Improving learning through study centres - Worcester College

Overview

When it became obvious to Chris Morecroft, the Principal of Worcester College of Technology, that the College’s accommodation was not up to scratch, he decided to take its renewal as an opportunity to change the way teaching and learning was delivered. As a result, a whole series of study centres have been created over the last five years. There are currently thirteen supporting students in subjects as varied as travel and tourism, science and music. For Chris, study centres should be well supported by ICT, provide flexible accommodation for group and individual activities, and provide individual support for students using a wide range of ‘resident’ staff.

Chris Morecroft, Principal

The good practice in detail

According to Wendy Parry, Head of Library and Study Centres, the study areas work effectively because “the resources available are used well by students”. Each centre has at least one study centre assistant who is a member of Wendy’s central team. As well as helping students, they also have experience of issuing and retrieving resources, an essential skill in areas where there are large numbers of resources and lots of students using them. Worcester’s study centres have already been visited by around fifty other colleges, many of which have used them as examples to set up their own centres. John Smith, Principal at Burnley College, says, “We are extremely grateful for the inspiration provided by Worcester College of Technology and their professional generosity in sharing their good practice. When we visited, we saw in practice a very powerful approach to individualised and self-directed learning.  The implementation of our own vision of the Study Centres through our Active Learning Zones has led to improvements in student engagement and behaviour and is positively impacting outcomes.”

A shining example of good practice is the study centre for travel and tourism. It is run by Bridget Robinson, who manages the provision. She worked as cabin crew for many years before coming into teaching and is committed to the approaches to learning used in the study centres. When the Principal decided that “four dark and gloomy rooms in the basement next to the catering changing rooms” were not quite the place to house high quality travel and tourism courses, she produced a plan for open spaces with an aircraft cabin, some classroom space, a reading area and properly catalogued and accessible resources such as DVDs, books and trade magazines. Four years on, the resources are all in place and working really well, although Bridget agrees that “buying the first set of airline seats on eBay was a bit of a trial! The ones we have now provide an excellent training area”. Gill Ritchie, the study centre assistant, says: “There’s a very friendly atmosphere, good communications and a lot of flexibility regarding teaching areas and the sharing of resources.”

Bridget Robinson

For students to work on their own effectively, they need to be good at using different information sources and learn to develop the skills to find and use these sources. Students are helped to identify their own preferred learning styles and then staff support them to learn in the most effective ways. As well as subject specific support, the study centre also acts as a base for May Perkins, a member of the College’s learning support team. May provides support for key skills and feels that “the informal atmosphere in the study centre makes it easier for students to approach me and get help quickly. I mingle amongst them all day, so there are fewer barriers”.

So what are the outcomes? Both teachers and students enjoy the new learning environment and the new ways of working together. Teachers enjoy more extensive contact with students and feel they get to know them better. Students are really enthusiastic about the study centre. They comment about the friendly and more relaxed approach; the easily accessible help and support they get from staff; the extensive range of good resources that they have at hand; and the enjoyment they get from the industry standard approaches to their training.

There have also been improvements to success rates.  On long courses run in the travel and tourism study centre, success rates have improved from around 67% in 2006/07 to almost 90% in 2008/09. Students are successful in pursuing their careers after college and many leave to take up posts with major airlines and other large employers in the industry. They like the freedom that they have to learn in ways that they find most effective. It’s easy to see though, that their freedom comes about because of careful planning and management of the centre’s accommodation, resources and staff.

Uploaded - December 2009

What could you do next to improve your provision?

The Building Better Practice (BBP) web resource is a great place to start if you want to benchmark yourself against other providers. It will show you the most common inspection strengths and weaknesses for each issue or topic, an analysis of the good practice found on inspection and a series of health-check questions to help you establish how you compare to others. Look specifically at how you could use BBP to improve the support for your learners and the management of learner support.

Actions for Quality Improvement (AQI) is a set of activities with resources around which you can run staff development sessions with your teams. The activities cover all aspects of the learner’s journey and will help your staff embed quality improvement in the heart of your provision.

If you need more help, ideas and resources for the process of self assessment then look at the Learner-Centred Self Assessment (LCSA) materials. This is a web-based or hard-copy resource to help you generate a rich source of evidence for your self-assessment report through professional discussion rather than the completion of lengthy forms.

9 Data Projects to Improve Your Provision is a set of projects which help you use data to explore all aspects of the learner’s journey for improvement themes.

The Self-Assessment Surgery Projects have proved very popular at the Preparing for Inspection events. They will help you determine whether or not your SAR is fit for purpose.

Interpreting the Common Inspection Framework (CIF) is essential guidance on how to interpret the CIF for your remit and is now contained in the appendices of the Ofsted inspection handbook for work-related and adult and community learning.

The Inspection Toolkit contains step-by-step guidance on how to prepare for inspection and covers such topics as choosing the right person to be nominee, using data and self assessment.