Engaging Staff with Digital Tech
An ETF-funded OTLA Digital Project
Who are we and what are we doing?
As local authority adult learning providers, we all have a range of different learners across many curriculum areas. Across the three providers, we have Vocational Learning, Traineeship learners on programmes of study, Community-based learning (e.g. dressmaking), Employability, Family Learning, Skills for Life (maths, English and ESOL), LDD & SEN provision and more.
Use and embedding of digital technologies in a relevant and engaging way across teaching, learning and assessment was a recurring development area across OTLAs for Gateshead Council learningSkills, Durham County Council Adult Learning, and Northumberland County Council Adult Learning. We had identified from practitioners’ feedback that knowledge, skills, time and confidence are some of the main barriers to outstanding use of digital technologies within a classroom. This can mean that some learners may not access relevant, useful technologies which will enhance their learning experience and life skills, increase motivation and promote achievement.
As part of this project, digital workshops will be used as engagement tools to give practitioners an informal way to Themes for workshop have been successfully identified and many digital champions and tutors have already begun to experiment with using these digital technologies within their classrooms.
Digital Champions
A team of 12+ ‘digital champions’ have been identified across all 3 organisations. The digital champions are tutors who have been observed as successfully and competently using specific, relevant digital technologies within their teaching, learning and assessment previously. The digital champions can be supportive of other tutors and are able to offer advice as fellow practitioners and will run workshops in-house for other tutors to learn how to use digital technologies.
Workshops
As part of this project, digital workshops will be used as engagement tools to give practitioners an informal way to Themes for workshop have been successfully identified and many digital champions and tutors have already begun to experiment with using these digital technologies within their classrooms. Workshops will be: Blogs/Blogger, Padlet, Weebly, Mentimeter, Plickers, DuoLingo, Socrative Teacher, Kahoot, Nearpod.
We found from the self-assessment results that in these themes we had staff who were competent at using these technologies in one organisation and this identified some excellent opportunities for collaborative working.
You can find out more about these digital technologies and practitioner perspectives by clicking on the links below.
Self-Assessment Survey
Many of the changes to initial plans have come from reflective working as a result of the self-assessment survey. This in itself was an addition to the initial plans, as we as a collaborative group identified that a large challenge within this project is considering starting point vs end point with tutors embedding digital technologies within their teaching, to promote and evidence reflective practice. It was extremely important to us to assess and evaluate the impact of the workshops and it was vital that we produced a document that would allow us to do this, but also to ensure tutors consider ways that they would apply what they had learnt at workshops to their own teaching.
At an initial collaboration meeting, all local authorities agreed that the best way to do this would be to ask tutors to complete an initial ‘self-assessment’ to identify a starting point. The self-assessment has been completed by 94 staff across all organisations, 42 from Gateshead Council, 29 from Northumberland Council and 23 from Durham Council. The results of the survey were really useful in identifying key specific areas of focus for this project.
Workshop Reflections/Tutor Reflections
Success!
When we collated and analysed the self-assessment results, we found that 89% of all teaching staff who completed the self-assessments (across all 3 organisations) identified that they would benefit from guidance and examples around what could work in sessions from fellow practitioners (see self-assessment reports for figures per local authority). This made it clear to us that using digital champions was a good way forward and using evidence from fellow practitioners in similar contexts would be highly relevant and useful to tutors and would support engagement very well. Many tutors are looking forward to workshops and overall feedback so far has been very positive.
This has really helped tutors to engage with the project and understand that it is about ‘trying’ things and solving a problem, rather than being under pressure to shoehorn digital technologies into their sessions in an irrelevant way. Reflection documents which have come in so far have demonstrated that practitioners are really considering the impact of digital technologies on their learners’ learning, rather than just using digital technologies for the sake of ‘ticking a box’. The enthusiasm from the digital champions has also underpinned this. Essentially, rather than apply a blanket approach, we have asked tutors to identify a problem within their teaching, learning and assessment and then identify a digital technology or solution which could resolve it. This has meant that we have started to develop a very specific ‘digital problem-solving’ approach to this project and has really helped to engage staff with the project in a more ‘have a go’ type approach.
Many tutors used the self-assessment to research the digital technologies that they had been asked about and as a result, became more engaged with identifying different digital technologies which could be used in teaching, learning and assessment. Tutors and digital champions across all 3 organisations have independently tried out technologies before the workshops have rolled out and this has been captured via the Padlet.
The overall response to the digital technologies project from tutors and practitioners has been highly positive which, after writing the bid, was a very welcome and pleasant surprise. 97% of staff in Gateshead, 96% in Northumberland 95% in Durham and felt that they and their learners had experienced positive outcomes from using technology. This was useful in gauging that attitudes and views around engagement with technologies are positive in the vast majority of tutors and that knowledge, awareness and confidence are the main areas where development is required and tutors see the value of using digital technologies with learners.
What have our challenges been?
Although the title of the project is ‘Engaging Staff with Using Digital Technologies’, it was clear from the majority of the assessment that many staff are already engaged and positive about using technologies, but that preparation time and time-restraints were the main issue and that those staff who are not already engaged would be useful to focus on, but as the survey was anonymised at individual level and only available by curriculum area, it was difficult to identify individual practitioners to signpost to workshops. We made the decision to give practitioners a list of the digital technologies with key areas of teaching that these technologies support and encourage practitioners to consider how this would impact learners.
Collaborative working whilst keeping costs relatively low was also a challenge, as well as considering how this could be done digitally to solve this problem and share our practice with others. During our self-assessment meeting we discussed the idea of videoing tutors delivering digital technologies and using this to keep costs low and this was agreed.
Tutors who have tried some technologies have found challenges with either software or hardware and this, in some places, has had an impact on the quality of teaching, learning and assessment. For example, one tutor planned to use a Plickers quiz as an initial assessment in a short activity as part of an observation, however through various issues this was not successful. This was sometimes a challenge in working with practitioners to try again and see the relevance of doing so, it was vital to the project that some things do ‘go wrong’ as it allows for reflection and further development – it has been a case of simply encouraging tutors to persevere.
Physical digital kit and hardware issues (such as slow Wi-Fi, problems with connecting a Smart board up) was identified by the self-assessment as an issue which resulted in negative impacts for learners across all 3 organisations, so this was an opportunity to address these issues before rolling out the project and having limited success or ability to participate in reflective practice due to kit issues.
'Having a go' with Kahoot at the Interim Event
Date for the diary...
Digital Market Place Event
Friday, Nov 9, 2018, 09:00 AM
The Dryden Centre - Gateshead Council, Evistones Road, Gateshead, UK
What's next?
• Northumberland will be moving to a video-led observation process from September 2018 so will be able to easily share best practice via the Padlet and video-based sharing will be extremely useful for new teaching staff who are keen to see technologies in action.
• Organisations have also been encouraged to use their own themes and workshops – for example, Gateshead Council are investigating the use of Edmodo for engagement of hard-to-reach programme of study learners, one Construction tutor has already begun to experiment with this and has reflected on the impact on learners. Collaborative working opportunities by uploading videos to Padlet have also been identified.
• Incorporate digital technologies to ‘problem solve’ with tutors who have received a grade 3 or 4 at recent observation. This will naturally encourage embedding of digital technologies in a relevant way to enhance teaching and learning
• All 3 local authority providers will be rolling out workshops and practice from tutors will be uploaded to Padlet to share with others via video. Reflection documents from workshops will be used to identify how relevant digital technologies are to certain curriculum areas
• As per the self-assessment results, 100% of staff in Durham Council, 85% of staff in Gateshead Council and 78% of staff in Northumberland Council all identified that they would be interested in a market place CPD event for sharing digital technologies practice, so ‘Digital Marketplace’ date has been finalised for lead organisation to host on Friday November 9th 2018. This will be an event where staff who may not be able to attend workshops or may not enjoy this format of learning will be able to access an event where digital technology stalls are being run by digital champions and practitioners, to give teachers ideas and answers to their TLA problems. It has been agreed that if this is a successful event, it would be something which could continue past the project ending date.