Brockenhurst College

Year 1: brock.mobi: mLog 2007/2008

The mLog project, part of a wider initiative called brock.mobi, was intended to research a potential solution to the problem of providing students with sufficient and timely access to online learning support resources.

Brockenhurst College has invested significantly in recent years to develop online services that have helped to enrich and deepen the quality of learner support. However, although the PC stock at the College has increased by about 15% a year in the last two years, the breadth of this development has been inhibited by the availability of PCs on campus (many learners have reported being unable to access a PC at a convenient time).

By extending the Learning Log to a mobile platform, and piloting its use both on campus and off, the mLog project sought to enable a rigorous assessment of possible future College strategies to support ubiquitous, personalised access to online learning resources.

The brock.mobi initiative was an innovative action research and development project that explored the application in day-to-day teaching, learning and administration of services delivered across the mobile internet. Following research and piloting, ‘brock.mobi: mLog’ was the initiative’s first systems development project.

mLog planned to further enhance the effectiveness and accessibility of personalised support for learners and aimed to encourage improved retention and achievement. It extended existing PC-based software developed in-house by the College, and embedded throughout its tutorial support for 16–19 further education (FE) learners on Level 3 programmes, to a fully mobile, any time anywhere service delivered through personally owned handsets.

College and Project Background

The mLog project was a single college activity at Brockenhurst College and part of a wider initiative called brock.mobi that explored the application in day-to-day teaching, learning and administration of services delivered across the mobile internet.

Brockenhurst College is a tertiary FE institution located in Hampshire in central southern England. The College is based in the heart of the New Forest National Park which, although it is near the urban centres of Southampton and Bournemouth, is also rural, covering over 570km2, and renowned for its flora and fauna, which include free-roaming ponies and cattle.

The College attracts learners from a very wide catchment area that encompasses Southampton to the east, Salisbury to the north, Bournemouth, Poole and beyond into Dorset to the west, and the Isle of Wight to the south. The College leads a 14–19 partnership (with 13 local secondary schools), most of its learners are 16 to 18 (attending an approximately 50:50 mix of A- level and vocational programmes), it provides for about 9000 adult and continuing learners (the oldest of whom presently is 105), several hundred work-based learners (WBL) pursuing Apprenticeships and NVQs, a few distance learning programmes, and a growing number of international students.

The College is a learning and skills sector Beacon College and is graded ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted. It is also a British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) Technology Exemplar Supporting Provider.

The brock.mobi initiative focused on ubiquitous, personalised and personally owned technology to contribute to the development of sustainable long-term investment plans for the College’s technology systems. Other priorities included enhancing the effectiveness of communication between learners, teachers and tutors, continuous improvement of support for learners and adding further value to the college’s bespoke software systems.

‘brock.mobi: mLog’ was the initiative’s first systems development project. mLog planned to further enhance the effectiveness and accessibility of personalised support for learners and aimed to encourage improved retention and achievement. It extended existing PC-based software developed in-house by the College, and embedded throughout its tutorial support for 16–19-year-old FE learners on Level 3 programmes undertaking performing arts, physics and business, as well as some Level 2 GCSE students, to a fully mobile, any time anywhere service delivered through personally owned handsets.

Project aims

To extend existing PC-based Learning Log software to a fully mobile, any time anywhere service delivered through personally owned handsets
To further enhance the effectiveness and accessibility of personalised support for learners
To encourage improved retention and achievement
To enhance reflective learning practice.

Key objectives

Design a project informed by existing guidance and best practice from earlier projects.
Be led by learner requirements and expectations by constituting a representative steering group, supporting a community of practice and undertaking continuous review.
Extend existing web-based ‘Learning Log’ application onto wireless platform and enhance with integrated multimedia tools for photographs, video clips and audio notes.
Identify positive and negative impacts on practitioners (time, personal efficiency, e-skills and e-fluency).
Ensure that data protection and security are taken fully into account at all stages of project development to protect participants and the College.
Have a positive impact on retention and achievement rates among target audiences as measured at the start and end of the project.
Contribute to the further development of a culture of innovation and excellence across the College as identified in the College strategic plan.
Blur the perceived boundaries between formal and informal learning and learning support activities.
Engage openly and positively in networking opportunities with other projects and with commercial suppliers.
Enhance the reputation of the College among its current and prospective customers, stakeholders and peers within the sector through innovative practice.

Benefits for participants

Benefits for learners, across all learner groups

Learners gained:

increased motivation through increased access to structured, personalised reflective learning activities and stronger communication with personal tutor and lecturer staff
improved capabilities to learn independently and take more ownership of learning progress
more varied learning activities using a wider variety of media including voice, images, video, etc.
more available, on demand access to online resources, especially for learners in practical subjects (eg performing arts) where access to ICT is not always available
more efficient record-keeping of learning activities and outcomes

Benefits for staff

Staff gained:

more motivated and increasingly independent learners using mobile tools (eg the mLog) to engage more reflectively in their learning process
improved learner attendance patterns enabling purposeful progress through the scheme of work and reduced workload supporting absentees
personal development as reflective practitioners identifying opportunities to improve their teaching practice by evaluating alternative technology-assisted methods
improved communication opportunities with individual learners facilitating more personalised support and guidance.

Benefits for the lead college

The lead college gained:

increasing organisational knowledge of effective practice using mobile learning technologies
increased intelligence about learner and staff expectations and reactions to mobile devices
better understanding of barriers to and motivators of sustainable personal ownership of ICT equipment
enhanced reputation for innovative approaches among prospective applicants and their parents
positive contribution of the project towards renewed achievement of Ofsted ‘outstanding’ status during April 2008.

Lessons learned

Learners’ capacity to adopt mobile technologies was a little over-estimated at the start of the project. The project team did not offer formal training activities when the devices were issued to learners and staff, but instead chose to observe whether, and how quickly, they developed confidence in learning their own way around the device. The only documentation provided beyond the manufacturer’s owner manual were some single-side training sheets to assist in the configuration of mLog and college email access.

If they were starting the project again, they would provide more formal training to staff to ensure that they are more comfortable and confident in using the device. They would also encourage all staff involved to build activities into their schemes of work and lesson plans (starting the project mid-year was not ideal from this point of view).

The devices were delivered to the project team just as learners were leaving for Christmas holidays. With January examination modules taking place for many of the target learner cohorts they decided not to issue the devices to learners until after these examinations were completed. Although this reduced the period of research time available to the project, it was essential that involvement in the project should not damage learners’ progress and achievements.

Classroom management of the devices proved to be less problematic than feared. Most students behaved sensibly and made productive use of the device during lessons. The terms and conditions documentation (which both learners and parents signed at the outset) detailed expectation that instructions from staff about appropriate use of the devices during lessons would be followed.

Feedback from both learners and staff indicated an increase in the capability of learners to use the mLog tool to reflect on their learning experiences. Personal access to the device at all times meant that learners could record reflections when they wished (including on the bus on the way to/from college) and maintain an asynchronous supportive dialogue with staff which enabled them to improve their learning.

Learners were very good at independently identifying uses for the Windows Mobile applications. For example, they used the voice recording tools to help them learn scripts for drama performances and they used mobile internet access to look up references and resources while working in studios or labs (where access to ICT is not always immediately available).

Overall, the level of motivation for learning among the target cohorts was high. In cohorts where every learner in the class had a device (physics, performing arts, business studies), they met regularly throughout the week, and an expectation of use of the device was built into scheme of work and lesson plans, the learning experience of using mobile devices was very positive. In cohorts where learners typically only met once a week (in tutor groups) but spent much of the week in subject classes where they were the only user of a mobile device, confidence was much lower and the benefits of access to the mobile learning device were much less clear.