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05/12/06 | College Wins SFEU Award
MDC Learning Systems have a long standing partnership with Forth Valley College and are very pleased to announce their recent success....
Commitment to training and best practice in a major five-year project to establish a pervasive IT presence in its classrooms across multiple sites has helped Forth Valley College secure a prestigious national award.
‘Putting IT in the Classroom’, which was launched two years ago with the aim of ‘embedding a culture of ICT pervasiveness in the classroom through innovative staff development and support’, picked up the SFEU’s 2005 Professional Learning and Enhancement Award – sponsored by Microsoft!
The project was initiated to combat one of the key challenges faced by most education establishments - how to ensure that all teachers/lecturers embrace the idea of using IT to offer a modern, blended approach to education.
To bring about the turnaround in culture required, Forth Valley recognised that innovative and resource-intensive approaches to staff development and support were vital and, subsequently, developed a groundbreaking model of good practice to enable the required culture changes to take place. Key elements of this were:
- A five year strategy comprising annual Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) Staff Development Implementation plans
- The design and delivery of regular, targeted and specific staff development workshops
- The use of a Virtual Campus Help Squad to work on an individual basis with staff in their workrooms to embed the new knowledge and skills required to effect a change in culture.
- Extensive resources invested in developing and supporting staff to achieve specific ILT staff development appraisal objectives.
Linda McKay, Principal of Forth Valley College, says: “We are delighted that the SFEU has recognised the innovative nature of the College’s approach to the use of IT in the learning environment and I congratulate the College team responsible for its creation and implementation.”
Alison Inglis, Flexible Learning Manager, of the Learning Services Department, who manages the project, says: “We have successfully introduced a challenging concept by the use of a long-term plan with an innovative strategy. Over the last two academic sessions, this approach has seen most of the permanent academic staff being actively involved in using the VLE to support learning and teaching in the classroom.
“The College VLE is now regarded by staff as a positive and inspiring tool for enhancing the learning experience of our learners and, while we recognise there are still challenges ahead, we feel we have created very strong foundations for success.”
Benefits gained by for those involved in the project, include:
- Ability to use ILT in the classroom to enhance the student experience.
- Increased confidence and experience in using ILT in their teaching.
- Conversion of handouts to interactive online materials with links to websites, Powerpoints and other online resources.
- Upload of course materials to Virtual Campus (VLE) for staff/student access.
- Creation of online formative and summative assessments.
- Tagging and storing of electronic resources (learning objects) in a content database for future retrieval and reuse. A College-wide, central, shareable bank of electronic resources is now available for the first time.
- Researching and storing School/subject related online resources, eg. NLN and other learning objects.
- Development of online Learning Guides.
- Provision of School and course information online.
- Use of Virtual Campus (VLE) communication tools to support learners.
ILT means: Information and Communications Technology in Learning and Teaching
http://www.forthvalley.ac.uk/ForthValley/news/latest/College+Wins+SFEU+Award.htm