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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, Sixth Form colleges/schools
Keywords: Improving teaching and learning, improving institutional effectiveness, curriculum development, management of resources
Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College (QE VI) uses their new library system in an innovative way which has benefited the College tremendously. From managing the library's catalogue to assigning student locker keys, the new system has had a huge impact on the management of resources and improvement of student access to information.
QE VI in Darlington has approximately 1800 students and has an excellent reputation for high quality post-16 education. It offers full-time and part-time courses and has been awarded Centre of Excellence by Ofsted.
The College places great emphasis on the learners having good information skills and being able to study independently, as well as the ability to take on more responsibility for themselves and their actions.
To help realising this aim, the College introduced a new library system (Oliver - Softlink).
The introduction of the new library system has had a huge impact on the number of learners using the library catalogue. Because they are able to browse the library catalogue via the internet wherever they happen to be, user numbers have increased from 7,921 in Autumn term in 2007 to 11,733 during Autumn term in 2008. Learners are also using the system independently and with more confidence.
The new textbook service has saved the College a lot of money as hundreds of books used to go missing. Lecturers also saved time by not having to chase up lost text books. Learners are thought to be more responsible for items on loan to them and they can log in and see which items are on loan to them.
Julie Johnson, English Literature Course Leader said:
"Every year our department would have to spend extra money replacing texts that students had not returned. We had no real way of enforcing their return which was very frustrating. Using the new library system has enabled us to monitor more effectively which students hold copies of set texts and has significantly reduced replacement costs."
Image 1: The library database links to all the subject rooms within the VLE, so no matter what subjects a Student does, there is a button in their ‘subject rooms' inviting them to ‘Search the Library Catalogue'.
The Oliver system has already had a major impact on the College's strategy in reaching its aims. Senior management are looking at exploiting more of the systems capabilities for cataloguing and managing the loan of other equipment such as cameras and computers. The library is looking into providing more of the mobile technology that learners want to use, and the new library system is ideally placed to administer this.
Tip: Talk to Staff and Students, and read the feedback information that your institution gathers - find out what barriers people face and what would make teaching/ learning a smoother process for them. Then think outside the box! Can the technology you already use assist with these problems?
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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.
You can find this page and download any referenced resources from the Excellence Gateway at http://excellence.org.uk/201973.
