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Models of Staff Development South Staffordshire College. Rationale for developing an online model of staff development. Due to funding cutbacks and college sustainability program can’t afford to continue with the travel incurred costs with staff driving to different campuses.
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Rationale for developing an online model of staff development • Due to funding cutbacks and college sustainability program can’t afford to continue with the travel incurred costs with staff driving to different campuses. • Need to find realistic alternatives to significantly reduce travel costs.
Rationale • One of the challenges of our multi campus college is ensuring staff development and CPD sessions are offered across all campus’s • Take staff up to 45 minutes to travel between campus locations. • Staff loose time to travelling and thus this can affect attendance. • Sustainable CPD & team meetings • To address these issues, the E-learning & Quality Teaminvestigated online CPD & online meeting room options
Online meeting alternatives All have pros & cons…
WFD – e-portfolio system • Last year we had just invested in a new web hosted e-portfolio system for our Work Force Development • Smart Assessor came with an integrated web conference room they called Smart Rooms. • Assessors can use the Smart Rooms to interact with learners 'virtually' over the web, in between formal face to face reviews. • Smart Rooms allowed assessors to record audio/video for Professional discussion, Q&A sessions and review progress. • The E learning team immediately saw the benefits of this software from a teaching & Learning & training perspective. • Here was our own online meeting space….
Innovations Day – College’s Cross Campus CPD Day - Streaming the Activities • Staff feedback - excellent – Less travel • Management feedback - excellent – standardisation of CPD • Externals - excited – Took ideas back to own SLT • Attendance - 40 + attendance to many online sessions • We proved that we could stream CPD activities with minimal hardware investment whilst demonstrating different uses of the technology. • It also meant that we were able to present standardised CPD across all of our campuses
Re purpose our recorded sessions - Online CPD • Staff really liked the online cpd sessions • As a result we created an online course that included the resulting video footage from the sessions & introduction to our college “experts in the field”
Re purpose our recorded sessions - Online CPD • Created more online cpd courses for staff to utilise • Many of our early courses had an Elearning focus.
Online CPD Developed • Usage & enthusiasm for online cpd was up • Held onto this enthusiasm • Work closely with our Advanced Teaching & Learning Coaches (ALTAC’s) • Worked with our ALTAC manager to create a similar online course to promote Teaching & Learning • TWITS (Teachers With Ideas To Share)
Online CPD Developed • TWITS (Teachers With Ideas To Share) • Started to move away from our intranet and info / video/ links & placed related paperwork into our TWITS course • Interactive Forums created • Launched and immediately communication and the sharing of good practice between academic staff began to improve.
TWITS • TWITS is growing into a resource bank of ideas for staff to share. • We are now starting to see an increase in users • The impact of it's effectiveness to date, by the number of pro-active staff who are accessing the course • Staff are improving their teaching practice whilst still trying to meet the everyday demands that teaching today brings
Identified issues of streaming live staff development • Create “cinema” rooms on each campus • Work closely with your IT services • Create bespoke log ins • Staff the streamed rooms • Have super users controlling layout changes rather than the deliverer
Identified issues of streaming live staff development • Test all formats and layouts you wish to deliver • “Close off “ the live rooms from external noise disruption • Need to consider audience involvement, positioning in front of the webcams and session content. • Do not attempt to stream sessions using Wi Fi
Advantages of Online Meeting space Low investment • Sustainable delivery method • Only a normal computer with Internet access and special web conferencing software is required to participate in an online meeting. • Cost effective Web cameras and headsets • All participants can jointly access, view and edit documents in real time. • Small investment is necessary to implement online CPD / meetings
Final Advice !!! • Staff need to be fully supported through using the technology from the pedagogical approach • Online delivery is not the same as delivering face-to-face teaching in a traditional classroom environment.
Further Information / Support South Staffordshire College Stephen.wileman@southstaffs.ac.uk Ian.Holt@southstaffs.ac.uk How to set up a smartroom conference http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ9g-FztIeM Smart Assessor – Eportfolio / Smartroom online meeting space fiona@smartassessor.co.uk