staff are able to gain access. Institutions can register free for the Jorum User
Susan Eales Programme Manager, Exchange for Learning
Second annual e-fair Plans are well advanced for the second annual East Midlands e-fair on June 22nd. The theme is “Learning as a social activity”. We invite you to come along and be inspired - find out what other people are doing, pick up ideas to use in your own setting, see what is available (often for free!) and get a glimpse into the future and how it can work. Keynote speakers are Professor Gilly Salmon and Terry Loane. There are at least fifteen separate sessions for you to choose between and an exhibition which currently has twenty seven stalls. Last year, nearly 150 people attended, so it is a really good opportunity to mingle with people from all over the region. If that is not enough, we are even planning a treasure hunt and prizes! The e-fair will be held at the University of Derby and admission is free. For more details and to book your place, visit our website.
New build in the East Midlands There is much new building taking place in colleges and ACL in the East Midlands and the RSC is working to support it. Our initial audit, although not yet complete, shows at least twenty one learning providers have projects being planned, in progress or recently completed. James Higham leads RSC support in this area. The projects vary considerably in terms of scale, time frames and costs, from complete new build projects involving the construction of entire new premises and facilities to the refurbishment of individual learning areas to cater for modern learning requirements. For the learning providers supported by the JISC East Midlands Regional Support Centre, the range of new build projects covers all supported sectors: FE, Sixth Form Colleges, Specialist Colleges, Adult and Community Learning and HE Colleges. The only variation across the academic sectors appears to concern the scale of projects undertaken. As a result of all of these new build projects, a large pool of knowledge and experience has become available across the
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East Midlands, concerning new build, and similar pools of knowledge and experience are being gathered across the rest of the UK as a whole. In order to encourage the sharing of new build best practice amongst the region’s learning providers, the JISC East Midlands Regional Support Centre is organising a new build event at the brand new location of Stephenson College in Coalville on Friday 16th June. The event will feature contributions from regional learning providers who have undertaken (or are undertaking) new build projects, the regional LSC and the JISC E-Learning and Innovation Programme, who will provide a national and regional context for new build projects. For information about this event please check online at www.rsc-em.ac.uk or by emailing support@rsc-em.ac.uk James Higham Advisor
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Forthcoming
EVENTS May 4th
Learning Resources Forum
8th
e-portfolios (jointly with NILTA/Nottingham Uni)
10th
FOCUS
ON...
Broxtowe College Simple technology that benefits tutors and students Mike Puls, a Broxtowe College sessional tutor in the community, describes how a long range remote keyboard and mouse he discovered as a direct result of attending an RSC course has greatly improved the teaching resources for his classes.
ACL (NLN R4 materials) (NIACE)
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Students can, if they want to, remain in their seats and manipulate the computer without the embarrassment of standing up in front of the class. They become more involved with the lesson because they are included and are having fun. I have used it successfully for group completion of Hot Potatoes quizzes, for mind mapping and for demonstrations of techniques learnt in Office programs and digital imaging programs. Off line internet can also be used to demonstrate internet principles.
Moodle Users Group Learning Styles and concept mapping
18th
ILT Forum
23rd
Staff development and ILT strategy
24th
Online Assessment
26th
Technical Forum
June 8th
HE Forum
8th
NLN R4 Materials
Mike Puls using the wireless mouse Broxtowe College has a wide variety of community venues around Nottinghamshire and high-tech equipment is not always possible at each of these sites. The 9 metre range Gyration GP1200 Ultra suite keyboard and mouse has enabled me to interact with a datashow presentation from
Hints
and
anywhere in the room, with the added bonus of not obstructing the screen. The Gyration mouse can be hand held so can be used without a surface to rest on and the keyboard is also fully functional from anywhere in the room. All the benefits of interactive white boards can be simulated with this device (at a fraction of the cost). There is no need to create special white board resources or find time for white board training.
This small piece of inexpensive hardware (it costs less than £90) together with a portable data projector has enabled me to incorporate many new strategies in the learning process. Community e-learning has been given a boost. Mike Puls - Sessional Tutor, Broxtowe College
Tips:
into Moodle 12th
e-learning for teachers
Learning and Skills Web is live
in training 13th
MIS Forum
16th
New build
22nd
e-Fair
The government’s e-strategy identifies the need for an “integrated online education information service”. This is it. www.learningandskillsweb.org.uk Learning and Skills Web is a new service for busy education and training practitioners working in all areas of the learning and skills community.
See our website for further details
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It offers a convenient point of access to the array of existing online resources, information and news currently serving the sector. Or, as one registered user put it, “Just what we needed. A website that links all the websites!! You’ve saved me loads of time, thank you”. Register Online Registered users will be able to influence and shape this developing service. Simply register at www.learningandskillsweb.org.uk What to expect when you visit Learning and Skills Web • easy access to e-learning resources • quality education and training search results from trusted, reliable sources • registered users can save search results, select news feeds and much more Coming soon • Visit the site regularly to keep up with all the ongoing developments. • more resources from more sources • user reviews • find relevant events • online communities • enhanced and even faster search results Learning and Skills Web is managed by Becta and funded by the LSC. It was previously known as NLN Online
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