Ludlow College

Year 2: m-ludlow 2008/2009

We will bring m-learning to the forefront of the educational experience for all learners, including Train to Gain, allowing students to learn wherever and whenever they want, delivering skills crucial to meeting the needs of our rural community. Building on 6-years experience in providing e-learning, ‘m-ludlow’ will use research from MoLeNet 1 to identify the best technology for the project. Having worked closely with student, teachers, assessors and employers to deliver e-learning, we have a solid platform on which to develop fully integrated, interactive m-learning experiences. It will cement the College’s wider ICT agenda.

Project Aims

‘m-ludlow’ will make Ludlow College a WIFI e-learning centre to increase access, flexibility and personalisation of learning for all students, especially work-based learners, by:

Making learning fun
Revolutionise this learning community
Raising aspirations by engaging learners
Increasing personalisation
Removing barriers including lack of public transport
Increasing access to tutors and facilities
Increasing flexibility of when and where students can learn
Providing additional e-learning support and facilities to all students
Building our College Community through our e-network
Developing Partnerships – 14-19 Diploma and Employer

Project Objectives

‘m-ludlow’ will:

Develop a sustainable future for College and community by delivering courses via fully interactive WIFI systems, UMPC’s, Smart Phones, PSP’s/DS’s and other personal technology.
Allow students to learn at their choice of location, when they choose.
Enhance student learning opportunities, experiences and skills, make learning fun
Enable a wider range of evidencing opportunities via ‘e-portfolios’ for NVQs, such as videos, voice recordings and images.
Support regional economic growth.

Critical to its success will be ensuring accessibility and use of personal devices. ‘m-ludlow’ will kick start this revolution by providing a selection of technologies to targeted user groups, enabling students to understand the benefits and the College to assess how to achieve greatest impact.

Key objectives are to establish the right infrastructure and create demand.

Infrastructure

Install WIFI routers and appropriate hardware.
Develop software, including Moodle pages, e-portfolios and skype
Train all staff.
Create core ‘superusers’.

Demand

Change learners approach to learning and make it fun
Run trials with students and staff
Official Launch

We will involve a wide range of learners from different sectors and levels. Our objectives are to include:

Employers through T2G and Apprenticeships in our well-established Health and Social Care programmes - already using m-learning and e-learning effectively but this opens new areas of opportunity
Our Diploma Partnership. A joint appointment (starts January 2009) to develop Business Administration & Finance will be a key player in developing the m-ludlow strategy within this sector
All teaching staff. This gives a whole-organisation approach, through training and familiarity with the technologies thus furthering personalised learning
An academic area of study (Drama & Theatre Studies) and a vocational area (BTEC Sports) at Levels 2 and 3, to lead on applications to enhance their classroom teaching and encourage self-study .

All students will be able to receive/submit assignments, utilise interactive on-line tasks, join on-line forums appropriate to their subject/level and have increased personalised support from their tutors.

Trials will involve:

Distribution of three different technologies to five student groups, employers and staff, to identify the most appropriate and engaging tools.
Exploring commercial agreements with suppliers to provide technology at reduced costs for students who wish to take advantage of it.

Advantage West Midlands predicts ICT use in all sectors of the region’s economy will potentially increase regional output by £3 billion.

‘m-ludlow’ will directly support that growth by:

Using technology for training previously unreachable employees
Providing the skills to use the technology within the community.

In 2002 Ludlow launched its e-assessment system and we were identified as innovators of education, speaking as ambassadors for e-assessment at national LSC events. ‘m-ludlow’ puts us back to the forefront of this exciting and swiftly moving arena, by developing existing, embedded processes to become fully interactive across the College. For learners on low incomes, with poor public transport and rising costs of living, this will be a crucial step forward.