Lewisham College

Year 1: Wireless blended learning for workplace learners (WBL 4 WPL) 2007/2008

The WBL 4 WPL project at Lewisham College provided access to mobile learning for workplace learners. It focused on learners in hospitality, construction, business, IT and care who attend college for around two hours per week, with most of their learning and assessment taking place in the workplace.

The college provided learners with HTC Touch personal digital assistants (PDAs) preloaded with learning content and Mobile Office applications that supported their learning. In the school of computing the PDAs were embedded into the teaching and learning process by allowing the learners to record course content in and outside the classroom using the following functionalities – SMS text, camera, voice recording and mediaboard.

The aim of the research was to investigate the impact of the use of mobile devices with groups of learners in different curriculum areas of the college. The findings of the research will inform future College projects using this technology and future College strategy including establishing a sustainable route for them to be incorporated into the curriculum.

A key result was an increase in attendance of almost 10% compared to the control groups.

College and Project Background

‘Wireless Blended Learning for Workplace Learners’ was a single college project initiated by Lewisham College, which set out to evaluate the impact of mobile learning on workplace learners across a range of curriculum areas.

Lewisham College is a large further education (FE) college situated in south east London amid a growing and increasingly diverse community. Up to 100 languages are spoken in schools across the borough and, while the community draws on a rich cultural and linguistic mix, deprivation remains an enduring feature.

A quarter of Lewisham’s working-age population lack a Level 2 qualification. Vibrant local economies coexist with enduring unemployment, which is twice the national rate. Lewisham has more than 6000 businesses with growth rates outstripping the London average and yet there is often a profound mismatch between employer demands and the skills of local residents so improving the fit is a critical task for Lewisham College. Lewisham College has 13,600 students enrolled on 637 courses (25% are sponsored by employers, 32% studying at NVQ Level 2) run on two campuses and offers high-quality learning and teaching, as well as an excellent range of facilities and services to the wider community.

In April 2006, the College received an overall grade of ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted in its inspection, which resulted in the highest rating for any London college and positioned the College second in the entire country. Lewisham College has a strong reputation for innovation and excellence, which was formally recognised by the awarding of Beacon Status in 1999 and two more Beacon awards since.

In 2001 Lewisham was designated the UK's first Centre of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) in computing and information technology. The College also has a CoVE in hospitality which is housed in a state of the art e-kitchen.

To build on its reputation for innovation and excellence Lewisham College set out to investigate further the opportunities for mobile learning with the aim of evaluating the impact and establishing a sustainable route for these new technologies to be incorporated into the curriculum. Before embarking on this project mobile learning at Lewisham College was still in its infancy although indicators suggested that learners would be highly receptive to this type of personalised learning.

Key aims

Deliver underpinning knowledge personalised according to learner profile
Deliver innovative and flexible assessment opportunities
Improve the range of diverse portfolio evidence through digital video and images
Develop a sustainable system of staff development in m-learning by embedding reflective practice, action research, dissemination and collaboration.

Key objectives

To explore, identify and develop innovative learning materials and assessment activities that will support the underpinning knowledge requirements of Level 2 qualifications in the curriculum areas of hospitality, construction, IT and care
To provide the College’s workplace learners with the opportunity to learn through high-quality interactive materials preloaded onto a PDA that enables them to study at a time, place and pace suitable to them
To build a sustainable community of practice in m-learning that includes authenticating student and staff ‘experts’ that are directly involved in sharing their expertise within the community of learners. This will be evidenced through the use of video diaries, blogs and the virtual learning environment (VLE)
To develop lifelong learning practices within the students by empowering them to evidence their own learning against clear criteria that they understand and can access at all times
To establish the impact of individualised personal learning programmes on retention and achievement rates with Level 2 learners
To enhance the profile of MoLeNet, and the role of m-learning in the modern curriculum through dissemination events outlining the progress of the project and use these as an opportunity to further develop expertise and reflective practice
To offer learners the opportunity to gather portfolio evidence through the use of the video and photographic means available on their mobile learning device to diversify how achievement is recorded and communicated
To support teaching staff in the distribution, management, use and maintenance of the PDAs issued to their learners
To produce best practice advice on the use of PDAs with work place learners that not only describes the methods used but also includes commentary by the students and staff involved.

Benefits for participants

Benefits for learners, across all learner groups

PDA benefits included:

being able to gather work-based evidence in a variety of formats using PDAs (photo, video, audio)
underpinning knowledge resources, eg ‘How to hang a door’, can be viewed at work
device selected was easy to use
use of Microsoft Mobile Software to take notes in class
take photographs and create videos to embed in presentations to provide a more creative aspect to a dry subject (information systems, impact of IT on organisations)
using Bluetooth.

Mediaboard benefits included:

opportunity to upload MMS and SMS messages for self- and peer assessment
reduction in workload related to key skills
time-saving mechanism

SMS benefits included:

two way using txttools
opportunity to respond to teachers SMS
keep in touch with tutor
text response to tasks for recap of sessions.

Benefits for staff

PDA benefits included:

easier collection of evidence
increase in attendance: four groups – average attendance 83%, attendance with group allocated PDAs 93%
chance to personalise learning, to provide evidence in the format of their choice
take notes in class when pen and paper forgotten using mobile Word
calendar to schedule tasks
opportunity to connect to Wi-Fi within the college to catch up on missed work
use Bluetooth to send files to devices.

Mediaboard benefits included:

saves time as the templates in mediaboard are easy to manage
contact through SMS or MMS with learners

SMS benefits included:

two-way response to all texts
useful for recap/icebreaker of sessions; summary of session handed out and learners asked to summarise the summary in 160 characters
possibility of using either for voting or peer review exercises

Benefits for the lead college

As more and more learners are learning outside the college, use of mobile technology offers them greater flexibility and participation.

Staff are becoming more aware of the ways in which mobile technologies can be incorporated into the curriculum and developing the skills to be able to implement this.
The training session that Lewisham College hosted on SMS and Bluetooth opportunities motivated/mobilised many teaching staff.
Tutors are excited about the variety of resources on the PDAs eg voice recorder which will help with reflective diaries.
The new Diploma cohort starting in September could use UMPCs (ultra- mobile PCs) to watch broadcast lessons picked up through Wi-FiI connections.
There are more opportunities for distributed learning.
There are opportunities for linking learners, employers and parents through streamed lessons, live video feeds (employers can broadcast video), e-portfolios and e-assessment.
There will be future opportunities to integrate with the College’s other e-learning systems like the VLE (Blackboard) and e-portfolios.
There are opportunities for two-way mobile video conferencing between learners and tutors as well as learner to learner.
There are opportunities for interactive online collaboration using web- based applications like Google Docs.

Lessons learned

The timing of the project was not ideal from a curriculum viewpoint; mobile learning was only introduced into the curriculum in the latter half of the academic year. In future the technology, devices and resources should be up and running at the beginning of a qualification so that learners have the opportunity to use the devices from the beginning of their course.
As part of the project one building was set up with wireless access points and although this was a bonus, it was not operational until quite late in the year and it was not easy to set up the PDAs to access the network. This was quite a steep learning curve for both teaching and technical support staff. However there are now a team of staff who are competent and comfortable in setting up the devices to connect to the Wi-Fi network.
The development of appropriate resources, although incredibly successful was very time-consuming. It is important over time to create a bank of resources. The project has enabled staff to evaluate the possibilities for creating immersive and engaging multimedia learning content using a variety of applications (Flash Lite, MyLearning Author, Microsoft Reader, Photostory, PowerPoint etc) which can be delivered to learners on various mobile devices.
In one instance a resource created containing knowledge questions for an NVQ could not be used because the tutor had provided ‘live’ questions which were not for issue to the learners before assessment. The validity of these materials should have been established before creating the resource but it did give the author valuable experience of using a new application to create materials It is essential that subject specialists are dedicated to the project to provide relevant and up-to-date resources.
It also became apparent that the selection of course groups to participate needs to be made carefully. Where motivation and IT skills are high, tutors/assessors have been proactive in the pedagogic use of the devices and experimented with extra resources and applications (SMS). However, where the tutor/assessors were not so IT literate, the amount of staff development time required to upskill them meant that they were less confident about trying out some of the more advanced features.
Time allocated to the distribution and training of both staff and large groups of learners was another significant factor. Training offered was patchy and rushed for various reasons (specifically staff sickness) although most of the learners said that they were happy with the amount of training they received. It is felt that in future we should offer follow-up sessions (two to four weeks) after the initial distribution to find out how they were getting on and to make sure they were using all the features.
A major cause for concern throughout the project was the lack of buy-in (and refusal to participate in some cases) from employers on the Train to Gain programme. Despite the considerable efforts of account managers who were experienced in selling the benefits of the project there was still concern from employers about taking responsibility for the devices and allowing their employees to use them while at work. This was particularly significant in the care curriculum area and it was decided to move the focus to other areas where the employers had a more progressive approach to innovative methods of teaching and learning. This did however mean that the process of issuing devices took significantly longer than anticipated and in some areas it was decided to delay the issue of the devices until the next cohort of learners were recruited to prevent learners being issued with devices at the end of their course. Many of the Train to Gain programmes run from January to June and because of this Lewisham has now developed a cycle for the distribution of devices to these learners. The significant lesson learned was the importance of involving the employers much earlier in the process to motivate them and get them to participate in the project before creating resources and training staff and assessors in the use of the devices.
At the outset of the project it was anticipated that the underpinning knowledge resources provided to the learners would form part of the 20 learning hours funded by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) as part of the Train to Gain programme, and plans were in place to track and report on the use of the resources to evidence this. However it became apparent mid way through the project that this was not acceptable to the LSC as contributing toward the required learning hours.
Bluetooth was used in some areas and although it worked well with one or two users, it was time-consuming and cumbersome when trying to use with a large group. In future tutors will get Bluetooth software and dongles that can beam to many devices in one go rather than trying to do this on an individual basis.