About our project

In January 2014, we received the good news that we had been successful in our bid for an extension of our original project via the Jisc FE and Skills Development and Resources Programme – Embedding Activity. We will continue to use this blog to record our activities, outputs and achievements over the next months.

The aims of our Embedding project are:

- to build on the positive outcomes and outputs of our original webinar project
- highlight the key employability skills identified in webinars by the employers who took part in our original project
- produce a well structured and resourced blended learning course to teach students the skills of setting up and running a webinar as a 21st century employability skill
- continue to disseminate our project findings and offer support through Jisc Regional Support Centres to help embed webinar training for students as part of a tutorial or curriculum programme using a blended learning course.

Monday 10 March 2014

FELTAG Report and funding cuts

Having presented during the FE strand at ALT-C 2013 when the FELTAG open consultation session was run we were eager to read the Report that was published last Monday. FELTAG is the Further Education Learning Technology Action Group, convened by Minister of State for Skills and Enterprise, Matthew Hancock at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

Obviously a report that discusses the future use of technology in FE is highly relevant to our project. The timing of this report and the announcement that the government is cutting funding to ‘low value’ courses will allow us to reflect on both of these points whilst shaping the webinar employability course that we are designing for L2 and L3 students.

The aim of our course will be to teach a technology skill; the setting up and running of a webinar. We feel that the hard and soft skills needed to do this will help students be more successful in looking for employment both now and in the future. Our goal is to find a way to make the course fundable by validating the delivery through an awarding body accepted in the post-16 community. As the FELTAG report suggests, a proportion of the course will be delivered online and we are looking at putting the assessment online as well.

FELTAG recommends that “the funding system must fully support the adoption of new digital technology and learning methods….” (p. 23). This short course should tie in nicely with many of the recommendations for funding. We will keep you posted on how we get on.

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