An Excellence Gateway case study

An Excellence Gateway case study

This case study was produced by JISC RSC (Regional Support Centres) East Midlands on behalf of the Excellence Gateway.

Sector relevance: Adult and community learning, further education colleges

Keywords: Improving teaching and learning, mobile technology, mobile PCs, recognising and recording progress and achievement (RRPA), curriculum development, learner support, reviewing learners' progress, quality improvement

Summary

Nottinghamshire County Council's Adult and Community Learning Service (ACLS) working in partnership with North Nottinghamshire College have had a successful start in a pilot project using small mobile PCs to carry out teaching and learning in the dispersed community venues that it uses to deliver learning.

The new devices have helped incorporate information learning technology (ILT) into settings where it has often been lacking historically, and more tutors are getting the devices as the project expands.

About Nottinghamshire County Council's Adult and Community Learning Service & North Nottinghamshire College

Nottinghamshire County Council's Adult and Community Learning Service (ACLS) works with schools, further education colleges, community colleges, the Workers Education Association (WEA) and a wide range of voluntary and community groups to provide learning that meets learner needs in the heart of Nottinghamshire communities.

Many of its courses in the north of the county are delivered by the Community Learning team based at North Nottinghamshire College. They offer courses in the local Bassetlaw community at a variety of venues and cover a wide range of subject areas, including IT skills, crafts, basic food hygiene and life, family and health skills.

The challenge

Much delivery in the adult and community learning (ACL) sector takes place in community centres, village halls and schools where there is often a lack of IT facilities.

National Ofsted inspection reports have highlighted that limited ILT was being used by tutors within ACL across the country. There was, therefore, a need to find a more mobile way of having ILT equipment to hand for tutors.

The kit

The ASUS eeePC has proved a valuable addition to the classroom for teaching and learning One of the possible solutions to this was the new lightweight eeePC, an ultra-mobile laptop that had just come on to the market at the time. The ASUS 900 model is one of a range weighing less than 1kg with a 23cm screen. It comes with the Linux operating system but can have Windows XP installed as an alternative. It has a 1.3 megapixels inbuilt webcam, an SD/MMC card slot and microphone, and headphone ports.

Applications installed include: Microsoft Works, Moviemaker, Acrobat Reader 8, Skype, Microsoft Media Player and Internet Explorer version 6. Microsoft Office does not come as standard, however, there is PowerPoint viewer.


The ASUS eeePC has a 4GB Solid State Disk (SSD) giving a robust piece of kit with a fast boot-up time. It is virtually shock proof and gives out very little noise. Using a dongle, a USB plug-in to connect to the Internet, allows use in any location without the need for wireless network access. However, the laptop is Wi-Fi-enabled and has an Ethernet port.

As with many pieces of kit there are restrictions too. The keyboard is only 20.5cm across compared with a standard one of about 28cm. It should be used as a secondary device rather than for prolonged periods. Battery life is limited offering a maximum of two hours continued use and opening multiple browser tabs may affect performance.

The activity

At the same time that this dilemma was being considered the JISC Regional Support Centre in the East Midlands launched a pilot scheme for ACL providers in the region to have the long-term loan of an eeePC in order to explore the potential offered by its portability, wireless connectivity and webcam.

Nottinghamshire ACLS were one of the ACL providers who volunteered to take part in the scheme. In order to decide how they would use the one eeePC available per ACL provider, Alan Clark, Development Manager at ACLS, organised a competition as part of the ACLS Tutor Conference for the service, in which members of staff could propose how they would use the device.

From a healthy selection of entries, Melanie Hancock, Community Manager at North Nottinghamshire College (NNC) was chosen.

As Community Manager, Melanie has a base in NNC with a PC and some of the sites that the service uses have IT suites, but many of the sites don't have any IT facilities. In the past a laptop was available but, due to its size and weight, it wasn't really used that much. Now the eeePC fits this gap nicely and Melanie always has suitable ILT equipment to hand.

In the first two months of having the eeePC, Melanie has been using it in a number of different ways, both in and out of the classroom.

  • Preloading the eeePC with content - by having images and film clips already on the device, the tutors have been able to give more life-like demonstrations and resources to their learners during the class. For example this has been done with Netball coaching. The class watch a demonstration, and then perform it themselves, before reviewing the film clip again to see if they thought they replicated it.


  • Capturing images of the class during its duration - this has allowed the learners to see what they've achieved in the space of that class and to show to other people afterwards. For example, this has been done with the Flower Arranging classes, with a set of learners who traditionally have not used ILT. This is also a good way of recognising and recording progress and achievement (RARPA), as the images can be saved onto a disk for assessment. In the future the hope is to show evidence of meeting aims and objectives of classes.


  • Capturing film during the class and playing it back - whilst this hasn't been done as yet, the plan for the Healthy Eating classes in the future is for the initial demonstration of the cooking to be filmed. This can then be replayed on the eeePC, either on the device itself or hooked up to a projector and screen. Learners will be able to check the steps of the demonstration again by watching the clip.


  • Showing learners who missed a class what was done - this helps keeps learners up to date with what the class is doing. By showing the learners what happened previously, it helps to keep learners involved and boosts retention. This is particularly helpful for those learners who are too shy to ask for a repeat of what they've missed from the week before.


  • Having resources and schemes of work easily available - these are very handy to have whilst in the classroom, as the tutor can refer to them if the need arises.

Outside of the classroom, Melanie has been using the eeePC on-the-go for general purposes, for meetings and for events.

The eeePC is particularly useful for visually showing what the different classes have been achieving, predominantly through pictures, rather than film, at the moment. At events, showing actual examples of learners doing activities has proven to be a real aid in recruiting more learners, particularly for example with craft courses where it is a lot easier to use visuals rather than words.

Melanie Hancock (North Nottinghamshire College) showing Alan Clark (Nottinghamshire ACLS) how the ASUS eeePC has been used in Adult and Community classes.Similarly Melanie has found the eeePC an invaluable tool in her contact with community leaders and school teachers. The nature of ACL is that the service provided is bespoke and the courses are decided upon during the year rather than at the outset. Being able to show examples of learners has meant that other community centres have opted to have the same class run at their venue.

The ability to show what has been taking place in class has been really important for internal meetings. For example, after viewing what learners had been doing in class, Sue Green, Head of Service for NALS was impressed:

"The eeePC has proved to be an effective way of illustrating the progress being made by learners and to market the benefits of engaging in learning."

In team meetings Melanie is able to show other staff how she has been using the eeePC. This generates discussion on how else it could be used and the team are constantly coming up with new ideas.

The outcomes

Melanie has found several advantages and disadvantages to using the eeePC.

The main advantages:

  • "The size is great - I can even fit it into my handbag!"


  • "Because of the size and the fact it is lightweight, it makes it so portable that I can take it with me everywhere I go. It's especially good for those who suffer from back problems."


  • "I feel safer with the eeePC, as when you're carrying a laptop everyone can see it, which can be worrying when you are out at remote locations in the evenings."


  • "It's helping us move away from paper resources a little."


  • "It links in with the other ILT equipment that we're using in our classes."


  • "In ACL there is little technical support when you're out and about, so the simplicity of the eeePC helps build confidence with staff."


  • "Most importantly of all, it engages both staff and learners - at the moment everyone wants to get their hands on one for their class.”

Some of the problems that Melanie and her learners have experienced with it:

  • "The keyboard is fairly small, so people who don't have small or dextrous fingers can find it hard to type. This would be especially the case with our learners who have learning difficulties."


  • "Also the screen size is fairly small - but we've tried to get round that by using projectors where possible. Without this the problem is particularly acute for our learners with visual difficulties."


  • "The learners were a little unsure at first about being photographed or filmed. But after a couple of weeks they became comfortable. This was probably helped by the relatively discreet nature of the device."

"One of the main drivers for us is to help parents become positive learning role models for their children and encourage them by spending time with them in the evenings and in some cases even volunteering in schools. We've found that the introduction of the eeePC has acted as a spur to our learners and it's giving them more confidence."

Feedback from learners has been positive. For example, all the learners at the Elkesley craft class agreed that the device was a very good idea and didn't feel it interfered with the lesson at all. They felt that, if anything, it was a good addition to the class as it allowed them to view their progress through the video and stills taken.

The impact

Alan Clark at Nottinghamshire ACLS was so impressed by the progress made by Melanie and her team that very early on he investigated getting more devices for other tutors:

"The eeePC was sparking lots of ideas and everyone was wanting one, so we decided to purchase more, as we could clearly see the impact they were having."

All the original entrants to the competition for the RSC East Midlands sponsored eeePC were contacted again and offered the chance to take up a device. These tutors are spread across the county and teach a variety of different subjects including Health and Beauty, Art, IT, Food Hygiene, and family learning.

One provider, Advocacy to Engagement, who work with learners with learning difficulties and disabilities (LLDD) plans to use the Asus to film learner feedback rather than getting them to complete an evaluation form.

In the future Melanie and her team are hoping to develop the potential of using the eeePC in the observation of teaching and learning, which will involve a fair amount of effort and building up the confidence of tutors. Again due to the success of the pilot a further two eeePC devices have been allocated to the team so that more tutors can start using them.

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