Inspire learners, drive attainment - make FE learning resource services front and centre

Editor's Notes

• #3: Home of Clarks Shoes / Clarks outlet mall / town with Quaker origins – community spirit, modest, in fact Street was teetotal until the 1970s! can look out from this green onto Glastonbury Tor / areas of wealth (City of Wells / private schools – Millfield) / areas of depravation – Glastonbury ; Being rural many travel into college on buses – up to 1hr 45m on bus each way. We survived the merger process and remain stand alone ; that said we have some big colleges on our doorstep – people in the South West are rather fortunate as we have many Grade 1 Colleges ; it means competition is high. ; Another element of local competition - We have a number of schools with sixth forms close by / work hard to keep the cream of crop / students - they provide paper textbooks for their students. Interesting student population - we have many white witches / pagans / travellers / people who choose to live off grid.
• #4: Our Moodle is managed by the LRC staff. Its very ‘out of the box’ ; hosted in house ; we have no developers. LRC Staff set up & create new Moodle courses for teaching staff – send out guidance (including backing up courses, how to functionality…) deliver training at Staff Development Days ; 1-1 inductions for new staff. Work with IT, who manage the back end of Moodle. Moodle been around for a long time, we did the bronze / silver / gold standard for courses a number of years ago. Many would like to change to Google Classroom / Microsoft Teams… but we’re not there yet and for us ‘the price is right’ for moodle ! I report to the DP and both the IT Manager & myself sit on various committees – IT Strategy Group ; IT User Group ; College Managers ; Curriculum Action Group ; HE Operations ; we present to the Governors and we attend Student Forums – Our opinions are sought and valued - I think this is key to being at the heart of the college.
• #5: Strode are so small compared to large colleges – When new specs came out I couldn’t offer 1 textbook per learner or titles as ebooks on concurrent user licences. Marc records are linked between paper records copy and ebook copy. At Strode all course managers are responsible for their own moodle pages / content / all lecturers have ‘teacher’ / editing rights. I had in the past preached at staff meetings… we have fabulous resources… reply - oh yes must check them out…. A few champions… preaching to converted. A few years ago I spoke with some tutors and asked if I could have a play with their courses and add ebooks – they were a success. That summer, I hijacked every moodle course and added a digital library…. It’s a KISS Strategy – Moodle HTML Block with images hyperlinked directly to the ebook. Most of our students (and staff) don’t know they are using ebooks for FE, they think they are using moodle. All moodle blocks are backed up as standalone, so they can be dropped onto any new course or restored if the lecturer accidently deletes – it’s happened. Shibboleth was critical for us as we needed home access / bus access. Lucky JISC had discounted training our IT staff attended. Interestingly we have seen some of our ‘lowest scoring’ moodle courses have the highest ebook usage.
• #6: We have integrated our databases into our VLE also – to be honest it’s rough and ready – if I can do this you can too – if you’re big and have a budget then let your imagination & developers go wild for you. I was surprised to learn during our Value Study that not every college makes full use of JISC’s free resources – go have a look! Sign up to them all – even if you only have two users, it was worth it to them. Dominic is a physics & photography student – our students appreciate saving money on purchasing textbooks, they like not having to carry books around campus (we have limited lockers), and the like access on the move.
• #7: Content where students use / lucky because we are small we are involved in the enrolment process – we run network logons / Moodle accounts – lots of parents / early sell ; starting to see parents coming in at enrolment knowing ‘the College provides ebooks’ – we’re saving their family money… enrolment win / enrolments up from schools with sixth forms ; the most successful things for us with staff is league tables for ebook usage – always gets the usage up, as staff promote it – current winners – A Level PE ; Chem ; IT ; for students success highest for moodle campaigns on banners … ; We have an annual IT & LRC survey and we have seen student use of ebooks grow year on year. Our A Level results & high grades are fantastic. Good luck