Reasons to be cheerful

If you felt a breeze this afternoon drifting from the Home Counties and surrounding areas inhabited by staff working at an educational institution there then it was probably generated by the massive sigh of relief accompanying the news that OFSTED's imminent Inspection had been postponed.

Due to start on Tuesday, I was faced with Saturday, Sunday and Monday being spent worrying about what to do. It wasn't the sessions I had planned that was bothering me, or whether students would attend / behave or whatever. It was the amount of extra paperwork that was being demanded and the insistence that 'lesson plans' show all sorts of additional things that were going to take an age to include and which were mostly just going to be there in some sort of pretence that it was what we would 'normally' be doing.

For example, I am now running workshops across the board. I have provided long ago all the general teaching and provision of materials and resources that would have enabled a willing and reasonable able student to have completed their units on levels 1 to 4 BTEC programmes to as high a standard as they could achieve. So the idea of a formal 'lesson' with specific topics being addressed and clear 'learning outcomes' would be nonsense and, if I were to do so, then firstly I would have to try and come up with something new at this very late stage in the proceedings and secondly ask quietly beforehand that the students do not say something like 'that's all very interesting, Sir, but what we really wanted to do was complete missing bits in this or that unit'. Yes, I know I could probably have entertained them, or, at least, those that turned up but it would have meant a lot of work, a lot of co-operation from students beginning to panic at this time and wishing they had paid attention more in October. A huge amount of work, in fact, for the 8 potential sessions that inspectors could have dropped in on.

There is also the problem that, even if I had put on a super performance and had them clapping and dancing in the aisles the they would represent at best about 30% of those on the register for a combination of reasons that include many have actually completed everything and won't be there, some who have disappeared and not been seen since January, and those who tend to come to sessions where I have fewest students so they get more attention, mixing and matching very smartly but not in the way college managers seem to appreciate. 'Poor attendance' means unsatisfactory, no matter the reasons or, for that matter, what I do for those who do come.

A further problem is that of something called Equality & Diversity which, in the Education sector, is now going the same way as Health & Safety did in the wider world. It seems that if I cannot demonstrate in my paperwork that I have included specific steps to ensure that students of one or other race or creed can achieve as well as others, can show that I have arranged for everyone to know about odd things like this colour or that colour week, advised them of the dangers of sundry sexually transmitted diseases and reported any suspicions that any are taking drugs or having problems at home or, horrors, communicating with a tutor by any means other than via the official student e-mail which I don't think any of them ever actually use - if I fail in any of these areas in my lesson plan text then I'm unsatisfactory anyway.

So my inclination had been simply to do what I usually do - remind students of what they still had outstanding by way of tasks and offer to help anyone to meet the requirements by showing them in small groups or 1-1 if necessary sample answers, where to find resources etc etc. That's what works. That's what they all appreciate and actually prefer me doing in these last few weeks. I even get queries on other tutors' assignments. It can be challenging as I can never be completely sure what's going to come up but I always manage to give feedback and suggestions to everyone and those that deserve to pass do so. That wouldn't have made me popular with some senior management, though. If I'd had to choose between helping students pass and helping the place get a good grade, however, then I have to say I was definitely thinking more about the former option and hoping that OFTSED might see the sense of what I was doing and get some nice comments from any students they landed upon too.

It was going to be a nerve-wracking few days. I am so very relieved. I can now continue to do what comes naturally and have a nice, peaceful weekend. The people demanding all the new paperwork have good intentions at heart but they'd be better starting from scratch with a new team in September, with digital documentation and decent ways to collect, report on and monitor progress in these off-topic, pastoral and 'minority' or 'social' areas than attempt to get tutors to invent stuff now or spend hours rewriting plans that may well not even be seen at a stage when it simply isn't in the best educational interests of the students attending at this time and wanting to complete their tasks.

Naturally, the fact that the institution due to be inspected was still in the middle of a quite prolonged reorganisation, with many posts vacant, visiting tutors covering for redundant staff, students demonstrating about their concerns at what might happen to their courses next year, unions drawing up petitions about this and that, staff and students being moved en masse to temporary and rather last minute arranged accommodation, one department's staff being entirely at risk of redundancy and staff left doing their level best already to ensure that things go smoothly just to get their students through while people move offices and even stand-in managers disappear at short notice has aboslutely nothing to do with the postponement. I do rather suspect, however, that it might not just have been teaching staff that breathed that huge sigh!

All will be well next term - let's just hope they can put it off til then.

Professionalism in Further Education. Common sense, at last!

A fascinating interim report has just been released by the The Independent Review Panel established by the Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning. Brilliant stuff and finally someone has seen the light and proposes to cut through the nonsense that has been the compulsory membership of the Institute For Learning and requirement for qualifications that seldom seem to have produced any improvement in the classroom and certainly no better use of modern technology.

[Anyone would think I had contributed la great deal to this myself!]

Entitled Professionalism in Further Education, here are some key points:

Over the past decade, government has attempted to impose by statute a form of professionalism on the further education sector through the development of national occupational standards for teaching staff. As successive reports by Ofsted and academic research have shown, this endeavour has failed to achieve consistency in the diverse provision for acquiring vocational knowledge and skills.

This Review will endeavour to offer comprehensive recommendations to government which will not only reflect circumstances which are very different from those of a decade ago, but which also pay greater attention to the particular virtues of further education, its unique place in our national life, and a conception of professionalism which suits a body of staff who often enter teaching following a successful career in business, a trade or another profession.

Our intention will be to outline and encourage new directions which will be free of unnecessary compulsion (and the perverse outcomes so often associated with it), and to bring some fresh thinking to issues which, evidence suggests, have become confused.

There are sufficient statutory arrangements in place through, for example, employment legislation and the requirements for staff performance management and learner safeguarding set out in Ofsted’s Common Inspection Framework, to ensure at least a threshold level of professional competence. Above that, providers should have the freedom to stand or fall according to the service they offer to learners and the public accreditation they earn for the high quality of that service from Ofsted and others (e.g. IiP, EFQM, ISO etc). The example of the Higher Education Academy shows clearly that a shift from the intention to compel lecturers to achieve teacher-training qualifications, towards one where they and their employers are persuaded that this is in all their best interests in order to enhance standards, is much more effective than regulation.

Initial teacher training programmes appear to be largely generic and theoretical, rather than being related to the professional and occupational expertise of college lecturers; mentoring continues to be weak; the system of qualifications and credits is very inconsistent among teacher training providers; and the commitment of FE employers to support their staff to attain excellence in pedagogy appears distinctly uneven. It is at least arguable that most of the national effort has been made in the wrong place: towards standards, regulations and compulsion, rather than towards fostering a deep and shared commitment to real ‘bottom up’ professionalism among FE employers and staff.

The panel’s doubts about the validity of the 2007 Regulations; a conviction that it would be absurd and impracticable to dismiss those lecturers who have dissented from them (in some cases, from the outset); and our understanding of the tenor of government policy, lead us to conclude that the Regulations are unenforceable.

Setting aside the lack of any form of compulsion bearing on lecturers in higher education and the apparent illogicality of requiring lecturers who may have already worked successfully in FE for many years to become ‘qualified teachers’, the IfL on behalf of the FE sector, is unique in requiring post-qualification tasks before conferral of ‘qualified’ status.

these additional hurdles to qualification might be interpreted as meaning that FE and FE lecturers are inherently less professional than their peers in other sectors. The implication is that they are in need of special measures to assure ‘professionalisation’. The review panel believes that this is nonsense, contradicted by the fact that many colleges in the sector, for example, have been giving a good public service for a century or more.

The researchers were told that ‘validation and endorsement of the new framework was so rushed that things were cobbled together by teacher trainers working in isolation from one another – all having to take their own university criteria, structures and credit ratings into account’. When the qualifications of the nine national awarding bodies are added to universities, variability seems likely to be unhelpfully large.

The panel has noted that the current arrangements are disproportionately concerned with formal teaching in colleges, neglecting much of the breadth and richness of the FE sector. We will invite witnesses from these areas of neglect to describe to us what they need to contribute fully to an ambitious and professional sector during the next stage of the review.

FREE. FE Divided By These Things†.

Remarkable things are happening in the world of learning these days. Over a decade ago I put my first exercises, notes and tests on The Studyzone, really just with the idea of making my life easier - instead of taking piles of paper around with me I could access whatever I needed in the classroom. Then I realised that students who either missed a session or wanted to move forward more quickly could do so from home or work and, in a wonderfully new-sounding course at the time, IT2000 had 12 units at levels from beginner to advanced validated by the Open College Network which could be taken on-line with as much or as little communication from me as participants wanted. I also slowly added more and more of the materials and links to official assessment criteria and the like I needed for whatever I happened to be teaching and, as the years progressed, a good range of units built up.

My main purpose, however, remained the provision of easy access to guidance, information and tasks for students rather than expecting anyone to do the whole thing without coming into the classroom at the College where they'd enrolled.

Then, a few years ago, I heard about some interesting developments by the people at Edufire where complete chunks of courses in a whole range of things could be done totally on-line. Just as well, I suppose, as most of the tutors lived miles, if not several thousand miles away! Broadband speeds and technology had begun to permit video to be streamed at a rate that meant stuttering and freezing was becoming less of a problem. People did need to pay for many of these, though, and to join an on-line 'class' at set times. This may have suited quite a few but both aspects would be inclined to limit take-up so, whilst this still is an excellent development, and one where I'm happy to be a tutor too, it's more of a step in the evolution of learning that takes us a little further along the road I'm observing.

Shortly afterwards I was appointed an Associate Lecturer at Middlesex University's Institute of Work Based Learning where all the students were distant learners. The technology involved was pretty basic but the whole of the undergraduate or postgraduate courses were studied and supported on-line, including the viva element of a Masters programme, where, traditionally colleagues would interview the student and discuss various aspects of his or her project over a glass or two of fine wine but now didn't need to share the wine, this not being an obvious facility that Skype offered.

Along came The Khan Academy. well, it had probably been there for ages so I should say 'along came my noticing The Khan Academy!' This blew me away. I thought it was just a few videos of someone chatting while scribbling on a blackboard but I soon saw the extent to which this has grown and now my two sons use the Maths section regularly and are rapidly progressing through the stages and learning lots as they go. Which, of course, is the whole point of all this.

Then some really good universities began to offer courses that could be studied and assessed on-line and, most significantly, students would gain a certificate accrediting their success from that institution or, at least, a department within that institution which was almost as good as the real thing. I have recently published the amazing introductory course being offered by two wonderfully renowned professors operating through Udacity and now find that there is already a massive list of great courses being offered by prominent and well-respected institutions. All free and many with some form of accreditation and certification. There may be better but The Open Culture site, apart from the annoying ads at the top which I plead with you to ignore, seems to have a comprehensive and well-researched list.

The massively impressive Massachusetts Institute of Technology now launch MITx with their free on-line learning offer. They make a point of emphasising that their on-line courses are the same as those delivered in classes in terms of range and scope and that the same assessment standards will apply, making these totally free, totally on-line courses opportunities for students anywhere in the world to achieve an MIT qualification. Well, an MITx qualification. As I said, there have to be some issues to resolve when it comes to assessment still. There are many examples of students' attempts to fool tutors in class as it is through various combinations of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, using others to complete assignments or just getting a lot more help than they should had they really known what they were talking about. Wise, especially streetwise, tutors can spot these cheats on most occasions but even Turnitin or similar software isn't going to be up to the job of detecting whether someone you don't know did the work or was it someone else you don't know?

I suggested to my class of about 30 students earlier this year that they might be an alternative option to coming in to College and over 50% were interested in the idea of studying at their own pace on-line if they could still achieve a decent qualification at the end of the day. That was when I said there'd have to be a fee which might not be fully covered by grants. Make it free and that percentage can only rise.

This is all happening much more quickly than I'd expected. I had had thoughts just a few months ago of finding a suitable institution and setting up an on-line 'university' where programmes could be delivered at Foundation Degree level and with the idea of competing with FE BTEC-type Level 3 Diploma courses. Now I am beginning to think that there will soon be a range of alternatives at reputable institutions already out there for them. And they'll be free. Once employers start to recognise such programmes and accept them as equal alternatives to the traditional form then whatever troubles FE Colleges think they face now will seem tiny if they don't make substantial changes to how they provide teaching and learning.

E-learning certainly rules. Free could be the beginning of the end of FE as we know it. I think I my just take that offer of Voluntary Redundancy after all.

†For those who didn't do Latin at school, re can mean by these things.

Eight Out Of Ten Cats...

I first had this idea about a year ago. Now I'm beginning to see others saying similar things and, although I haven't quite got my head around exactly what I want to do, here's the gist of it. I see college students at various places where I work every day and must have about 100 at the moment that I'm teaching at some point or other through the week. (My remarks are a general summary of what I find overall and do not necessarily all relate to any one institution). Some students are bright, some have trouble understanding their timetable, never mind assignment instructions. Some arrive on time for their 9 o'clock session, most don't. Some actually do some useful work during the session. Most don't.

Now you're probably already shaking your fist at the screen or shouting at me something to the effect that this shows a good number have no respect for the college rules, me or that they should be disciplined, thrown off the course and that it's all my fault. If I were a better tutor or course manager then everything in the garden would be lovely...

I have, therefore, asked them for some honest reasons as to why they either arrive late and my colleagues for similarly honest reasons as to why the ones that struggle are on the course in the first place. I knew the answers already but it was good to get confirmation. All many students really want to do is stay on a course for as long as they can or until they get a job. They want to go to university next and that will allow a further extension before they really will have to start working full-time. Few have any real hope of getting a decent full-time job when they leave school so they come to college. Those that might have done well at job interviews are probably the ones who also got good grades at school and so could either go straight to university instead or are the few bright sparks who I've got, with grades that were just not quite good enough so they're doing A level equivalent courses at college and then hoping to go to university.

By far the majority didn't do very well at school, maybe scraped through a few GCSEs and now are scraping through another batch of subjects at college. Several at one place had wanted to do something other than what they're enrolled on but the department managers in that area had got their act together and insisted on decent GSCEs and references before taking students on. So the students tried a department where tutors were instructed to take almost anyone because the numbers enrolled had to meet some target. Not meeting the target would mean fewer teaching hours and so fewer tutors. Someone also said that the college has a pastoral role, care in the community and all that. If they didn't take them they'd be roaming the streets so they were doing the local community a service. Some students had some pretty dodgy behaviour history too and, if their parents weren't going to show them some good practice then that was the college's role too. So we finish up with a class comprising a few who genuinely want to study that subject and have the right attitude and a load that don't really and haven't.

Because their parents get quite considerable tax breaks or income support for them remaining in full-time education, and some do still get an Educational Maintenance Allowance or similar weekly payment for attending too, there is massive pressure at home for them to be a college student. Some I've spoken to would, in fact, be content doing some part-time work and gaining some experience in the real world, even tedious jobs, but their parents insist that they stay at college. So stay they do. They've worked out that it is almost impossible to remove them from a course unless they behave absolutely ridiculously badly and, although some can be a pain, they know how to play the game and don't cause trouble on the premises. They've also worked out that they don't need to attend many classes to pass the course. They just need to do a pile of assignments. There are a lot of assignments but no exams so, as long as they hand something in sometime before June that is good enough to get past the basic criteria then that's all that's needed and, remarkably sometimes, they do finally come in with what's required although quite where they've got it from is often a question not easily answered.

Of course, passing, say a level 2 course means that they can move on next year to a level 3 course. That lasts another two years so colleges have got them for three years at least. That's money in the bank for the college, for their parents and a qualification to boot that can probably then get them into one of the less concerned universities where they'll have another three years not having to worry about getting a job and support continuing to trickle into the home too.

Commands from on high about attendance targets and success rates pervade all that tutors do. If someone has them missing attendance ticks from the register then they get hauled before panels and get planted on some action plan form or another that is supposed to correct things. So now tutors don't bother. As long as they see them at some point in the day and know they're alive then they're there and their attendance figures look exemplary. They may not get the maintenance grants (as no-one will sign those unless they turn up) but there are rather fewer of those now and the sums are less significant too.

For success rates, with everyone staying the course and handing in bare pass material then job done, 100% thank you very much. Well, there's always one or two who do drop out, move home, get arrested or something so it's nearer 80-90% but that's OK. The college can publish reasonable figures and everyone's happy.

Except they're not. The bright sparks who want to study and learn more in lessons don't get a chance to when the others are around. Either there's too much noise, not enough pcs or the tutor is constantly having to ask some to stop playing games, turn off the phone, demand explanations of why they are they late etc. Some actually quite like it when the others are really late or don't turn up at all. For example, I can get on really well and move some of the students way forward and discuss progress properly with them. Not all my colleagues, understandably however, allow the others that flexibility and the good ones suffer as a result.

So the others are not so happy either. I may ignore the passenger students and basically let them play the game but they have a rough time with colleagues who don't. So those colleagues don't have the best of days when they're teaching that group either where many just reluctantly sit in the sessions waiting for break time.

All in all, this is a disaster. Something has to change and this is what I'd like to do. Sweep away the classrooms, the timetables and even some of the courses too. Enrol everyone on a new type of programme that provides the skills that employers demand nowadays, in fact have been demanding for years but we don't seem to do a great deal about it. In their first year they do the basics, Maths, English, communication skills and the like plus some other useful modules that may be pertinent to their general career direction. Then they move on to the specific modules related to what they want to achieve. More often than not these would be shaped by employers because they would be helping to fund the education and offering to take some of them on at the end. So, where this applied, the students would be learning what the employers needed them to learn as a priority.

This programme could be a variation of a foundation degree in the UK for many of the existing level 3 candidates currently doing BTEC National Diploma type programmes which seem to be the bedrock for so many Further Education institutions. Attendance ceases to be an issue because the vast majority of learning can take place on-line, at home or wherever. When they want to learn, where they want to learn at a pace they want to learn at. I would suggest that regular 'workshops' are arranged whereby the tutors do meet the students face-to-face and can assist them individually with their progress or specific queries. This is the Work Based learning model that I have seen used effectively at Middlesex University and could be adapted with a little imagination and effort.

Existing institutions could run this type of programme with rooms cleared of pcs and clutter, furnished as pleasant enviornments where tutors and students can chat as well as work, using laptops, tablets, wireless networks etc. as well as a few pcs or macs. Only those institutions that could prove that they can work in the community with local employers to deliver what was required, though, would get the business so I guess many might close. This opens the door to other types of organisation to offer them instead and I don't see any big problem with that, provided that they can set up the appropriate quality controls over assessment and employ the staff to run things.

That brings me to the other matter - that of quality. Once the ridiculous, and, honestly they are laughable, targets and benchmarks for Further Education are binned then we can start to see both honest assessment and students passing because they genuinely have done what they should have done and all the nonsense about attendance and shouting at students who don't turn up at 9am or can't concentrate at 10:15am for some reason virtually disappears. Those who want to learn and get on will do, some quickly, some not so quickly - it's up to them to a large extent. With some guidance they manage their own learning. The quality of such figures as are produced will also be sound as there should be fewer reasons to want to fiddle them. Local competing institutions might even decide to work together. Good grief, that would be different!

Lastly, students on this type of programme would be free to work as and when they wished. As well as providing some much-needed income for themselves and, I suppose, their parents, they could be learning so much more about what work is actually like and, who knows, even get that thing about getting to places on time, behaving responsibly and even getting certain tasks completed on time! Just like they are constantly being asked to do at a college but which few actually ever seem to manage to achieve willingly. Employment is the answer to a lot of things. Employers can sack them. Tutors can't. Employers can offer real incentives that they recognise. Tutors can't. Employers can offer a tangible, realistic prospect of a future. Tutors can't.

So I would like to ask anyone out there who thinks they could support a Universal Foundation Degree programme along these lines to get in touch and, especially, to see whether there are any commercial organisations who might represent potential financial backers at the outset as setting this up takes time and money. I have a few expert e-learning colleagues who are interested in joining me with possible designs for modules that could be validated by a university to deliver some of the foundation modules referred to. Naturally, there will be a mass of other modules required to meet a wide range of future progression needs but, to a large extent, these ought to be available through tweaking of existing course units, modules or whatever.

After briefly outlining the idea to a group of 40 or so students some time ago, at least half of them said that they would have preferred to study that way if they had had the choice. Of the rest, they were evenly divided between those who liked the discipline and organisation of college as it stood and wanted to remain in a school-like environment. The others said they didn't mind, provided that they weren't worse off and could still get a qualification (and I'm not sure they were paying that much attention to what I was saying!) So my guess is that about 8 out of 10 of eligible students would, in fact, go for it - if the funding or grants were there. There does exist funding for part-time Foundation Degree programmes through Finance England but that is related to family income so its not ideal but I suspect there are other sources that those in the know might be able to tap to make such a venture feasible.

As I said, it's time for a change, and hopefully one where I can help make a difference!

£14 million for Analysis, Thematics and Networks, £14000 for an Intern

Surely some of us can get together and apply for some of this huge amount money that is floating around Government departments and The European Commission? This is in addition to the last lot mentioned in my post a couple of weeks ago. It would be easy to grumble about wasting our money but why not actually get some and do something useful with it before somebody else does? And, of course, include me in the deal somewhere!

Local Enterprise Partnership Capacity FundDepartment for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS)

The Fund now has a broad objective of supporting LEPs to address the issues that will best help them deliver local growth. A share of £3 million funding can be used to support a range of activities, including the following:

• Analysis of existing economic data or intelligence to help LEPs prioritise the activities to engage in.
• Analysis of new or emerging industries or clusters.
• Analysis of potential barriers and collection of new economic data. This may include analysis of data that already exists on a local authority level, on an LEP level.
• Training for board members.
• Facilitating SME engagement with the partnership.
• Identifying economic benefits of working between LEPs on infrastructure issues or sectoral priorities.

ACTION! 2012 (UK)Working Title FilmsA full-time intern placement and bursary award to give individuals vital experience and exposure through working in an international production company. The bursary award is £14,000. 

Applicants should be eligible to work within the UK and have some experience in the film development and production sector and a proven commitment to a career in the industry. The internship will take place on a full-time basis for one year. Interviews will be held in London during in the spring. The deadline for receipt of applications is 17 February 2012 at 5pm.

EUROPE FOR CITIZENS 2007-2013The European CommissionActive Citizens for Europe
Town twinning citizens' meetings - indicative budget of €6.1 million.

Networks of twinned towns - indicative budget of €4.5 million

Citizens' projects - indicative budget of €1.3 million

Support measures - indicative budget of €805,000.

Active Civil Society in Europe - support for projects initiated by civil society organisations - indicative budget of €2.8 million.

Active European Remembrance - indicative budget of €2.4 million.

URBACT IIThe European CommissionThematic coverage for this Call includes a series of topics related to the Europe 2020 strategy for innovative, sustainable and inclusive cities. Project proposals must select from one of the following topics:

Innovative cities1. Promoting innovation and the knowledge economy.
2. Promoting social innovation.
3. Promoting employment and supporting labour mobility.
4. Promoting entrepreneurship.

Sustainable cities1. Developing low carbon and energy-efficient urban economies.
2. Enhancing urban planning performance and an efficient public administration.

Inclusive cities1. Promoting the active inclusion of specific groups.
2. Fostering regeneration of deprived neighbourhoods and combating poverty.

The total eligible budget for a Thematic Network is €800,000.

The end of 'the cat ate my memory stick, Sir'

Sometimes ideas just occur to you. There you are, sitting at traffic lights, wondering why they're still red when there's nothing else in sight and even a well-driven Ferrari wouldn't collide with you if you jumped them, and you realise that you've thought of something that you really ought to have thought of years ago. But didn't.

So there I was, similar scene, and there this idea was too. Getting work out of students seems ridiculously difficult. I mean, it's not asking much that they print something each week or write some notes and hand them in, or even keep them for a while and give me stuff maybe once every few weeks. I say it's not asking much but, thinking about it, anything involving a presentation file with more than half a screen print seems to gum up the printing works for a whole lesson and, of course, the next few too until you get someone to clear it or a grey-striped print does eventually emerge. Then there's their own well-honed excuses: no longer do dogs have to eat assignments - we have USBs that can be left at home, break, especially those the College issued at Induction, we have networks that mysteriously lose folders, especially in the early weeks and variations on similarly unlikley catastrophes that no doubt will be covered by parents' Contents Insurance policies before long. That reminds me: I need to upgrade my Public Liability Insurance as I am finding it increasingly difficult to avoid using really quite bad language when such lame excuses are presented, and especially when the printer only does the 'er' bit and forget it has a pretty vital first syllable.

Now I tell everyone about Google Docs and blogs from Week One and some do use them but, and this is the thing, if they all, one lesson soon, simply transfer all their tasks and work in progress to Google Docs or a blog then (i) I would get their stuff automatically without waiting for printers, (ii) I could see how they're actually getting on with tasks (many 'haven'y quite finished, Sir') and (iii) marking is dead easy on-line anywhere I happen to be with no carting folders home when I think I'll have time to mark but don't or leave them at work when I might have.

Blogs, particularly, are great for displaying images and more visual stuff that looks crap in crappy grey-stripe-scale. With units like Digital Graphics and Web production to cover it's virtually essential unless I can persuade Art & Design to be nice to a bunch of lads disturbing them and their nice colour printers every week which I never quite manage to pluck up the courage to suggest aloud.

This is linked to my previous post threatening to 'do' all their assignments and I was thinking where to start. This is a good place. There's nothing very new here at all, folks, I know. Just the determination to do it.

Now, when are those lights going to change?!

DIY

My National Diploma students are now half-way through their first year, or 2nd years are three-quarters of the way through the whole 18 units and the vast majority still seem to have pretty empty folders in the 70s metal filing cabinet. So I thought I'd do all the assignments myself - for the units I teach, of course! If I can knock out something suitable in a week or so between ILPs, ICRs, SARs, LATs and whatever other initialled documents are requested when staff return from February sojurns to pastures greener and warmer or whiter and colder then that might convince some students that they really ought to do some work.

If I do manage the 15 assignments I've set them reasonably quickly then I'll be much better placed to push forward the suggestion that that's what all tutors should be doing.

Obviously, I shall be marking mine myself!! Just in case.

Old chairs, a new Principal and chocolate cake

My son has secured a massive number of followers to his 'School Life' blog with his hilarious accounts of daily activities, or should I say, mischief, in class. So I thought I'd better keep up and, although I can't see me managing a daily post, I will see what I can do each week at least.

The highlight of the week in Further Education was the new Principal wandering in to a 9 o'clock class. Luckily he left it until 9:30am but there were still only 7 people in the room. I hid the register which showed a list of 12 names under my scarf. By sheer chance I was wearing a smart suit and looking respectable compared to one colleague who had not only had a long night out on the tiles but appeared to be wearing the same clothes still! Not that you should judge by appearances, of course.

The new chap's first impression would have been of a highly animated lecturer performing around the the room in great style. What he didn't realise was that my animation had been brought on by my amazement at the blank expressions and 'Please don't ask me' faces I'd got when I woke them up to ask what they thought might be a problem with a file that called itself kamasutra.pps.exe - disregarding the obvious. "OK," I tried, "what's the .pps bit?" Blanks. Finally I got one person to mumble PowerPoint when I suggested it might be something like .ppt. As for .exe, well, the nearest I got was "Excel, Sir?"

Hey, these were not just Computing students but 2nd year, Level 3 Computing students!! Well, one wasn't. She was doing 'A' levels and tends to come into my classes for some reason best known to herself, probably entertainment. They really should have been taught and learned what those extensions were all about by now. They had only just the previous week completed their UCAS applications and one had already had an offer or two. Hope it was for a Cookery course or something. Anything but Computing.

The original question had been about the news that day about a new trojan doing the rounds which I thought I'd talk about while the latecomers got out of bed and eventually arrived. The arrival of the Principal saved me using words that they'd have needed a medical dictionary to interpret accurately and saved them further embarrassment. He seems a nice enough chap but I was rather disappointed by his first words which were the dreaded Health & Safety. Some bottles had been left from the night before on desks and he was concerned about drinks and computer equipment. I thanked the Lord that he hadn't appeared at the 1pm session when you can seldom see the desks for ASDA bags, cups and plastic trays of foul-smelling lunch.

I also adjusted my scarf to cover my coffee cup.

He then said something about someone's bag perhaps not being best left on the desktop either before asking them how they were all getting on. "What would you like to improve?" he asked. "Good." I thought. "A chance for them to tell him how lousy the furniture and decor is." Someone said something about wanting extra sessions. I even picked up a chair and held it up behind him, pointing at it frantically to try and get them to say what I wanted them to but without success. I can't imagine how stupid I must have looked but there you go. I did try. Every single chair in the room had a broken back. Not just the plastic cover bit that dangles at right angles to the back and catched you just where you'd prefer it hadn't when a student whizzes round as you pass, but the whole damn things seem to have been built out of cardboard and cloth that dissolves in ASDA salt and vinegar crisp fumes.

The week ended with me staying with a colleague in our office until the caretakers threw us out. She has been struggling with an assignment for her PGCE for weeks. It looked so tediously boring and she didn't seem to have much of a clue where to start with pretty abysmal notes from her tutor (from another institution). She hadn't attended many lectures (or if she had attended she hadn't been particularly attentive, I suspect. You know, female, early 20s, phone, friends . . .they all tend to be more interesting than some lecture.) But there was nothing of much value in any of the notes she'd been given and no on-line stuff either. We had to start at square one. I think I managed about 3000 words in 3 hours which wasn't bad going. The poor girl had to try and find references for all the statements I'd made but did a reasonable job until she got hungry and chocolate cake interrupted the search. On the way we encountered some definitions of a whole range of curricula. the language used by the author was diabolically obstruse, almost as if she wanted it to be impenetrable and so appear so academically Level 7. Now I like to think of myself as pretty good with words but these definitions had me stumped for quite a while. Once we'd managed to dissect what the woman was actually trying to say, one or two were quite interesting. there was a null curriculum which appealed to me. It was what we don't teach. What we leave out of a course of study. Loved that one. I didn't think much of concomitant curriculum, though, and began to wonder why we have this need to use obscure words as some form of short term or expression when it would be simpler by far, and much more likely to be understood by students such as my friend, to say something like what is taught or gained from experiences in the home.

Anyway, the point is that such dreadful work turned out to be really quite refreshing after all as I was forced to have to explain ridiculously weird expressions by making up examples almost on the spot (she was an impatient girl) and many of them did feature chocolate cake. I do like a challenge from time to time.

SARS Farce

Hundreds, no thousands, of middle managers across Further Education (and maybe schools too) are probably locking themselves away in their rooms or burning the midnight gin at home on something they call SARs. Because virtually everything in education has to be reduced to a set of initials, like I'm sure STUDENT came not from the Latin studere, to be diligent, strive after, but seldom turn up daily eventually never there or something along those lines, SAR stands for Self-Assessment Review. It's a set of facts and figures and comments that every curriculum area has to do within an organisation. All the data comes from records maintained by the institution but, of course, they get re-written again here. Then, all the individual forms, which can be a dozen pages long, get sent to someone at the place who has to combine them all into a single document which gets sent off to a government agency and, amongst other things, can form the baseline against which people like OFSTED may assess progress.

Collating the data and setting targets for improvement, commenting on things that may or may not have gone well are all sound enough and the general concept is a sensible enough management procedure but what really strikes me as crazy is the way in which the process is handled. My guess is that just about everyone will be filling in Word forms. Except they won't even be real Word forms (the type where you can type in boxes to update a document rather than editing the whole thing). Even if they were decent Word forms, though, the business of typing, printing, putting in pigeon holes and then some poor person having to extract bits or somehow make sense of the whole before transferring it all elsewhere (never mind what could be several interim approval meetings) is crazy in this day and age. It's bonkers, which is more than mad.

Firstly, all the data should be filled in before anyone gets the forms. It really shouldn't be re-entered again and again. Some institutions may have figured that one. Let's hope so. But still we have people handling, many literally, all this paperwork.

I say it's time they forget worshipping at the statue of Word. Why not use a Google document that lots of people can collaborate on? All that each manager needs to add will be comments, actions etc. in the areas related to their activity and maybe check data and other standard stuff. As they progress with the on-line document it can be shared with others and, as necessary, older versions retrieved if someone makes a mess. Then, when it's ready, they can share it with the person collating all of them or anyone else for that matter.

No need for any repetition or printing. No slow opening e-mail attachments, confusing file names, folders full of awkward files with names with [1] or [2] after them because people have used the same file name . . .

And then we need to think of the government agencies or departments involved. Why don't they demand a more efficient method of submission? It must be almost as crazy for them to have to sift through all the inbox attachments.

Everyone involved in the whole damn process really should know better and be setting a good example to others. New e-learning technology has the answers to this. Use them. It won't totally remove the stress from the faces of my colleagues but would make everyone's job a whole lot better.

Wake up, folks. Let's end the SARs farce.

Forums

I have never liked the plural fora which I believe Jumbo Jenkins, my Latin master, would have preferred. But this isn't about Latin, but to report on some interesting discussions in the East about what should happen about some E-learning Forums that we have in the Six Counties.



Briefly, there has been the E-learning Forum and a Technical Managers' Forum for many years and a Staff Development Managers E-learning Forum appeared on the scene a year or so ago. For a long time the first two were so well attended that it was sometimes difficult to get everyone into the rooms provided and also difficult to get a word in edgeways sometimes as there was so much to talk about and so many people good at talking about it. Recently, though, numbers have plummeted. It may be due to some venues being at one end or the other of this large region and dates being inconvenient but it certainly isn't due to people not needing to have a place to discuss issues and share developments or ideas.

It's more likely to be because it's quite difficult nowadays to find time to get away for a day. ILT managers or those in relevant roles are now inundated with training staff, writing or implementing strategies, interpreting initiatives or, more often now, teaching and simply find it impossible to spare much time. Before they needed to get to grips with things and see how others were getting on in order to get on with confidence and the sort of meetings we had were pretty much an essential part of the job and not as much queried by anyone who might have been required to authorise the trips and absence.

Strangely, the very pace of developments in this field, the advance of Web2.0, 3.0? even and all the problems that using all these wonderful new tools throw up actually means we should be doing more talking and comparing of notes but with all the Agency support drying up, project funding disappearing apart from the expert bid-writers fayre, LSN in Regional limbo and Becta so quiet one wonders whether the H2G2 mice have taken over at Coventry.

There had been a steady attendance at the SD Forum but myview is that the individuals would have felt just as at home at the other Forum and so I'm inclined to suggest that we have just the one to which everyone can be invited. RSC Eastern's lovely staff help run it and do all the arrangements, the last of the Agency e-Mohicans in many respects but hopefully with a better prognosis. We could have more meetings and build an excellent discussion and local support network that could be a good example for the rest of the country.

At a time when the Government seems to be telling those who they rain money onto that there is no need to fund more ILT 'Champs' and there is a huge workload now in just writing and implementing strategies and training staff and fewer hours allocated in which to do so, it is not easy to go against the flow and say that a day out with colleagues elsewhere would be useful. But we shall try.

£200,000 would come in handy

JISC have a couple of bid opportunities that I'm interested in. Here are the basic information summaries:

Institutional exemplars
Projects to develop exemplar technology and practice solutions to large-scale institutional problems (in the areas of administration for teaching and learning and for digital repositories).
Total funds: £1,400,000
4-5 projects £250,000 - £300,000 available per project
18 month duration

Use of e-Learning to Support Lifelong Learners (round 2)
Projects to implement and evaluate the cross-institutional use of e-learning to support lifelong learning, including the provision of personalised learning experiences and flexible delivery to support progression, widening participation and work-based learning.
Total funds: £1,200,000
c. 6 projects, up to £200,000 available per project
18 month duration

Apologies for copying them from the JISC documents - if you really want to read everything, go to this link.

I feel that a lot of what several colleagues and myself are doing: looking at ways to utilise Web2.0 and similar developments in e-learning and considering ways to cut through the crazy repetition of data entry both within and across organisations fits well with the general thrust of what JISC seek to encourage. However, I'm just me and the institution I work for doesn't have 400FTEs in HE so maybe someone out there would like to discuss a joint venture I can contribute to?

Whither LSN now?

The National e-Learning Support network Co-ordinators have been asked to contribute ideas as to where LSN should concentrate the e-learning and technology team's efforts in 2007/8. This year has been dominated by the continual development of eCPD, about which I have written separately, and the 'Framework'. What next? My view is that we need to get out more. In many senses of the phrase! One of the great things about the old Q projects was the comparative freedom I had to help FE Colleges develop their ideas and I had time to visit them and talk about solving their problems rather than the somewhat false ones 'created' by awkward eCPD project requirements. The money wasn't much but I felt that I was useful. Hopefully we can get back to simple support in explaining and understanding what all this new technology can do, with the main effort being made to help those to whom it really is still 'new'. Just as ICT skills really do need urgent updating as so much has changed since we did CLAIT and IBT II or III, so too has all the ways those skils can be applied. Indeed, so much is so much simpler now and I feel that those whom we never really reached in the old days can now be inspired as they could, with minimal training, do so much more than before with the newer, more user-friendly, and exciting tools and applications. So my vote is for a return to Q projects, with minimal bureaucracy and well-managed advanced promotion so that we can make sure that not just the bid-watchers apply.