Excellence Gateway
This case study was produced by JISC RSC (Regional Support Centres) Northern on behalf of the Excellence Gateway
Sector relevance: Further education colleges
Keywords: Improving teaching and learning, improving institutional effectiveness, improving responsiveness to learners, curriculum development, development of teaching and learning resources, teaching, training coaching and learning, e-learning materials, learning resources
Samantha Lavery, Business Lecturer at South Tyneside College, is passionate about making learning as much fun as possible and uses a range of interactive learning materials to enhance her students' learning experience. She develops some learning materials herself but also purchases commercial material from a variety of suppliers. She has recently won the RSC Northern e-Learning Award for Bringing Fun to Learning. The RSC Northern Awards celebrate exceptional contributions to e-learning and education in the North East of England.
South Tyneside College is a large further education college in South Tyneside in the United Kingdom, with its main sites in South Shields and Hebburn. The College offers part-time and full-time courses for both young students and adults. The College was formerly known as the Marine and Technical College, and was founded by Dr Thomas Winterbottom, a former surgeon-general in Sierra Leone. The College is still one of the largest merchant navy training colleges in the United Kingdom, and attracts students from as far afield as India and Africa.
Samantha wanted to bring more fun to her A-level Business and Economics lessons to motivate her students and enhance their learning experience. It helps to grab their attention and can improve retention rates. Interactive learning materials, like games, also offer advantages such as learning through collaboration and doing.
South Tyneside College allocated a budget to bring more interactive learning resources to the College and Samantha was appointed e-Learning Specialist within the Business Studies unit of the College.
Samantha has always had an interest in computers and enjoys creating her own interactive learning materials, such as games and puzzles. Her preferred programme is Microsoft PowerPoint for creating interactive games, but she also uses other Microsoft Office programmes such as Photo Story, Word and Excel.
Samantha keeps her games bang up-to-date as she uses popular TV programmes like Celebrity Big Brother, Dr Who and the Simpsons as inspiration. She also incorporates clips from YouTube and popular music.
Samantha would also like to introduce virtual reality into her lesson plans by enabling students to set-up and run their own business in Second Life. Second Life is a virtual world and is accessible via the Internet. Users can interact with each other through avatars. Second Life has an internal currency, the Linden dollar (L$). L$ can be used to buy, sell, rent or trade land or goods and services with other users. So students can take risks with virtual L$ rather than the College's actual money!
A lot of Samantha's time when not teaching is spent researching and reviewing e-learning games, and what is available for free and how it can be adjusted for her own classes. One of her favourite websites is www.classtools.net where all interactive learning materials are free and are very easy to adapt to your own lessons.
When purchasing interactive learning materials, www.tutor2u.net is a popular website for games aimed at business students. Their game ‘Hot Seat' is a firm favourite with Samantha's students. The game involves managing a football club and students learn how to make decisions.
Samantha plans her lessons methodologically and usually starts her lessons with a quick game to get the students into thinking 'businessy' without feeling like they are doing any work.
Samantha's students enjoy playing the games during the lessons. Some games are played for a shorter time than others to avoid students getting bored and the game becoming repetitive.
Lecturers from other subject areas have also shown interest in using interactive learning materials in their lessons and many of Samantha's learning materials are now being shared through the College's virtual learning environment (VLE). Not everybody is as confident using technology, or knows where to find resources, so Samantha also organises a weekly evening workshop for her colleagues and has a ‘slot' on the cross-college conference to share her e-learning knowledge.
Incorporating interactive learning materials has proven to keep the students' interest up and they don't feel as much pressure. For the first time, several A2-level students commented that they were looking forward to taking their final exams.
Samantha said:
"People may think that business and economics are potentially uninspiring subjects, but it really shouldn't be that way. I always focus on getting the students to enjoy lessons by presenting key information in a fun way. Business and economics are subjects that can be brought to life really quickly and I'm really passionate about them so I like to pass on my enthusiasm to my students. One example of this is a game that we play to hammer home important information - I use a business version of Family Fortunes on an interactive whiteboard to help students remember the top answers to vital business questions, such as issues affecting demand. In this way you can really engage students and get them thinking about business in a fun way. This, in turn, really helps them to remember the information they need."
"People may think that business and economics are potentially uninspiring subjects, but it really shouldn't be that way. I always focus on getting the students to enjoy lessons by presenting key information in a fun way. Business and economics are subjects that can be brought to life really quickly and I'm really passionate about them so I like to pass on my enthusiasm to my students.
One example of this is a game that we play to hammer home important information - I use a business version of Family Fortunes on an interactive whiteboard to help students remember the top answers to vital business questions, such as issues affecting demand. In this way you can really engage students and get them thinking about business in a fun way. This, in turn, really helps them to remember the information they need."
Classroom learning tools and games provided by South Tuneside College
TIP: Have you rated how useful this case study is? Use the star-rating facility, which features in the grey bar that runs across the top of every page of this site. (To rate a case study, or any page in the Excellence Gateway, you need to log in to the site first.)
Disclaimer: The Regional Support Centres (RSC) and the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) support the development of educational e-learning. We may refer to specific products, processes or services. Such references are examples and are not endorsements or recommendations and should not be used for product endorsement purposes.
Source: Learning and Skills Improvement Service
You can find this page and download any referenced resources from the Excellence Gateway at http://excellence.org.uk/194884.
