Excellence Gateway
Published: 18 September 2009
This case study was produced by JISC RSC (Regional Support Centres) London on behalf of the Excellence Gateway.
Sector relevance: Further education and Sixth Form colleges
Keywords: Improving teaching and learning, improving responsiveness to learners, improving institutional effectiveness, individual learning plan, eTracker, communication
Bromley College offers a diverse range of learning opportunities from A-levels, BTECs and NVQs through to work-based learning and Train to Gain programmes. This diversity presents a major challenge in how to monitor the performance of its learners to ensure they achieve their potential.
eTracker is an electronic individual learning plan (eILP) solution that enables lecturers to take a highly personalised approach to the individual needs of their learners. It enables them to identify issues early and intervene quickly – not just academic issues but also pastoral and behavioural. eTracker has been a motivating force for the learners at Bromley College and it facilitates good communication across the College.
Bromley College is a further education college with over 7,000 students and 500 staff. It offers a great variety of courses to help students achieve their ambitions by acquiring skills and qualifications that are highly regarded by employers.
The College has several sites and its Rookery Lane campus is now in the second phase of a £20 million redevelopment. Bromley College is proud of its partnerships with schools, universities and local employers, and the place it holds as a centre of educational excellence in the local community.
Bromley College had already successfully implemented a Moodle virtual learning environment (VLE). However, the College wanted a better system for tracking student grades, monitoring progress and setting pastoral targets. Bromley College had clear ideas about what it required. It wanted the solution to:
Bromley College turned to VLE Support to help it develop a new online management tool that could meet all the above requirements. The result was eTracker, which has since been adopted by other further education colleges in the UK, including John Ruskin, Southampton City College and NESCOT.
The College opted for a complete, cross-college roll out of eTracker to all staff in one go. However, it quickly realised that, to achieve the best results, extensive training and support would be required throughout the first year. Danny Hodder, Lecturer at Bromley College, was put in charge of providing an eTracker helpdesk:
"We found it effective to train one department at a time. It meant we could ensure that eTracker met their specific needs and requirements. We typically gave small groups of about 12 lecturers an overview of the system then let them go away and play with it for themselves. The basic system is intuitive to use, but sometimes lecturers want to do more and then they come back to me with their queries. They are usually delighted to find that it can do exactly what they want – it has all the functionality they need. Occasionally there's something that eTracker can't do and then we decide whether it's worth developing or not."
One such example is the 'traffic light' system. 'eLights' enables a learner and their lecturer to quickly monitor their performance profile by means of a green, amber or red signal. Learners are given a green light and 100 points at the beginning of each academic year. They can lose points if there is a drop-off in performance in any particular course or attendance, or if a lecturer registers a cause for concern. As points are deducted, the light changes from green to amber to red. Equally, students can gain points through improved performance to get back to a green light or to see a 'Good', 'Excellent' or 'Outstanding' comment alongside their green light. Traffic lights can also be used to provide a comprehensive illustration of how a group is performing.
Danny continued:
"There are some courses, such as the English as a Second Language, where there are no set assignments during the term, only one test at the end of term. This is where some creativity is required to make sure that eTracker can provide feedback on meaningful, formative assessments. The system is very flexible and can provide exactly what the lecturers and students need. Other courses, particularly the 'BTECs', simply love it from the word go! The students are introduced to eTracker in a tutorial early on in the year. Most students grasp the concept instantly and quickly become hooked on it."
Image 1: Example of a learner's eTracker
It is important to spot when a learner is 'at risk' and take action as soon as possible. eTracker allows all the information the College has on the performance of learners to be easily available to lecturers and personal tutors.
Danny said:
"Before eTracker we used paper-based systems, which made it hard to see what was going on, but now we can see performance immediately and take the necessary action right away."
Danny commented:
"We don't have before-and-after eTracker measurements because the training was rolled out incrementally, and also because there are so many factors influencing the results it would be difficult to isolate the effects of eTracker. However, we have seen good overall improvement in our course results last year and I feel that eTracker has played an important role in this success.
"The increase in motivation of the students is plain to see. It is not uncommon to hear students complaining that their tutor hasn't updated their marks yet – eTracker encourages them to want credit for their work and the students start driving us to use the system."
Attendance is often closely related to retention. eTracker enables lecturers to keep track of attendance and punctuality, and share this information with the learners.
"Reality and perception often differ, and having the hard facts in front of you makes it easier to address the issue with students. It also helps them to take responsibility, as they can clearly see how often they are absent or late.
"eTracker has also helped curb some difficult behaviour. Previously students could hide behind the veil of anonymity because many members of staff wouldn't know who they were. Now we have eTracker, it's easy for a member of staff to access information on a student and this helps to maintain an open and honest approach."
Connexions, the agency working with young people, has an office at the Bromley College campus. Connexions can monitor the full eTracker system, and can add notes to a learner's profile that can be seen by everyone, including the learner.
"This has helped enormously with communications across the College. Often students will try several routes to resolve an issue and knowing who else is involved can save time and help the process along. Next year we will be looking at how to extend eTracker to support our work-based learning courses, linking students' work placement results with their college studies."
eTracker has helped Bromley College lecturers to:
eTracker has helped learners at Bromley College to:
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