Cumbria County Council application case study

Background

Irene Krechowiecka is the E-learning Development Manager for the Cumbria 14-19 Strategic Partnership. From the early days of the 14-19 Pathfinder, she has been instrumental in spearheading a remarkable shift in the learning culture of the county.

A substantial part of her work has been around how e-learning could supplement, enhance and potentially fill gaps in collaborative 14-19 curriculum provision.

What follows is Irene's account of how the 14-19 Pathfinder philosophy has produced an outcome that will play a vital part in delivering the 14-19 entitlement in Cumbria.

What they did

Part of our brief as a 14-19 Pathfinder project in Cumbria, a mainly rural county, was to explore the potential of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). Initial experiences back in the autumn of 2004 were not good. Our small group of highly motivated teachers was dismayed by the gap between the marketing hype and the reality of the VLE. It was so difficult and awkward to use and we could not see other teachers ever taking it up.

So in desperation we revisited the open source Moodle VLE - a product we'd initially ruled out because of concerns about training and support. The good thing about confident e-users is that they need little help with a product that works as well as Moodle. They are enthusiastic and they can cope with foul-ups. Having been exposed to a difficult-to-use VLE gave them an enhanced appreciation of the benefits of this one.

Two-and-a-half years later, most schools, all colleges and some work-based learning providers in Cumbria are Moodle users. This unity in our approach helps make partnership working for Diploma delivery feel achievable. Hosting, support and training for schools is managed by our regional broadband consortium, Cumbria and Lancashire Education Online (CLEO).

For many pupils using a VLE is now the norm. We saw a VLE as a way of making resources, tests and other information available online. We didn't anticipate that it would also act as a social networking site and the effect that would have on teaching. We also underestimated how valuable this would become in the context of supporting collaborative working across institutions and sectors.

Mark McNulty, one of the early adopters and now Director of E-learning at Queen Elizabeth School (QES) in Kirkby Lonsdale, Moodle has injected new life into teaching and he sees that extending to diploma delivery.

Mark said:

"There's potential for a double benefit here; the Diplomas promise to pump new life into a moribund curriculum and we've already found using Moodle makes learning a more exciting, engaging experience."

The approach has been pragmatic.

He added:

"Our use of e-learning is not driven by whatever happens to be the e-learning flavour of the month but by the practical needs of pupils and teachers,"

As a specialist performing arts college, staff have had some foretaste of things to come once the new 14-19 Diplomas are in place. Students from other schools regularly spend a day a week at QES.

"Because they have access to our Moodle there's no dead time between sessions. It's easy to keep in touch and deal with queries or problems as they arise. "

As well as hosting Moodle for all schools, CLEO have provided us with subject network sites, one for each of the diploma lines of learning. These professional development communities bring together those who will be working to deliver diplomas. They provide an effective way for staff from schools, colleges, work-based learning providers and employers to keep in touch and access the latest information and resources.

They build on relationships already formed through subject networks. Supplementing face-to-face meetings with virtual networking makes a lot of sense for busy people, particularly where there are large distances between schools.

Carolyne Taylor in her role as 14-16 IFP Manager at the Lakes College in West Cumbria has extensive experience of managing school-college links and has helped promote virtual subject networks:

 "As most schools and all Cumbrian colleges now use Moodle its also good to have subject-based sites. I can be sure anything I post to a discussion forum reaches all in the network. It's an easy way to keep everyone in the loop and I can see who's looked at what. Once people see it as a useful place to go for resources and information it takes on a life of its own."

Another plus is that Moodle is open source. John Nixon, the county's School Improvement Officer with responsibility for ICT said:

"An important factor for the Local Authority is having the ability to develop and manage any VLE so it meets our schools' needs. We've been able to influence the development of Moodle and shape it in a way that would not have been possible with a commercial product." "

That flexibility is precisely what's needed in the context of 14-19 today.