Covid forced big changes on the way we work

long-term students, 'I think it's a good idea and will continue to dip in when I am not in the centre.' Another model might be a student who we never see in person but who gets benefit from the site.

Our Virtual Learning Environment currently includes video courses, games (which we have had especially made), as well as stories, some of which our team have written. The video courses cover art, nature and the outdoors, web safety and social skills, exercise and wellness and it is our plan in the future to launch live video sessions, as well as discos and social meetings which we found were popular under lockdown. This will provide an educational resource for adults with learning disabilities, but also a social networking opportunity and hopefully an online community. How did we create this? Well, we realised that the key to making something for a particular community is to involve the people from that community in the creative process. So, while making this website, we involved our students at every stage, working with them to troubleshoot problems with the developing site. As an example, we found some of our students struggled with scrolling side bars, so we had the bar turned into arrows and moved closer into the centre. For students who struggle with the written word, we activated a function which reads the words for them. We did this through a process

About the author

Tom German is the ‘Education Lead’ for the Fifth Trust Connect project. He has a background in Further Education and now works with Adults with Learning Disabilities. ftconnect.org of surveying, finding the areas that students struggled with or found boring and working on changing them or removing them. We also are using students as presenters and models for our site, encouraging users of the site to identify with it. We want adults with learning disabilities to look at the site and say, 'This is for me!'.

What have we gained? We don't know yet. We suspect that students with learning disabilities will get not only skills, but a sense of purpose and hopefully a network from this venture. There are certainly positive indications in research literature that it may be the case that online learning can be an aid for adults with learning difficulties. In the future we are looking at working with a nationally recognised centre for research to work on measuring the impact that the project has on an individual's development. Our hope would be that our project would improve the quality of life indicators identified by the researcher Robert Schalock. As each element of the site relates to one of the key indicators, students can identify areas where they are lacking quality of life and tailor a path to suit themselves. Our project should open new vistas for adults with learning disabilities, allowing them a space where they can learn and communicate. There are also links to employability and independent living. Our courses cover topics such as life skills and cooking, as well as gardening. These could be aids for getting students interested in the working environment and upskilling them for the workplace Our video service could be used outside care settings in more conventional educational settings, as well as being used by clients or students who for whatever reason are unable to attend a day care centre. We also hope it will provide adults with learning disabilities with either a complete curriculum to aid them with independence, or additional learning for those who are pursuing a course of study in this area already. So, we are exploring this exciting new area, with our students helping us every step of the way. Where this journey will take us, we are yet to discover, but our hope is this will become something that both our students and the wider learning disability community can use as a tool to expand horizons and improve lives.