Choosing and engaging project participants.

I engaged employers who would not be deterred by project setbacks and who would be proactive. I particularly avoided larger prominent employers when planning the pilot phase. As our college had been through a restructuring, whereby employer engagement became a set aim, I targetted curriculum areas with close established links to the college.
When introducing employers to the project I found it useful to meet them alonside one or two learners. This meant that discussions about usefulness had more than one perspective. Often learners stressed that they wished employers to be aware of and involved with their study progress.
As part of our restructuring and new build HE centre plans, staff involved with work based learning at NVQ level and staff newly charged with HE employer engagement have began to work together. Whilst project team visits to senior management teams have led to awareness of the project at that level, the ground level operatives remain unaware or unconvinced of the WBLWAY support points use. This is partly due to the delay in providing information from Hive (repository) that would make the information point a useful marketting tool.
Plans for future engagement:
At present I am waiting for the information point to evolve to a point where I can revisit employers and placate their early fears (largely relating to information available).
The Standards and Development Unit at college now has a dedicated HE Curriculum Development Manager (employed on a temporary project basis). He will be made aware of the Information Point, as the Curriculum Area Leaders have been at formal leadership meetings which were promoted by CEL (Centre for Excellence in Leadership) and Kingston Universties "Managers into Leaders" programme. Involvement in the LSC's Technology Exemplar Network should also provide an opportunity to promote the WBLWAY Information Point.

An immediate opportunity to engage staff teams should be afforded by the training programme we have just initiated to embed FrameUp. FrameUp is now being used to begin to track work based leaners at all levels below HE. It clearly presents the framework that students follow and enables staff to monitor student progress, details and involvement with employers but is only an internal tracking tool ( accessed by college staff only).
Staff are already questioning its usefulness and wether something similar should be applied to HE (particularly FD's) and opened up to employers. Owing to this interest, I have made them aware of WBLWAY. Should WBLWAY ever allow even a simple overview of progress alongside its capacity to provide information that could market FD's, it could become an accepted tool. Our employer engagement team would now be keen to talk to the team about WBLWAY. Pauline Athersmith leads the team, with Evelyne Flynn responsible for employer engagement, and a team of placement officers. They would deal with progression to FD's, whilst Curriculum Area Leaders and Advanced Practitioners have a role developing FD's.