With the expansion of academic higher education and the abolition of grant aided apprenticeships in the 1980s such programmes fizzled out.

Only now has government appreciated the importance of such schemes and is making the apprenticeship a core option within its 14-19 agenda alongside academic routes such as the traditional A Level and ‘new’ Diploma. Much of the delivery will be based in schools.

Rebuilding an apprenticeship framework for 14-19 year olds from nothing within schools that have generally focussed on academic subjects will not be easy and may be some reason why at least 13 government quangos such a the Sector Skills Councils (that identify the required competences) to the UK Commission for Education and Skills (that has to find ways of engaging employers) have been created.

So where will IT will be used for these youngsters?

Just a short (and not comprehensive) list:

• Information and Guidance systems which assess students abilities, provide career and labour market intelligence information and provide the opportunities to record ‘action plans’.

• Local prospectus systems that identify the opportunitie available within schools

• Systems that support employers in providing the necessary information for work placements

• Systems that support the students and their advisors in finding work placements.

• Tracking systems that monitor the attendance and progress of students at school, college and in work placement

• Content delivery systems that provide underpinning knowledge in an innovative and interactive way. (Comeback learning objects!)

• Portfolio systems that store validated students achievements for assessment.

• Online testing systems for key/ functional skills and the underpinning knowledge for the Technical Certificate

• Qualification awarding and recording systems that are linked to the Qualification and Credit Framework.

• Support networks for teachers that provide exemplars of good practice and resources.

• Systems that ‘feed’ attendance and achievement data to national DCFS collection systems.

• …..

……….and the challenge for JISC.

Given that the Unique Learner Number will enable infinite opportunities for collation and aggregation, to identify where data standards and the interoperation of systems are required and how privacy and security can be maintained.

As mentioned in earlier blogs, this work will be conducted within a context of government imposed tight delivery deadlines and a commercial provider sector will exploit the open doors to provide quick and profitable solutions.

On a personal note, my apprenticeship is now over and having obtained my qualification for a bus pass, this will be my final blog for CETIS.

I would like thank all those friends within the JISC community that have made my work so satisfying and enjoyable and wish you all success, happiness and good health for the future.

This sharing of my time between the public and private sectors gives me a fairly unique understanding of the conflicting and shared pressures that face these two areas.

My commercial colleagues are driven by the market. Up to now there has been little appetite to invest in technology based tools to support teaching and learning as so many pioneers in such as teaching materials have met untimely and expensive ends (administration and information systems are another matter!).

Things are changing rapidly. There is a recognition that the prevalence of technology from the mobile phone to the software that supports networking communities within our ‘customers’ lives has meant that there are now significant commercial opportunities from the development of appropriate tools and services.

System that underpin the sharing of learning objects or exemplar lessons or match an individual’s achievements to employment opportunities are coming off the drawing board. Major international companies with publishing assets and expertise are well placed to integrate such tools into their existing business offerings.

The English government’s multi-billion ‘Building Schools for the Future Programme’ that has led to many local authorities sub-contracting their information technology systems and infrastructure to the private sector will provide a ready and easy channel for such commercial products to be installed.

This may not be such a bad thing. The products will probably work, be user friendly, rugged, regularly updated and heavily supported.

Teaching, learning and employability will be enhanced.

Interoperability will be focussed on what is important such as the ability to work across diverse platforms rather than satisfying speculative possibilities.

So where does JISC and CETIS fit into this world ?

I suspect that increasingly there will be a closer relationship between the JISC community and the private sector. Just as engineering companies such as Rolls Royce have relied on universities to develop such as rotor blade material technology the major publishers will be looking at HE to provide answers to such as identity management, maintaining trust and security and, yes, appropriate interoperability.

For example, ‘trust and security’ is a very topical example of where work is needed. The public are becoming uneasy about tens of thousands of health professionals having access to medical records or even more educational administrators through ‘Contactpoint’ being able to identify which agencies (including such as social services) have been involved with their children.

Can our JISC community provide solutions?

So a plea, for my JISC colleagues:

Keep a close eye on the private sector and what they are doing and especially what they are doing in the schools sector where there are so many easy commercial pickings. Some privately funded initiatives will inspire you. Others will identify necessary areas of research and development. Some will identify easily developed non-commercial products such as Moodle extensions

Our learning technology landscape has changed.

The secure ground is increasingly being taken by big business. JISC better not be left with the (Mark Stubb’s inspired) swamps.

For example, in Newark, a new £1.6m ‘Construction Centre’ has just been opened by Ed Balls, the secretary of state for children,schools and families.

Having spent most of my working life in FE and having had to manage challenges in trying to maintain income within ever changing contexts, I have much sympathy for the management within this sector. As ever as a leader within a college, one will look at the use of technology to bring efficiencies and to enable new income streams (such as Train to Gain contracts) to be realised.

The priority for all custodial institutions is security. Prison governors have tremendous authority and are obviously nervous about the use of the internet and other means of communications, In most institutions CDs and pen drives are banned, necessitating tightly controlled computer networks (where they exist at all).  

The requirements for offender learning in order to assist rehabilitation and a reduction in re-offending are clear.

It has been well publicised that a significant proportion of offenders require basic literacy and numeracy education. Less well known is the need for English as a second language courses. In London 50% of inmates are foreign nationals.

Craft workshops in prisons need to replicate those in the real world and therefore require appropriate technology. Timetabling of traditionally delivered courses can so often be affected by the logistics of prison management. e-Enabled distance learning could offer solutions.  

Many who are near to being released after long sentences need interactive simulations (such as for the use of cash machines) to prepare them for a different kind of world from the one in place when they started their sentence. Employability and the need for inmates to obtain evidence to build positive images of themselves for prospective employers is becoming increasingly important.  

The focus on the need for security, though, means that technological solutions have to be tailored to individual environments within a context of the need for confidence by institutional managers and governors. The picture is somewhat clouded by the role of the private sector who have responsibility for 30% of provision and have strict service level agreements (which currently are unlikely to include elearning) with the Home Office. 

Offender Learning is not just a Learning and Skills Council agenda. It must also be remembered that there are many prisoners studying for Open University degrees and there are other obvious opportunities for HEIs to deliver professional development programmes to an expanding and captive market (sorry!). In an environment where prisoners with Masters degrees are studying level 2 (GCSE) programmes to meet LSC targets, HE should be becoming more engaged. 

There are the seeds of infrastructural developments that are helping.

Within the need for security, some institutions such as Wormwood Scrubs are developing computer equipped learning centres. Learndirect have installed online centres with limited online external assessment facilities that have satisfied the concerns of governors.

The Learner Summary Record is being piloted to provide both on and off line summaries of learning outcomes and results and a record of action planning discussions. This will be linked to the Unique Learner Number and with the permission of the ‘owner’ will be capable of being shared with other agencies once a sentence is completed to enhance employability prospects.  

POLARIS, a VLE service with limitations (no internet links) is being piloted  for a handful of London institutions. Electronic whiteboards that in addition to showing tutor input, also displays the current screens of the students are available to enable the tutor to monitor for inappropriate use. 

So where can JISC help? 

There is a promise of government activity in this area and our advice will be sought. 

A few suggestions: 

Firstly we should recognise that there are many prospective HE students within our prisons and offender institutions.

Secondly we should look  at tailoring those (often JISC funded) technological mainstream solutions that satisfy both prison governor’s needs for security and the offender’s needs for learning and future employability. Systems that will enable national services that can provide only the  ‘approved’ URLs that can be accessed by inmates; tools that more effectively monitor computer usage; the provision of appropriate learning simulations and interactions and the provision of secure information and guidance services linked to employment are just a few ideas for consideration. There must be many more.

Finally, should we not be expanding our accessibility agenda to include offenders within our penal system?

The Diplomas will be starting in September and as the delivery will be co-ordinated by Gateway consortia of schools and colleges the opportunities for hiccoughs are great. The Minerva system for aggregating achievements from all the components that make up Diplomas should be ready but the distribution of funds to partners could be problematical. As a student has to achieve all the components to obtain a Diploma, one can see a ‘pass the parcel’ blame game if one partner fails to deliver the necessary success for a component. The Diploma will herald the use of the Unique Learner Number for 14 year olds (FE students will be allocated them from September) which will enable through MIAP the aggregation and distribution of a great deal of personal achievement and aspiration data.

From September every 16 year old will have a guarantee of an apprenticeship. Information and Guidance support will have to be ratcheted up to meet the demand of 14-16 year olds and systems for assessing competences, functional skills and background knowledge (the Technical Certificate) will have to be more effectively delivered by Awarding Bodies. Employers need engaging especially as the many of the apprentices will be those who are currently not in education, employment or training. Information systems to support them are considered important.

Information and Guidance is also fundamental to the shift in adult part time FE. Employer needs for the training of their staff will increasingly be delivered through the brokerage services of Train to Gain. Skills accounts will be available for individuals wishing to update their skills. Rather like mobile phone top up cards the credits on these accounts will be exchanged to pay for course fees. The government can manipulate demand by charging less for courses that meet their strategies.

The principle that students must pay a contribution for their part time vocational studies is now well established. Unless the student has no level 2 (GCSE level) qualifications from next year students on part time courses will be expected to pay 42.5% of the cost of their course.

MIS managers within the sector are having to face a change in their systems that record enrolments and achievements for funding by the Learning and Skills Councils. With three different funding models (14.18, adult learner and employer) to deal with, curriculum leaders are grappling with spreadsheets to develop the most cost effective mix of provision and timetabling.

Distance learning is still not treated more favourably and auditing systems are still required to collate the hours of tutorial support that are aggregated to determine the funding.

One important factor in funding is that one years funding for a provider can be severely diminished by poor performance in a previous year. Innovative ise of ICT can have a big part to play.

So where are the pressure points where JISC can help with standards and exemplar services?

Firstly for administration and the modelling of income and expenditure and the provision of services that complement the returns made to the LSC. Secondly for Information and Guidance and thirdly for Teaching and Learning.

For these latter two, Becta’s developing strategy for schools and FE focuses on ‘providing Learning Experiences that have access to technology wherever and whenever they require it’. 

They suggest that this could only be achieved if the following were available: 

• a wide range of tools for the creation and manipulation of multimedia texts
• a wide range of online resources
• information on per
  sonal learning goals and student progress
• collaborative tools and the opportunities to share with others
• the ability to continue learning from one environment to the next
• systems to provide protection (inappropriate content and contacts) and
  data security
• access to formal learning support and teaching when required.

The outcomes of JISC previous and current initiatives can obviously support the attainment of many of these needs.

One important factor within this strategy is a move away from institutional systems for teaching and learning towards a recognition that the future is in providing more directed opportunities for students to obtain and share their own resources and increasingly to use Web 2.0 social networking  systems for collaboration.

Having said that the funding pressures on Adult and Continuing Learning (yoga and holi
day language course) has encouraged several providers either in collaboration or independently to use Moodle to support teaching and learning. JISC RSCs have been pro-active in many cases such as RSC North in support of initiatives in the Tees Valley.

This sector needs help in staff development of a (generally) part time work force and providing the necessary quality and innovative practice to fight off other providers who can now annually bid for 10% of ACLs traditional work.

FE has grown up with its view on online content. It is expected to be free and for text is generally printed for use. Video clips are more effective than animations for describing such skills as changing a washer on a tap and several centres such as Bolton
Community College are developing catalogues of such clips to be shared by others.

Online assessment is generally normal now for many qualifications. One college I visited is expanding 10 fold the number of work stations dedicated to online testing. Educational purists may grumble but the ability for students to repeatedly take mock tests until they prove themselves ready for the ‘real thing’ is significantly raising achievement and with less expensive teaching is greatly improving income for their colleges.

One other bright spot in development is that concerned with offender learning in prisons and other similar institutions. A great deal of money is being spent on learning centres within institutions where internet access will be available but only to selected sites. A big opportunity for those developing interactions that support the teaching of basic literacy and numeracy and from what I hear about the employers views of some undergraduates something that HE could do with as well!!

Clive Church 1 February 2008

 

Vocational and especially skills based education has for many years suffered from low status compared with academic routes for learning. The government wants the meeting of employer’s skills and education needs by HE institutions to have equal status with research and academic activities.

 

Ironically the status of skills based education is being perhaps somewhat undermined by the government’s agenda to tackle the 16-18 NEET (not in education, employment and training) problems by obliging students within this category to take ‘apprenticeships’.

 

As far as skills delivery is concerned the Leitch agenda objectives prevail: level focussed, demand led, employer driven and qualification captured.

 

The ‘levels’ is easy (ish). Every qualification will be approved by the appropriate Sector Skills Council and will according to the level of language used for the outcomes be given an academic level between 0 and 7 (HE is 4 to 7). Each qualification will be sub-divided into ’10 hour credits of learning’, each of which can be assessed independently.

 

‘Demand led’ is relatively easy too. Provide prospective students with Skills Accounts that the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) can top up as necessary (and avoiding the past problems with the similar Individual Learning Accounts of the 1990s) allow students to trade in their accounts for appropriate courses. For the employer who is unsure of the training opportunities that are available expand ‘Train to Gain’ and introduce a ‘National Employers Service’. Train to Gain brokers will link the employees of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) with training providers. Currently focussing in low level skills this brokerage service will expand over the nest 3 years to include HE based skills with a budget virtually doubling to just over a billion pounds.  The computer based register of learning providers and the qualification/ credit details recorded on the Qualification Credit (QCF) database will support their work. For larger employers with more than 5000 employees a regionally based national Employer Service will provide support and manage accounts. It is hoped that the work of this agency will encourage most internal staff development to be formalised and therefore recordable within the national database of Learner Achievement Records (of more later). Currently employers spend £33bn on training bit only 33% leads to accredited qualifications and the CBI is asking the government for £470m to provide an employer based accreditation service pilot linked to the QCF.

 

Employer driven?

 It will be the responsibility of the Sector Skills Councils to be responsive to employers’ needs in their development of national qualifications containing units of competence and understanding. The responsibility of employers to provide some kind of accreditation for in-hose training is yet to be agreed.

 

Capturing the qualifications will be orchestrated by the QCA/ MIAP QCF system which will record with the use of the ‘Unique Learner Number’ student achievement of a minimum of 10 guided learning hours of expertise (a credit).

The QCA/MIAP system consisting of details of learning providers, accredited qualifications and unit/credit details and learner records is expected to be fully operational by 2010. For more details see http://www.qca.org.uk/libraryAssets/media/QCF_Leaflet_final_web.pdf

MIAP expecting to service 2.5 million adult learners in their initial launch.

As part of the MIAP service, learners’ records will be subject to regular ‘Rules of Combination’ exercises by which students and their advisors will be pointed to future study opportunities that are based on their current profiles. Using the Unique Learner Number (initiated by the 14-19 agenda) IT based guidance services introduced for this age group will be expanded to support a new Adult Careers Service that will be closely linked with Job Centre Plus.

 

There is an implied confidence that the private computer services sector will be able to provide the required technical infrastructure.

 

FE is fully aware of the changes it will be making; Funding models will be changing to meet the demand led agenda with employers/ individuals carrying more of the cost for higher level (level 4 and above skills education). Increasingly the focus will move from education validated by recording achievement/ competence to recording achievement/ competence supported by education/ training to compensate for ‘gaps in expertise/ knowledge.  More assessment and underpinning knowledge/ skills based delivery will be conducted off site.

 

FE has been competing with private providers in this space for many years. With employer based provision planned within the recent Comprehensive Spending Review to be more than doubled to 1.2 million by 2011 there is plenty of profit to be made by responsive and flexible private providers.

 

Such private companies have been adept at providing vocational competence recording tools, online assessment (and assessment practice) systems and online content. Awarding bodies are increasingly likely to join with such companies to deliver a total service to companies and their employees that leave little space for colleges.

 

So what are the challenges for HE?

 

Competing with colleges and private providers for employer based education and training by offering better more flexible and responsive provision; marrying the QCF system with those planned for recording HE delivered achievements and accrediting prior achievement and learning ( a priority action for work based foundation degrees).

 

…and the challenges for JISC (blue sky thinking apart)?

 

Ensuring that there are close links with those private companies providing the services that underpin so much of this government’s skills agenda to harvest developments (such as data standards) that have an impact on JISC projects; anticipating issues such as identity management and trust systems for research and development that could hold up national implementations and develop and provide innovative services that can build on and complement those systems that underpin and support the government’s skills agenda

 

Clive Church  3^rd December 2007

 

 

 

 

Politically there has been a sense that the Labour government has spent many years talking about significant change through technology but now has limited time to deliver it.

 

One must not forget the principal driver for this sector……….. the re-enforcement of ‘personalisation’: understanding each individual child’s needs so that education can be ‘bespokely’ tailored within a safe and secure environment.

 

Systems that join up data from children services, probation services and other agencies that engage with families are being developed. If linked up through the Unique Learner Number with details of educational attainment, then comprehensive data to support teaching and learning and Information and Guidance will be available to both the professionals within the classroom and the support staff within Connexions or the local authority. The 14-19 prospectus agenda that will attempt to link up a child’s aspirations and goals with educational opportunities using a UCAS style application system will complement these initiatives.

 

Within HE one often neglects the experience of individual staff and especially the students in exploiting technology to support teaching and learning. Electronic whiteboards are common within school and FE classrooms. It is not now uncommon to find schools and colleges that have installed a whiteboard in virtually every classroom. Teachers are adept through their communities to find appropriate content and innovative use of proprietary (generally Microsoft) supplied tools to engage their classes by using this technology.

Commercial content is commonly available within schools. The elearning credits system gave schools free materials. Initially a good deal for suppliers, the best are recognising that once they have to compete for future school resources they will have to raise their game with both individuality and assured interoperability. The suppliers’ trade organisation Besa, is recognising this through its renewed interest in standards and particularly ‘common cartridge’.

 

It was apparent from Becta’s recent Harnessing Technology conference that a child’s ability to use technology to support their education has to be recognised. Children are adept at using the internet, communications tools and social software, The challenge is not to try and institutionalise these tools but to provide facilitation mechanisms to point children in appropriate (and safe) directions that enhance both their studies and knowledge of progression opportunities. Connexions are already piloting such systems to get students to share their knowledge from work experience of employers and careers.

 

(Institutionalising the tools for teaching and learning? A big debate is needed).

 

Becta are hedging their bets with much work being performed on delivering Learning Platforms for every secondary school through the Building Schools for the Future programme alongside the recognition of the power that most children have in their mobile phones and computers to support their education.

 

The Diplomas for 14-19 year olds will be the first qualification that needs the Unique Learner Number. The first students will register for this qualification next September by which Minerva, the tool that aggregates the necessary achievement components from different awarding bodies will have to be ready.

 

So, what are we seeing from this part of our educational community: standardisation of enterprise data (XML based data models are rife…don’t forget the IT requirements to support the government’s target culture or schools); the development of SOA based solutions to facilitate user driven enterprise systems; innovative bottom up use of technology (and increasingly Web 2.0 tools) to support teaching and learning and information and guidance; online assessments for an increasing number of qualifications; online marking and quality assurance (Edexcel scanned in 11 million scripts for online marking last summer); more innovative online content and the adoption(ish) of common cartridge; pragmatic use of metadata and vocabularies for content (focussed on IPR); an increasing recognition that eportfolios are no more than the results of aggregated content (and another enterprise system)……..

 

Most importantly the school’s sector possesses millions of users (teachers and students) who now (and increasingly will) have the confidence and knowledge of computer based tools and systems to develop exciting new pedagogic approaches to teaching and learning.

 

In the introduction, I mentioned the urgency on behalf of the government for action and implementation on its personalisation agenda. Many of these IT based initiatives in support of this goal could fail. The government has not a good reputation for IT projects (and data security) but many will succeed and, fail or succeed, many will require support from the academic learning technology community.

 

Over to you JISC.

 

Clive Church, 29^th November 2007

 

 

 

 

Since I last ‘put fingers to keyboard’ I have been boring folk with my view that over the last year the ‘centre of gravity’ of learning technology standards developments have moved to the schools and FE sectors from HE. Driven by the e-Strategy and other governemnt schools based agendas such as ‘Every Child Matters’, Becta, MIAP and others have been obliged to deliver solutions. to strictly imposed deadlines. The focus so far has been in two areas: joining social service systems up with school administration systems and learning platforms for schools. Both have required standards based developments: the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) underpinned by the adoption of a Unique learner Number (ULN) has been adopted for the former and Becta has produced specifications (all around standards and extendability) that suppliers of learning platforms have to satisfy. Additionally, the Qualification and Curriculum Authority, in order to meet the requirements of the new vocational Specilaised Diploma will have to produce data standards by the Autumn for course details and qualification achievements.

Obviously such developments will have an impact for the JISC communities. Firstly, there will be a concentration  of minds around where standards are really needed (rather than ‘could be useful’) and there will be a requirement for JISC to focus on those areas of detail which could impede national projects if not attended to. Solutions to the problems of Identity Management and the scalability of SOA implementations are just two that need urgent attention.

So to survive , JISC has to be sufficiently engaged in influencing and engaging with learning technology based solutions in the schools and tertiary sector in order to anticpate those areas that need the efforts and expertise of our community?

So what have I been doing for my one day per week in addition to boring my colleagues at mangement meetings with the above?

Well I have been supportng Peter with ePortfolio develovepment (around assessment) and with the help of Nottingham University finding out about Lifelong Learning Networks,