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Oaklands College

Year 1:The MoLeMentors project 2007/2008

 

 

 

 

FE teachers often have large workloads, with preparation, marking and accurate record-keeping. The idea of the MoLeMentors project was to join the pedagogical viewpoint of the teacher with the pragmatic approach and technical ability of the student. Mobile technology is now ubiquitous among the 14–19 group and it is necessary to leverage this to provide enhanced learning opportunities. The main outcome hoped for in the MoLeMentors project was finding a strong correlation of improvement in the success rate (1.5% approximately – retention 2%, achievement 1%) overall on courses where MoLeMentors have been used.

From this project, the participating colleges have come to the conclusion that the success of mobile learning is directly related to the creativity of the people involved and not necessarily the technology. Improved communication between students and teachers is the key effect of the use of mobile technologies on teacher practice in the MoLeMentors project.

Project and College Background

The MoLeMentors project involves the four Hertfordshire colleges.  Between them they service the whole of Hertfordshire and also have some students from North London and Bedfordshire.  Hertfordshire has a largely urban population of around 1 million, with 87% living in settlements of over 3000 people, although North Hertfordshire and East Hertfordshire are both sparsely populated rural areas.

The economy in Hertfordshire has moved from a very specialist defence, aerospace and engineering manufacturing to a broad-based economy, ‘featuring an improved performance from the manufacturing sector, further growth in construction, better conditions for retailing and other distribution and continuing strength in finance and business services’. (Local Economy Assessment, 2007).  Just over a quarter (27%) of people are employed in distribution and hotels, 25% in banking and finance and 22% in public administration, education and health.  Manufacturing and construction employ 9% and 6% respectively.  For this reason all of the consortium colleges run a largely similar range of vocational, A-level, Access and foundation degree courses.

Although there is some competition between the consortium colleges, they have a track record of working on shared projects and are all partners with the University of Hertfordshire on Foundation Degree courses. 

Oaklands College is based over four sites. The two main campuses are the Smallford campus, which is on the old agricultural college site and will be the site of the new campus in 2011, and WGC Campus which is in the heart of Welwyn Garden City.  The sites in St Albans City and Borehamwood are declining in use, ready for 2011. Oaklands is lucky to have an eLearning and technology team, two part-time eLearning development leaders and a director of elearning, which means that the college is well resourced for staff to help run complex projects.  Oaklands has been running Moodle for several years, has equipped all rooms with interactive whiteboards and has used mobile devices for an work-based learning project for English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) learners.  Oaklands has also been running an eMentor initiative for two years where learners support their class and their teacher with ICT.

Hertford Regional College (HRC) is based over two sites in Broxbourne and Ware. It was formed from the merger of Ware College and East Herts College in the early 1990s and currently employs 900 staff and working on a new build project. HRC has an established virtual learning environment (VLE) (Blackboard), which is used across the curriculum, with particular strengths in academic and continuing education and ICT where all student work is submitted online. Work-based assessors have been using handheld voice recorders for capturing professional discussion. HRC is moving to Moodle and has recently employed a dedicated developer to work with their eLearning manager.

North Hertfordshire College (NHC) is a medium-sized general further education college enrolling around 15,000 learners a year. It is based over three main centres in Stevenage and Hitchin, with an additional purpose-built management centre in Letchworth Garden City. NHC also has a well- established VLE (Blackboard), an organised staff development programme and extensive provision of interactive whiteboards in classrooms.  NHC employs an eLearning manager who has a wide range of responsibilities, from writing the eLearning strategy to training staff in MS Office applications.

West Hertfordshire College was formed in 1991 by the amalgamation of various local educational establishments such as Cassio College, Dacorum College and George Stephenson College. It has four main campuses: Watford, Cassio, Dacorum and the Construction and Engineering Centre in Kings Langley. West Herts differs from the other colleges in that it does not have any management with the specific responsibility for eLearning.  eLearning is effectively a partnership between IT support and curriculum based practitioners who apply to be ILT champions.  ILT champions occupy tutor and programme manager positions within teaching teams, taking on the dissemination of eLearning skills and techniques as an extra responsibility without specific time remission.  WHC runs an installation of Moodle and training on this is partly carried out by the ILT champions.

Project rationale

FE teachers often have quite high workloads, with preparation, marking and accurate record-keeping. Unfortunately this often affects the adoption of new technology and professional development. Students, on the other hand, have strong intrinsic motivation to use new technology (particularly mobile) in cementing social groups, and have experience in its use.

The MoLeMentors project hoped to join the pedagogical viewpoint of the teacher with the pragmatic approach and technical ability of the student. Using the students to support teachers in using technology appropriately in the classroom or workplace, the MoLeMentors would help to develop staff using mobile technology by mentoring them with methods and techniques that the students themselves take for granted.

Based on the concept that the one in the household who knows how to use the DVD properly is the child – the project built on the highly successful eMentors scheme developed at Oaklands College. Oaklands’ eMentors students can be called on to help with everything from assisting lecturers with equipment such as laptops, projectors and electronic whiteboards, to encouraging fellow students to make use of the college’s VLE and reporting IT faults to the Helpdesk.

Project aims

• To increase the amount of eLearning used on courses to motivate, support and engage students
• To facilitate student-mentored continuing professional development (CPD) in eLearning for teaching staff
• To create 180 MoLeMentor toolkits for use in the consortium colleges, local schools and Eastern Region Colleges.

Key objectives

• 2% increase in retention and 1% increase in achievement.
• Enhanced peer support between students and staff
• Improved feedback to staff from students
• Stronger collaboration between local colleges and schools
• Spreading of the eMentor project.

Benefits for participant

Benefits for learners, across all learner groups

Learners gained:

• increased levels of confidence and motivation due to the college trusting them with valuable equipment
• increased level of communication skills due to a new, close working relationship with their tutors
• higher levels of IT literacy with new types of equipment
• access to the internet anywhere at any time with the ability to interface with Web 2.0 sites seamlessly
• access to still image, video and audio recording facilities
• the opportunity to network with students at other local colleges on similar and diverse courses.

Benefits for staff

Staff gained:

• access to just-in-time, appropriate support from MoLeMentors with eLearning and Mobile systems
• higher levels of IT literacy with new types of equipment
• Access to MS Exchange email, calendar and tasks at any time
• use of a mobile phone for college business
• access to the internet anywhere at any time
• access to still image, video and audio recording facilities
• the opportunity to network with tutors at other local colleges on similar and diverse courses.

Benefits for the lead college

The lead college gained:

• increased local profile and prestige
• experience in running large, distributed projects and new skills in managing external teams
• access to a wide variety of MoLeNet provided continuing professional development sessions
• capital grant to fund purchase of mobile devices and wireless network installation/upgrades
• opportunities to network and share best practice with FE providers across the country
• improved team working with Hertfordshire colleges at an operational level.

Benefits for institutions taking part (partners and colleges)

Institutions gained:

• capital grant to fund purchase of mobile devices and wireless network installation and upgrades
• increased opportunity for gaining experience of running projects with the latest mobile technology
• access to a wide variety of MoLeNet provided continuing professional development sessions
• access to the MoLeNet community portal and MoLeNet Mentors for support.
• opportunities to network and share best practice with FE providers across the country
• improved team working with other Hertfordshire colleges at an operational level.

Lessons learned

Given the late start of the project and the heavy workload of many teachers it was not possible to integrate the mobile devices very closely into schemes of work and lesson plans. Users did formulate three possible strategies for the effective use of mobile technology, but these were submitted before they had had been given the devices and were therefore ill informed. A lack of structure in the use of the devices became very apparent, with some enthusiastic users becoming quite frustrated with the lack of focus from the project as a whole.

The primary lesson here is that the devices need to be introduced to classes at the start of the academic year or even at the beginning of the summer break so that tutors have as much time as possible to plan sessions and tasks that would make the best use of the technology.  Tutors would also need access to examples of best practice from within the consortium and other MoLeNet colleges and active supported from eLearning specialists. A more focused schedule of training and support would need to be organised to capitalise on potential.

Another issue is that two people with devices are generally not enough to make a significant change in the way a class operates. It is very difficult for one student to have a significant impact on teaching and learning, when they are also having to keep up with coursework and studies.  In addition, any absence from the teacher or the student can completely disrupt the flow of the project, possibly irrecoverably.

Ideally the teams should have training and planning sessions with the mobile device before the start of the project. This would help them to focus on aparticular facility of the devices and ensure that it was used properly before moving on to using more features. Another possibility would be to consciously select devices with fewer features and possibilities for use. These would be cheaper, easier to use and offer a more manageable potential for users.

More emphasis needs to be placed on the multimedia facility of the mobile devices to ensure that their potential for personalising content and allowing different types of learner to access it more easily. The use of video and audio was only partly used on the project, although that may well have been because of the late start. As the MoLeMentors were studying a wide variety of courses, it was not feasible to create video content specifically for mobile devices.

In combination with other initiatives, the devices did seem to give impetus to tutors to increase the use of general, non-mobile information and learning technology (ILT) in classes, and gave students and eLearning an opportunity to suggest local interventions to improve the learning experience.