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Enabling distance learning through open platforms — Bristol City Council

Resource Type: 
etf
PID: 
etf:3001
Description: 

This Outstanding, Teaching, Learning, and Assessment (OTLA) project from 2016/17 aimed to address the Ofsted recommendation to embed IT (information technology) to support ‘out of classroom’ extension activities to a wide range of community learning courses delivered by Bristol City Council in partnership with North Somerset and South Gloucestershire. The culture within their provision was of staff resistance to the use of IT, due to skills shortfall, as well as the inherent difficulties associated with delivering courses across many disparate venues with mostly self-employed staff. The project worked to create simple bite-size solutions and open-source tools that would positively impact on the quality of tutor teaching, without undue setup time. Project activities included deploying training materials, providing IT support and having a continuing professional development day for 'hard to engage' tutors. The project developed a web portal as a repository for newly created resources including instructional videos for staff as well as training videos that staff can deliver directly to students. The link to the website is in the case study. Despite the usual challenges of community learning delivery, there was a 20% rise in tutors regularly using IT and a 26% increase in tutors who developed new IT materials for students.

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