19th November 2009

What people said about the event
“It provided an impartial view of the tool that made me see the pros and cons”.
“I’m glad I had an opportunity to put my questions straight to a Becta representative. I now know a lot more about how the tool can be applied”.
“I appreciated the opportunity to play with the tool and discuss it with other colleagues”.

As part of the RSC UK support to the Becta Generator initiative, this event was the first of two workshops prepared for the London community this academic year. Organised by the RSC London, the event was attended by Lisa Tyler, Becta Project Manager for FE and Skills.

The workshop was facilitated RSC London and provided delegates from across the sectors an opportunity to explore the tool and discuss how it could be used.

“A Becta initiative developed with providers and national partners, Generator is the technology improvement leadership tool for further education and skills” (Becta).

With the increased demand for Generator reviews seen in some recent funding bids (TEN, CAMEL, MoLeNET), delegates were keen to know more about the tool.

Pre-event survey

Prior to the event delegates were surveyed on their experience of Generator to date. In the survey, delegates expressed several reasons for considering undertaking a Generator review, themed under:

1. Benchmarking
2. Self-evaluation
3. Developing senior managers awareness
4. Strategy development

The event had a balanced mixture of RSC input, delegates' hands-on and Q&A, which promoted a deeper understanding of the tool and how it could be used by learning providers of all sectors. Delegate participation was enhanced by the use of EtherPad, which allowed everyone to share views, queries and concerns as the day progressed. Some of the issues raised were discussed and an unedited copy of the notes has been sent to Becta to inform its initiative.

• Generator reviews should be led by a member of the senior management team. The Generator Primary User should be either a senior manager or sponsored by one
• The review should be representative of the key stakeholders in the institution.
• Any review taken and submitted by one individual is unlikely to be a true representation of what’s going on across the organisation
• Reviews must be well planned and managed to ensure wider representation and produce the most accurate picture of the learning provider
• Collaboration could be more easily achieved by seeking group consensus before responding to the survey online, perhaps by printing out the questions to use as prompts for discussions about the state of technology within the area. Then, the lead person would transfer the answers to the review online and ‘commit’ it so that others within the learning providers could see
• To overcome time constraints, a full review could be planned over a period of time, when key managers would come together to tackle one or two of the business areas at a time.