Excellence Gateway
This case study was produced by JISC RSC (Regional Support Centres) East Midlands on behalf of the Excellence Gateway.
Sector relevance: Work-based learning
Keywords: Improving teaching and learning, improving responsiveness, mobile learning, curriculum development, reflective practice, diagnostic assessment
Care Training East Midlands has successfully developed a carry-case that has all the necessary information learning technology (ILT) equipment to set-up a classroom wherever the learners are based.
This portable set-up has been developed over two years and embedded into the curriculum. Learners have become more engaged since the introduction of this additional way of teaching, and pass rates have risen significantly.
Care Training East Midlands is a leading provider of Government-funded training, professional development and adult guidance services based in Nottingham, with other centres in the East Midlands region.
It also provides private training solutions for a wide cross-section of SMEs, public sector organisations and private companies. Since 1995 it has developed a reputation for excellence, flexibility and helping people improve their lives through learning and development.
The organisation delivers Train-2-Gain contracts and wanted to offer their learners who studied off-site the same level of experience as those who studied on-site at the organisation's centres. However, this was not possible as the equipment that tutors used was not portable, so learning and teaching could not utilise certain tools.
On-site learners were showing signs of being enthused by the new technologies being employed in their teaching. The delivery was undertaken using traditional methods but used new equipment that helped engage the learners.
The feedback from both tutors and the information, advice and guidance (IAG) team was that a gap was developing in the delivery of learning between on- and off-site. So the challenge was to find a way in which to make a 'mobile' classroom.
Curriculum Manager, Bruce Sheeran, drew on his experiences as a pilot and trainer of potential pilots to develop the mobile classroom for the organisation.
Bruce lived out of a pilot-case during this part of his career so could he use this as an inspiration? The case has both a handle and wheels so is fairly portable, but how could he get the classroom to fit into a pilot-case?
Tutors required equipment that was small but reliable. It also needed to be simple to use as the staff don't have technical support directly to hand. After searching, testing and reviewing several different items, Bruce drew up a list of contents that he thought would allow the tutor to be able to set-up a mobile classroom:
This set of equipment allows the tutor to set-up the equivalent of an interactive whiteboard on any wall in any building. The tutor can access the Internet and use any resources from there. The portable speakers allow the use of film or audio clips. And the printer and scanner can be called upon at anytime.
The usual working practice of the staff at Care Training East Midlands is now:
This is a slick operation that maximises the use of staff time.
One of the more unusual items in the pilot-case is the e-beam. This is a piece of kit that works like an interactive whiteboard. You simply attach it to any wall and then the wall becomes your interactive whiteboard. This means that the tutor can save the screen at any point, which is particularly good for being able to reflect back on the previous week's session.
The cost of the e-beam is about £300-400 and the overall cost of the standard pilot-case contents is approximately £2,500. In addition to this, Care Training East Midlands adds in a Qwizdom voting system, which doubles the price of each pilot-case.
The Company currently has five cases and these have been funded by a mixture of the Company's own investment and external funding from e-learning programmes (NIACE's E-Guides and the ConnecT and Realise courses from the Learning and Skills Improvement Service).
Crucially at the same time as setting up the pilot-case, the way in which Care Training East Midlands carried out initial assessment, teaching and ongoing assessment was reviewed so that the new technologies could play an appropriate role.
The outcome of this was that every learner at the initial assessment stage was assigned a four-digit code, which the learner could input into the voting pad when in the classroom.
The IAG team would then, using the Qwizdom software, work through a presentation featuring a series of questions with a selection of answers. The learner simply selects their answer using their voting pad and, whilst the overall responses can be displayed on-screen, individual's responses remain anonymous to the group, thus protecting the identity of the respondent. Staff, however, can identify individual respondents via their four-digit code.
Crucially, this new process offered the learner the option to choose 'Don't Know', which meant that the quality of the initial assessment was more accurate. This was important to the IAG team who were worried about the quality of the information captured previously.
All the answers from the learners are captured onto the software on the laptop. Once the tutor returns to the office they can quickly download this information on to the main database. Following on from the initial assessment, tutors can put together individual plans of learning for the students in their class.
Subsequent use of the voting system allows the tutor to track each learner's progress more easily and also introduces an element of interactivity into the learning. Individual responses are automatically stored onto the learner's record. One of the benefits of this approach for the tutors is that there is significantly less paperwork for them to fill in. With the progress of the learner being tracked in the system the tutor, outside of class-time can, at their leisure, go through the progress and what the learner needs. The tutor can also see that if several learners are experiencing problems on a topic, then they may need to rethink how that particular topic is taught.
The Company has found that their learners have become more engaged with their learning, especially amongst the young adults.
Feedback from the employers has been equally glowing, for example the HR team at National Autoparts commented that it was:
“an impressive piece of kit! We were impressed with the technology. It made the sessions more interactive and less like a classroom.”
Care Training East Midlands has seen an increased pass rate for learners undertaking Basic/Key Skills qualifications following Initial Assessment since the introduction of the mobile classroom. For example, one of its clients has seen a 62% rise in four months in its employees. The learners are also reaching higher levels of achievement than previously with their progression now going from Entry 2 to Level 2.
The tutors themselves are also engaged. The organisation generally has a positive outlook and there is a culture of adapting to change. Bruce has:
“seen tutors doing things I haven't shown them in the training. So I am always impressed by the learning that the staff are doing themselves. We plan to upskill all our staff to Level 2.”
The kits have been so successful that they are now actually used on-site too in some instances. Not all rooms in the centres are equipped with static interactive whiteboards so new investment has been on developing more kits, rather than purchasing further static versions, as this gives the Company more flexibility and substantial cost savings.
One of the most important things that the Company found was that, initially, when they relied on the internet connections of the employers, they were often running into problems with the host servers and access to resources.
To overcome this, 3G Dongles were purchased, which are inserted into the laptops like a USB stick and allow access to the Internet through a mobile broadband connection and, therefore, circumvent the local network and Internet connection.
Meanwhile one of the other improvements to the mobile classroom has been in fine-tuning a set of small useful items for the pilot-case that includes:
Care Training East Midlands has been sharing its experiences in developing the mobile classroom in the region with the aid of their JISC Regional Support Centre for example through a Work-based Learning (WBL) Forum in the East Midlands. This has given other learning providers a chance to see the mobile classroom in action and for ideas to be shared around the group.
According to Bruce Sheeran:
“You need to keep an open mind as to what the mobile classroom can be applied to. We're only really using it for two functions at the moment but there is so much more that it could do.” At the same time don't let the technology become the most important thing. We can switch back to a paper-based system at any time and our ability to judge when it is an appropriate time to use technology was part of the positive feedback from our recent Ofsted inspection.”
“You need to keep an open mind as to what the mobile classroom can be applied to. We're only really using it for two functions at the moment but there is so much more that it could do.”
At the same time don't let the technology become the most important thing. We can switch back to a paper-based system at any time and our ability to judge when it is an appropriate time to use technology was part of the positive feedback from our recent Ofsted inspection.”
The mobile classrooms have been used by a wide number of tutors in the organisation, but not all are using them yet. The demand from staff is increasing and the expectation is that more and more will use this method. Assessors are currently rewriting lesson plans to incorporate this method and undergoing internal training.
So with internal demand rising Bruce and his team are looking at ways in which to expand the number of kits.
Some of the tutors have found that whilst the pilot-case is relatively small they don't always find it that easy to transport. To help increase the portability the new generation of pilot-cases will be shrunk into a brief-case size bag. With technology advancing everything is continually getting smaller and lighter, but the introduction of solid-state laptops and advancements in data projectors have really impacted on the potential to down-size the mobile classroom.
Who knows how small Bruce and his team can eventually make their mobile classroom? Only time will tell…
Watch a demonstration of the mobile classroom
Press the play button twice to watch the video (length 7 min).
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