Excellence Gateway
Published: 28 January 2010
This case study was produced by JISC Regional Support Centre for Northwest on behalf of the Excellence Gateway.
Sector relevance: Further education and Sixth Form colleges
Keywords: Improving responsiveness to learners, improving institutional effectiveness, induction; financial support; learner support; attendance monitoring; management information system (MIS); value for money; efficiency and effectiveness; Education Maintenance Allowance; Adult Learning Grant; virtual learning environment (VLE), Moodle
Nelson & Colne College has developed a ‘bolt-on’ for its Moodle virtual learning environment (VLE), enabling students and staff to keep track of EMA (Education Maintenance Allowance) and ALG (Adult Learning Grant) payments. It has not just helped to simplify the EMA/ALG service for the College; it has been a useful lever in engaging students in the VLE, has reduced the College's SMS texting costs, has encouraged students to take responsibility for their EMA/ALG, and has enabled staff to identify issues with attendance at an early stage.
Nelson & Colne College is a further education college serving the Pendle area of Lancashire. Through its Sixth Form college and Adult Centre of Excellence it offers a wide variety of A/AS-level courses, vocational programmes, Apprenticeships and higher education courses.
The College was rated as 'outstanding' in its last Ofsted Inspection, and has bee awarded Beacon Status.
Mark Rosthorn, e-Learning Developer and Co-ordinator in the Resource-Based Learning team at Nelson & Colne College, was asked to take a look at how the College might make efficiencies in the way the EMA/ALG process operated and provide a system that was easy for students to use.
At that time the College was using an SMS texting service, at a cost of around £3,000 a year, to inform students when their EMA/ALG had not been paid, typically because they had unauthorised absences during the previous week.
It was identified that the SMS system lacked information and support beyond simply notifying students that there was an issue and telling them to go to Student Services. The need to provide better support for this process, rather than costs, was viewed as the main driver for developing a new EMA/ALG system.
Mark worked to develop a new system in Moodle, recognising that the students' need to check their EMA/ALG status on a weekly basis would draw them into Moodle regularly.
The solution is a database which provides an add-on to what is already offered in Moodle, although it is not a plug-in or module. The database sits alongside Moodle so as not to affect its ‘core’ and, therefore, also remains unaffected when Moodle upgrades take place.
Scripts have been written to query data, extracted in csv format from the College Management Information System (MIS), in the database. The system does not work with ‘live’ data, but simply exports and uses the MIS data at regular, defined intervals.
The database query determines whether or not students have been paid their EMA/ALG. If the answer is ‘no’, information is generated to highlight the reasons; this can be viewed by the student and Student Services staff.
When students log into Moodle, they can see their EMA/ALG status by selecting a ‘My EMA/ALG’ link from the main lefthand menu.
Figure 1: ‘My EMA/ALG’ on Moodle menu
Relevant information from the database (student name and ID, EMA/ALG ID, absences over the week and the EMA/ALG payment decision) is then generated and embedded into an HTML webpage within Moodle.
If a student needs to appeal against non-payment of EMA/ALG, an authorised absence/lateness notification form can be downloaded from the webpage, to complete to take to Student Services. Printing off the webpage also displays other relevant information which makes the appointment with Student Services much simpler; this includes the week number and a date stamp, as students have three weeks only in which to appeal against an EMA/ALG decision.
Figure 2: Screenshot of student EMA/ALG details
Student Services staff are able to see each student's EMA/ALG information via their own Moodle logins and, in a recent development in response to feedback, staff can now change the EMA/ALG decision from ‘No’ to ‘Yes’ if a student's appeal is upheld. This means that patterns of unauthorised absences are now easier to spot within a student's EMA/ALG history.
Figure 3: Screenshot of student EMA/ALG decision
The presentation of EMA/ALG data in Moodle is much more user-friendly (and less hidden) than in the MIS system; thus, if tutors or progress mentors are concerned about student absences, Student Services staff can view absence histories much easier.
Awareness-raising and information about the EMA/ALG system has been incorporated into the College's standard Moodle induction sessions for students, so that they know how to check their EMA/ALG payments from when they first start. Library staff and progress mentors are also familiar with the EMA/ALG system on Moodle, and are able to guide students through using it.
The new EMA/ALG system in Moodle has significantly streamlined processes for students and Student Services staff, as students can now go to their appointments with all the relevant information they need.
Previously, when students turned up at Student Services, they knew only that their EMA/ALG had been turned down; thus a lengthy process between student and staff followed to determine the relevant week number and reasons, before filling in the absence/lateness notification form if appropriate.
The new system not only provides better information about EMA/ALG status for students, but also involves them in addressing their EMA/ALG funding issues. As a result the students are more aware of the importance and issues of absence in relation to their EMA/ALG payments and, therefore, are encouraged to take more responsibility for their attendance.
The onscreen EMA/ALG information is much more clearly presented to Student Services staff. As a result it is easier for them to see patterns of student attendance and to highlight potential absence issues at an earlier stage.
The students no longer receive the SMS texts about their EMA/ALG payments.
Since the introduction of the new EMA/ALG system, the number of students accessing Moodle regularly has increased by over 30%, and the team has noticed a significant increase in the number of students coming back quickly to request a new Moodle password if they forget it, whereas previously many would delay asking for a new one for weeks, sometimes months.
Moodle is being used as an ‘intranet’ to provide important information for students, and the EMA/ALG system is a key part of the intranet development. By drawing students into Moodle, the team is confident that they are more likely to go into their course areas while they are logged in, and has deliberately located the ‘My EMA/ALG’ menu link close to the links to courses. Mark says:
“We don't want to get away from the fact that this is a virtual learning environment and it's for teaching and learning purposes, but we acknowledge that we need to give the students more besides – using it as an intranet is a great way to get key information to them and get them familiar with using Moodle at the same time.”
Having successfully written the scripts for the EMA/ALG system, which enable information to be imported, queried and presented in Moodle, the team is looking at where it might be able to make other similar developments. Mark adds:
“We've seen that we can have a significant impact with a simple and quick development, so this has ‘lit a candle’ for us in terms of looking for other College services and systems on which we can have a similar impact.”
The advice to anyone working on similar developments is to ‘keep it simple’, and avoid over-complicated developments that generate redundant data.
The EMA/ALG development was very straightforward for anyone familiar with querying databases, and it would be relatively easy for someone with database knowledge to add the system to run alongside their Moodle.
To this end, the team is willing to send the scripts (with notes about where changes would be necessary) to anyone who would like to use the system in their Moodle. In return, they would be keen to hear from developers about other systems and services that they think could be transformed using a similar approach.
A desire to develop systems to be more effective for students and staff is very apparent. Mark says:
“Although this development has saved money it wasn't really about that for me; I wanted to increase the numbers of students using Moodle. “But also, to a sixteen year old who doesn't really know much about [EMA/ALG] other than they should receive some money each week, having to go to Student Services to try to sort out why they haven't is just another pressure. If I can make it easier for them then hopefully they can concentrate more on their learning, which is what they're really here for.”
“Although this development has saved money it wasn't really about that for me; I wanted to increase the numbers of students using Moodle.
“But also, to a sixteen year old who doesn't really know much about [EMA/ALG] other than they should receive some money each week, having to go to Student Services to try to sort out why they haven't is just another pressure. If I can make it easier for them then hopefully they can concentrate more on their learning, which is what they're really here for.”
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