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E-learning


		11-16 schools

		6th form schools

		Colleges

The case studies on this page discuss how to use virtual learning environments to support, manage and enhance learning.

E-learning at St Helens College: using a virtual campus to provide vocational course for 14-16 students

Teaching VCE ICT online

Developing a college intranet

Small-scale development of subject pages

E-learning at St Helens College: using a virtual campus to provide vocational courses for 14-16 students

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.

St Helens, a large college of further and higher education detects a growing demand for on-line learning and has begun to provide courses on-line, or 'virtual campus'. Demand is growing, St Helens believes, because on-line learning offers the following benefits:

College courses are more accessible. Students do not have to travel to the college buildings or study at particular times. They can study at home, or possibly at their workplace if the course is work-related, and at times which are convenient to them.
Students save time and money by not having to travel to college.
Although students have to study on their own rather than with others in a classroom with a teacher, they do receive advice and instructions from a college lecturer - an 'e-tutor'. Students email their work to the tutor who marks it and emails it back to them.
Anyone, anywhere can study the course provided they pay the fee, even people on the other side of the world. The college courses are no longer simply for people in the immediate vicinity of the college, although the way the courses are advertised and promoted means that they are likely to be studied by people in the Merseyside region, at least initially.
The course materials are designed in such a way that students can decide for themselves how rapidly or slowly they will study the course. The course becomes tailored to the individual's requirements.
Unlike traditional textbooks and hand-outs which need to be periodically re-printed, the on-line course materials can easily be kept up to date.

In short, on-line courses are a form of distance-learning, like the Open University courses. Like any form of distance-learning, it works successfully when the students are sufficiently motivated to study on their own. Computers, of course, provide advantages over the traditional forms of distance learning which have relied primarily on printed materials and postal communications. For example, the computer provides moving images and sound, and unlike a television programme the material is interactive, responding instantly to students' answers to on-screen questions.

Enrolment

To become a student at the virtual campus, a person simply goes to the website and follows the on-screen instructions: enrolment is online. The newly enrolled student is immediately given a username and password, and granted access to a taster course pending confirmation of fee payment.

Support

Distance learning students need to be supported and to feel part of a community of students. So there is a service that provides personal messages not only between students and their tutor, but also between students, between anyone in the virtual campus. There is also a discussion forum that provides a convenient method for staff and students to exchange information or to discuss issues concerned with the virtual campus.

Course-tracking software allows the e-tutors to monitor their students' progress and to contact them if the system identifies any potential problems. Virtual campus staff can also use the tracking system to examine how users are interacting with the course materials.

The courses

The first courses to be available at the virtual campus are largely in ICT. They include the European Computer Driving Licence, Using Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint, and the Oxford Cambridge and RSA Certificate in IT. There are also two health and safety courses relating to hairdressing and using ICT equipment. Forthcoming courses include, amongst others, GCSEs in vocational subjects, NVQs in administration and management and access to HE courses.

Teaching VCE ICT online

Cornwallis School, a technology school in Maidstone, Kent, has 200 laptops on a wireless network and 200 desktop computers. Its aim is for students and teachers to be able to use a computer anywhere on the premises.

The head of ICT has been teaching the VCE in ICT entirely online for two years, providing all materials, including lesson notes and support materials, on the computer network. A plan for the month is also included, so that students can see when key lessons will take place. In lessons, the teacher uses a whiteboard linked to the computer network and 'screenshots' of the whiteboard are saved to the network. Students do not have to copy what is on the board: they can view it afterwards on their computers.

The teacher has also been experimenting with ways of using independent learning time to help her students learn more effectively in taught lessons. She asks them to do preliminary research, specified online, before each lesson. For example, before their first lesson in spreadsheets, students are expected to open a spreadsheet application on the computer and explore the menu options. She finds that lesson time is used more effectively if students carry out activities they can do on their own, in their own time, before the lesson. She aims to turn her students into independent learners before they go to university.

The computers are also used to help manage students' learning. All homework assignments are online. The teacher sets a midnight deadline for homework to be emailed to her, and the emails are downloaded in front of the whole class the next day. The students find this a powerful incentive not to miss their deadline. Parents can see what work has been set by looking at the school website from a home computer, and can support the teacher by encouraging students to keep up with their work. The school wrote to all the parents, asking them to support the teachers in this way.

Experiments in returning marked work to students by email have been less successful, because students value contact with a teacher when work is returned to them.

Developing a college intranet

At Esher College in Surrey, the highly-developed college intranet is accessible from the extensive computer facilities in the college and from students' homes (with a password). Seventy per cent of students read college emails and are active, regular users of the college network, and about 98 per cent have access to a computer either at college or at home. The college finds its intranet facility immensely valuable, not only for teaching, learning and administration, but also because it creates a sense of community in a college without facilities for allowing all its members to meet together.

Each subject department has its own website on the intranet, which includes:

awarding body specifications
class assignments
reading material
support material (for example quizzes, video clips and web links).

The computer network is used for general learning, as well as for students' main subjects. For example, there is a popular 'GASWorks' site, short for 'Grab A Skill Works', which contains advice and enjoyable exercises on skills such as spelling, active revision and portfolio building.

Small-scale development of subject webpages

Similar developments, on a smaller scale, can also be undertaken in less well-equipped institutions. At one school with relatively few resources, the head of careers is building a school website. Since the school's teachers do not generally have the expertise to create web pages, he has arranged for them to be able to place word-processed material on the network. The school also employs an administrative assistant trained in the use of the relevant software to spend one hour a week with each department, creating suitable web pages. The administrative assistant and the head of careers work with a single computer to achieve these developments.

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