Out and about with our Roadshow this week reminded me how hectic it is in the FE colleges over the next couple of weeks with student induction underway. Wouldn't it be great if prior to starting new learners could login into the systems and prepare themselves for a new phase in their lifelong learning journey, hitting the ground running so that the excitement and motivation I could see in all the faces this week can be exploited.
I think most people would concede that, particularly young people (so called Digital Natives), are well able to work their way around a system that has user friendly help. One of the attractions of coming into an FE institution is the perception that they will be treated like adults and technology, in particular some of the social software applications, I think can help in that respect. The ability to customise the interface, the opportunity to choose how other applications are integrated all add to the development of learner autonomy. Induction is a good place to start and I'd be interested to find out the views of my colleagues out in colleges.
Of course there is a need to follow through on this promise and ensure that the learning experiences meet the expectations set at induction time. I guess it all comes back round to taking a strategic approach to course development and delivery but in practice that's a tall order of course any strategy is dependent on a many variables. The team here at the RSC have been working out how to support colleagues in the learning providers we support to do this. Our Collaborative Course Design initiative aims to provide this, with the team working intensively with a whole course team over a couple of days and providing a mentoring role beyond that if appropriate. We'll be piloting this before Christmas and the focus will be on collaborative development of collaborative learning that exploits ICT to the full. Get in touch if you'd like to know more or feel free to comment here - ideas are always valuable and welcome.
1 comment:
I would be interested to see how the Collaborative Course Design programme goes, I'm currently looking at ways of using 2.0 technology to improve how we engage and interact with learners (and potential learners seeking guidance) to ensure that the learning journey meets their needs more effectively.
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