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RSC London and AoC London Region Seminar
19th November 2008
Showcasing Innovative Curriculum Delivery in London - AoC Conference 2008
“It’s all about Learning and Teaching”
“This is the best session that I have been to at this conference”
“This is what I come to see and hear"
“This workshop clearly shows that innovation in learning comes from the colleges, and not from the government”
The JISC RSC London and AoC London Region presented one of the master class seminars at the AoC conference in Birmingham on the 19th November 2008. Three colleges from the London region – Stanmore, South Thames and Lewisham, showcased examples of their innovative curriculum delivery stimulating a lively discussion on the use of technology, the importance of promoting creativity in teaching and the support needed to harness innovation.
Sue Parker (Regional Director AoC London Region) and Andrew Williams (Head of ILT Curriculum Development Kingston College FE and Chair of the Advisory Group for Regional Support Centre London) welcomed the delegates to the seminar. The session was expertly facilitated by John Gray.
Stanmore College
‘YouBrief - assignment setting in the 21st century!’
Jacqui Mace (Principal), Martin Spillane (Lecturer) and David Borrow (Lecturer).
In September 2007, Stanmore launched their ‘Study Space’ (based on a Moodle VLE) for their learners. To make the resources more interactive, Martin and David have used simple, cheap video cameras to provide audio clips to assist learners in their understanding and production of set projects.
Martin and David demonstrated the cameras and their ease of use using a visualiser and taking a video of a short interview with John Gray. Staff and learners at Stanmore now use this technology for demonstrations and collection of evidence. The Principal herself has taken the lead and produces videos for her weekly briefings for staff and learners.
Martin’s advice - “Make things easy for the staff and they will use the technology to try innovative things”.
South Thames College
‘LifeWise – Guns, Knives & Mobile Phones’
Sue Rimmer (Principal) and Mary Zinovieff (Head of School - Creative Industries, Humanities, 14-16 Programme).
South Thames have been running an innovative and highly successful cross-borough project involving collaboration between the college, local secondary schools and community groups on the theme of “Gun and Knife Crime” – an issue which is impacting communities across South London.
The “LIFEWISE” project involved 200 young people working together to produce materials for an awareness raising campaign. Some specific outputs were a theatre production, a CD of rap music, a logo and a showcase event at the London Assembly.
The project was helped by a successful LSC Molenet project bid and each learner was issued with a smart phone to allow them to capture digital images, MP3's and videos to work on the projects. The use of technology that was familiar to them was found be very motivating for the learners.
Further information about the project can be found at http://www.wandsworthclc.org/gunandknife/.
Lewisham College
‘Learning through innovation’
Tim Potter (Deputy Principal), Patricia Forrest (Head of E-Learning and Innovation) and Myron Agyri (Multimedia Developer).
Partly funded by another one of the LSC's Molenet projects, Lewisham College issued PDAs with pre-loaded content and mobile office applications to work based learners in different curriculum areas. The content, including video clips, text files and interactive quizzes, was produced in collaboration with employers by the multi-media team with the help of media students. Learners in the school of computing embedded the use of PDAs by recording course content in and outside the classroom using SMS text, camera, voice recording and a media board. As a direct result of engaging learners more effectively, attendance rates for the groups involved with this project increased by almost 10%.
The College is now looking at the sustainability of using mobile devices across the rest of the college by:
• Creating an infrastructure to support individual learners own devices.
• Use of blue tooth for transmitting content from tutors to learners’ devices.
• Peer assessment and file sharing using Google docs.
• CPD for the use of mobile technology, responding to individual staff needs.
Supporting innovation
- It is important for senior managers to lead by example. A Principal trying things out can certainly encourage others to do so (see Jacqui’s Vlog).
- Learning and teaching should always be the focus of the college. As college leaders, we need to provide:
- easy access to technology
- easy access to training for staff
- time and space for innovation to take place
