Excellence Gateway
Published: 25 September 2009
This case study was produced by JISC RSC (Regional Support Centres) Northern 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, electronic individual learning plan, e-ILP, paper light environment, virtual learning environment, VLE, interactive whiteboard
Gateshead College's Hair and Beauty department uses IT for both effective course management and teaching and learning. Technologies such as interactive whiteboards, video, electronic individual learning plans (e-ILPs) and online course files have improved teaching and learning, as well as simplified course administration.
Gateshead College has four brand new college campuses in Gateshead and offers a range of courses from Entry Level to Foundation Degree and Degree level as well as Apprenticeships. The Hair and Beauty students are based at the Baltic Salon and Spa, which is part of the Baltic Campus. The Spa and Salon is an industry standard, professional environment, designed to match the very best commercial salons in the surrounding area.
At the start of the academic year 2007-2008, the Hair and Beauty department at Gateshead College set out a vision of achieving an online environment where staff could share resources, communicate and engage learners. Technology should support all aspects of course management and delivery. This coincided with the move to a new building with less storage space and a commitment to a paper-light environment.
The whole team enthusiastically embraced this new initiative, although a real improvement had to be made to the team's knowledge and application of IT:
The team worked closely with the e-learning support services and created a complementary range of IT systems:
The introduction of these technologies in the Hair and Beauty department has made a significant impact on the department itself, as well as on the College as a whole:
The electronic folder structure introduced for course administration by the Hair and Beauty team has been so successful that it is now adopted throughout the College, and the piloted e-ILPs have played a key part in their cross-college introduction.
External verifiers and Ofsted commented on the amount of IT innovation implemented by the team, which has driven up the quality. Gateshead College has been rated 'Outstanding' by Ofsted in 2009.
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.
You can find this page and download any referenced resources from the Excellence Gateway at http://excellence.org.uk/250753.
