Stoke on Trent College

Year 2: mStoke 2008/2009

mStoke will enable the mainstreaming of m-learning pilots developed by the College in response to its ILT Strategy across the College, with the result that staff College-wide will benefit from the expertise and experience developed through these pilot programmes.

Activity being mainstreamed will include the use of mobile devices and e-portfolios in the workplace, mobile gaming devices to engage with young people, streaming multimedia, re-purposing and deployment of multimedia learning objectives in a variety of formats via PDAs, gaming devices and mobile phones to provide a rich personalised learning enironment to a wide range of learners.

Project Aim

The primary aim of the m-learning in Stoke (mStoke) project is to embed m-learning strategy and practice across the College to widen participation and increase the success of learners.

Project Objectives

The strategic project objectives are:

Increase achievement and retention – use m-learning devices to deliver formative and summative assessment and to integrate the results in order to generate holistic assessments of a student’s progress in order to target additional support to those students at risk.
Widen participation – use m-learning devices to address multiple barriers experienced by a wide range of learners including the hard-to-reach and learners from non-traditional backgrounds. Learners supported will include Apprentices and Train to Gain learners, young people following Specialised Diplomas, NEETs, unemployed adults, and people with low levels of basic skills). The type of m-learning devices will be appropriate to the client group.
Enhance and enrich the quality teaching and learning – use m-learning devices and flexible, differentiated learning materials to provide alternative teaching strategies which will appeal to a variety of learners and learning styles. This will be achieved by the deployment of m-learning devices and supporting equipment in targeted programmes over the life of the project.
Dissemination – organise a sub-regional conference to disseminate the partnership’s experience and expertise in m-learning to members of the Staffordshire Provider’s Association.

The following delivery objectives will help achieve the strategic objectives outlined above:

M-learning champions – the College will appoint m-learning champions in each Faculty to work with ILT Champions, Advanced Skills Teachers and Educational Technologists to promote and develop the use of m-learning
m-learning Champion's CPD programme - to assist m-learning champions to gain the requisite technical production skills as well as the skills needed to analyse and re-model working practices so that m-learning devices can be used effectively.
Re-model working practices – m-learning champions will assist in the re-modelling of working practices in the delivery of NVQs. This will enable m-learning devices to be used to capture evidence and deliver and assess underpinning knowledge thereby increasing timely success.
Maximise use of m-learning techniques and technologies – develop a CPD programme targeted at all teaching staff and tutor assessors to embed m-learning into teaching strategies across the curriculum with a particular emphasis on the local priority groups.
Enable connectivity – enable wireless access to staff, learners, employers and the general public across our Cauldon campus. This will integrate with the City Council's wireless mesh network enabling open access to m-learning materials including bite sized taster programmes, streaming video and other materials to encourage and widen participation.
Develop rich cross-platform multimedia learning and assessment materials – a multimedia unit will be formed and equipped with state-of-the-art video and audio production and authoring equipment.
Monitor activity through the College's Curriculum and Quality and ILT Strategy groups to promote mainstreaming of m-learning activity.