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	E-learning with St Helen's College

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E-learning with St Helen's College


		11-16 schools

		6th form schools

		Colleges

The continuing revolution in computer and communications technology is opening up new opportunities in teaching collaboration. At St Helens College in Merseyside it is leading to new ways of providing vocational courses for 14-16-year-old school students.

14-16-year-old school students

The college has a large programme of work with local school students. Each year, up to 600 school students attend the college for vocational studies, including GCSEs in vocational subjects, vocational taster courses and courses leading to level 1 and foundation units or whole qualifications.

This programme of work includes vocational GCSE for 14-16-year-olds taught in partnership with the schools. The school students attend the college for some of their vocational classes, but other vocational lessons are conducted at school using the e-learning materials produced for the virtual campus. This is particularly useful for schools who lack teachers with the relevant specialist expertise in particular vocational areas. If the school does not have a sufficiently fast internet connection, the college supplies the materials on CD-ROM.

At school, the students study under the supervision of a teacher in a computer classroom, and take their completed work to the college (on floppy disks in the case of CD-ROM-based study). However, many of the course materials are assessed automatically by the software. For example, the leisure and tourism GCSE material explains key concepts and technical terms on screen with text, graphics and pictures, after which it gives the student a multiple-choice on-screen test, with the answers marked instantly so that the student can see how well they have understood each section of the material. The student then decides whether to repeat a section or move on to the next one. The students like being able to study vocational subjects, and they prefer working on the computer to using a textbook.