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.

Project Promotion

I am being encouraged to increase our involvement with ILT Development Projects. Recently I joined the QIA/CEL (Quality Improvement Agency/ Centre for Excellence in Leadership) eXplorer programme. A number of the participants introduced Change Management Plans that involved promoting Work Based Learning. I took the opportunity to introduce both of our WBL projects. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that some colleges (ie North Devon) were already aware of the project outputs.
Our planned involvement with the LSC's Technology Exemplar Network may generate even more interest.

WBLWAY - Importance to FD Development

East Staffordshire Childrens' centre registered for WBLWAY Infomation Point services today. Hayley Johnson (training Officer) will be the point of contact. Staff and students relayed their appreciation of WBLWAY aims (the report posted in Google Groups details their response). One outcome from todays meeting is the role that the project is playing in the development of FD's, particularly in respect of administration and delivery.
Ian Watts and Dan Robinson's document (Google Groups 2007) covers "Responsibilities" of parties involved with Staffordshire Universities FD's. Perhaps this could do with some prescriptive elaboration, particularly around the role of tutors delivering the courses and expectations regarding use of ILT and Information Services. It would be helpful to both the project and immediate classroom delivery to FD students at Burton if expectations were restated or even made mandatory.

Employer Registers and college upgrades IT software for WBL.

Rachel Huyton from Burton Arts Centre registered on 10th Jan 2008. A report has been filed in Google Groups, detailing Rachels first impresssions. The Aim Higher Survey on local employer attitudes towards the service proved useful during the process of introducing Rachel to the information point. Hayley Johnson, Training Officer East Staffs Childrens' Centre is sheduled to be introduced to the service, alongside Sue Cornes and Sally Whitbread the centres management team, on Thursday 17th Jan 08.

The IT infrastructure at Burton continues to be developed. The updated list of MIS developments presented via Google Groups in July 2007 has been supplemented by Trax, Covalent, and Frame-up. As staff have to routinely use course management packages such as Pro Achieve etc, the software training consequences for the college are difficult to counter. Add to this Moodle, its ancillary software, and Well at College and staff are understandably "IT overloaded".

I would welcome the team's opinions on Frame-Up (www.wblresources.co.uk) and its implications for the project.

Scheduled meetings with employers

Having piloted the information point with Ruth Gill at Burton College, meetings with other employers have been scheduled. The Burton Arts Centre manager is to review WBLWAY on Thursday 10th January 2008 followed by the training manager for East Staffordshire Childrens' Centre on Thursday 17th January 2008.

Information Point not working 23rd Nov to 3rd December 2007

Met up with Max from Stoke on Trent and Dave from Shrewsbury at Burton College on 23rd Nov 07 to restart the pilot with our "friendly employer" Ruth Gill. The information point fell over everytime we tried it. Reports made to Sam Rowley during appointment with Ruth. We did get to screens of employer and employee but "work based learner details not available" appeared when we attempted to go further and provided Ruth with a link to her learners details.

November 07 Update

SMT welcomed visits from WBLWAY Team to college groups. Comment, "as project has invested £Xxx in college there is an expectation that updates occur".

Staff most responsive to Harvest Road Hive developments. Some are eager to access FD materials formerly in Blackboard in our own VLE.

ILT curriculum development bids which have been accepted include the kind of employer engagement that WBLWAY promotes. I have been charged with "keeping developers informed of WBLWAY". Gerrard Larkin (computing and Electronics) looking also at integrating FD with PTime HNC. Students to either opt out after 2 yrs and gain HNC or take final yr to gain FD.