Dearne Valley College

Year 3 Micro Project- Enhancing the m-learning journey

This project has been designed to facilitate a greater range of creative and innovative teaching, learning and assessment methods. It will focus on particular groups of learners across the academic divisions as a starting point but spread wider as experience, expertise and confidence grow.

Aims:

To contribute to the College Lifelong Accountabilities and IT Vision by giving groups of learners access to innovative and creative methods that will enhance teaching, learning, assessment and support. This will extend the current good practice with e-learning and encompass the opportunities for inclusion afforded by mobile technologies to help improve learner attendance, retention and achievement as well as contrinuting to the employment/employability agenda by giving NVQ/Apprenticeship learners access to a greater range of resources.

Objectives:

• Reinforce learning opportunities for Motor vehicle and sport learners by providing the opportunity to capture video/photographic evidence (using Sony PSPs or digital/flip cameras) in the workplace or on trips/residential which can then be revisited in the classroom. This would also be of benefit to the 14-19 diploma students as the learners would be able to use the artefacts in different settings e.g. School or College thus strengthening opportunities for collaboration.
• Generate alternative methods of formative and summative assessment and facilitate peer/self review of actions by learners filming themselves and each other taking part in activities. This is of particular relevance to learners on apprenticeships and those undertaking practical activities such as sport, motor vehicle body repair and catering.
• Facilitate the provision of feedback to students in alternative formats, for example using digital recording devices for verbal messages. This is part of a particular strategy to encourage learners on the FD Sports Coaching to embrace the concept of feed-forward through their PDP sessions.
• Use Sony PSPs to encourage multisensory approaches to teaching and learning with a view to increasing engagement students on the RAFT programme (NEETs) and avoid excessive note taking.
• Support teacher training/development (including internal staff of ITT programmes)opportunities by creating the facility to use digital video recorders to capture and evaluate own performance.
• Provide further opportunities for personalised learning through improved access to MARA (student owned self assessment, monitoring and tracking software tool) resources. Mobile access to the VLE through ultra mobile PCs will allow students working in a practical rather than traditional classroom setting the opportunity to work on their own MARA plans and discuss them with tutors.
• Establish further opportunities for inclusion and diversity through the provision of a greater range of innovative and creative teaching and learning strategies:-
- Create the opportunity for learners on sport programmes to use Sony PSPs to break down video of physical activity to identify muscle activity.
- Allow motor vehicle and catering learners to make ‘how to’ guides and training videos so that they can demonstrate concepts/techniques to each other.
- Make it possible for more RAFT learners to access learning materials from the internet including open source resources and the JISC TechDis Edu (Access) Apps by using ultra mobile PCs.
- Increase understanding of inter and intra personal skills by videoing group/project activities.
- Provide additional support for all the groups of learners by using recorded examples and artefacts for revision purposes.
• Encourage all the groups of learners to take ownership of their own learning experience and develop a greater sense of control/feeling of independence by using the mobile devices.
• Increase access to technology by removing the barriers and restrictions posed by the need for a particular classroom location for teaching and learning activities.
• Use clips/videos as a basis for staff development activity and to share good practice

Contribution to Local and Regional priorities

• Reduce barriers to learning and support increased engagement of hard to help learners in areas of high disadvantage.
• Provide positive learning opportunities for NEETs
• Reduce the digital divide and foster staff and learner confidence in using a range of mobile technologies.
• Impact on learner motivation through raised standards of teaching, learning and assessment.
• Inform learning strategy development on 14-19 Diplomas and Apprenticeships.
• Support the College liflong accountabilities particularly raising standards, meeting needs and creating a positive learning environment.
• Build on IT and ILT development at DVC as part of the ongoing evolution of e-learning.