Learning through digital
Learn My Way grows!
It’s been an incredibly busy and ambitious year for Learn My Way, the dedicated e-learning website that has grown hugely in both size and profile in 2013-14, as it has expanded beyond its digital inclusion roots to provide valuable and useful content for those not only looking to get online, but to improve their money management, literacy and employability skills too.
The site has always been based on the needs of its users, but this has developed even more so in the last year, with a new learner planner allowing learners to complete their own journey through the site based on the content that interests them, gaining a badge when they complete each new section.
New courses have been developed in response to focus groups and seminars with learners, UK online centres partners and industry experts, including a guide to Universal Jobmatch which comes on the back of a number of requests from learners, the Staying Healthy with NHS Choices course and supporting resources, and courses on creating documents online.
But perhaps most importantly, all courses have now been converted to HTML 5 - essentially, this has made all the Learn My Way materials device neutral, so access to the site is open to computers, tablets and phones alike. This has been a huge benefit to centres who are keen to take learning out into the community, and has opened up access to the site to many more.
English My Way
Despite only being in its infancy, English My Way is fast becoming one of the most exciting projects Tinder has embarked on in the last year. In partnership with the British Council and the BBC, we have developed an ESOL programme as part of the Department for Communities and Local Government’s English Language competition.
Local delivery will begin in May 2014, with the learning content already developed to support a 24 week, 96 hour blended learning approach, with learners supported through face-to-face interaction, online sessions and volunteer group activities. It’s all about getting people to grips with the very basics of the English language, and it is delivered through an innovative new website - English My Way - which provides tutors with all the resources they need for delivery as well as detailed MI on learner progress. The website can also be easily switched to a learner view, so they can work through the content without being confused.
The programme aims to boost people’s confidence with English, help motivate people to keep learning, and ultimately provide another trusted, expert course for our centres to rely on.
It’s an ambitious and innovative project, and as a result interest has already been extremely high. It’s unique for UK online centres, but equally, it is new territory for Tinder too, and we’re optimistic this ‘pre-digital skills’ type of programme will help us diversify and as a result extend and improve our content and online skills outreach even further.
Content co-creation
Following our lessons from the Creating Digital Communities work, Tinder Foundation launched a new Content co-creation project - based on the premise that local organisations can best respond to local needs, and create high quality learning content in collaboration with learners, community groups, local experts, other UK online centres, and Tinder Foundation itself.
The project saw Tinder Foundation fund 11 centres to begin to co-create new content for the Learn My Way website, and to collaborate on the development of an online tool (Course Creator) to help UK online centres to create their own courses on the site. Individual course projects have ranged from cancer care to computer maintenance, an introduction to smart phones and Apps, NHS translations for ESOL learners and support for mums at risk of postnatal depression.
Tinder Foundation has led on the development of the Course Creator, using the pilot courses and feedback from the pilot development group. It’s an online programme that is set to help even complete novices to build their own online course using simple templates, adding text, photographs, video content and even audio narration.
Eventually it will be fully integrated with Learn My Way, so centres can embed these newly created courses into the wider learner journey, and track progress on the website’s Management Information system.
Course Creator is set to be launched in its first incarnation this Spring.
Online Basics qualification
Our Online Basics Entry Level 3 qualification has continued to go from strength to strength in 2013-14, with over 1,400 accredited centres delivering the qualification, and 3,500 certificates achieved altogether. Large training provider Pertemps began delivering the programme to their learners, alongside many smaller organisations within the UK online centres network. All have realised the huge benefit of the qualification to learners who may never have received a qualification before, and learners continue to receive a huge boost to their confidence and their employment prospects.
National Careers Service
Between October and March, we worked closely with the National Careers Service (NCS) in order to create a partnership for the benefit of those seeking employment help. We’ve combined NCS’s expertise on careers advice and guidance with Tinder’s knowledge of delivering learning digitally to create expert new content of Learn My Way, and to support grassroots relationship building.
We undertook research with a number of centres into their relationship with NCS, and as a result, Tinder developed appropriate courses, sessions and awareness campaigns to get more learners and unemployed people to explore NCS and Learn My Way to further their employability, as well as boost their confidence with all things digital.
Training sessions were developed and delivered to raise awareness of NCS’s online presence. and three courses were created on Learn My Way - Skills and Careers Online, Creating Documents Online and Using Universal Jobmatch.
Case studies have given just a small snapshot into the huge response and success this partnership has garnered, and we have every confidence the collaboration and the courses and materials it has created will continue to benefit huge numbers of learners looking to get back into employment.
Case study: Library supports learners back to work with National Careers Service
A new partnership, brokered by Lancashire Adult Learning (LAL), between Lancashire libraries, Tinder Foundation, Jobcentre Plus and the National Careers Service is providing local job seekers with seamless support to get back into work.
LAL has supported Lancashire libraries to deliver Learn My Way (LMW) and Work Club sessions county-wide for a number of years and with an increasing demand for job search skills and support to use Universal Jobmatch, waiting lists were growing.
Kevin Vickers, UK Online Coordinator for LAL, explains:
“We knew we needed to offer more, and ‘triage’ our visitors so the right people got the right kind of support. That’s when our specialised work-clubs really took off. We’ve got a team of tutors, working in 16 regular library- based Work Clubs so we can focus on jobs skills, online searching, CVs and more”
Kevin knew that to really make a difference to the people coming to them for help, he needed to coordinate with other services. He continues:
“We’ve always worked closely with Lancashire Jobcentre Plus, but we soon realised we needed to make it super-easy for them to work with us. In the past Jobcentre staff were unsure which of our services to refer clients too, so we wanted to make it simple. Now people are sent straight to the Work Clubs, and straight into our support system.
The missing link was advice. We’re experts at the digital skills training - thanks to Learn My Way - but our Information, Advice and Guidance team only have limited capacity and we can’t type the content of individual CVs. We knew National Careers Service (NCS) advisors were already meeting clients in our libraries on an ad-hoc basis, and we wanted to join it up so we all worked together to make the service to job seekers really tailored, and really seamless.
Now there’s an NCS advisor attending almost all of our work clubs, and helping with that triage process to make sure each person we work with is getting exactly the support they need. It means I can send Learn My Way clients over for careers advice, and that John - the NCS advisor I work with - can send people to me when they’re ready to work on their IT skills or attend the Work Club. It’s a win-win situation, helping us both meet our targets, and helping us help people to the best of our abilities. Essentially it’s made it easy for us, easy for NCS, easy for Jobcentre Plus, and most importantly, really, really easy for Lancashire job seekers.”
Baking with Friends
From measuring and weighing ingredients to searching for healthy recipe alternatives online, Baking with Friends aimed to combine maths and beginners internet skills to create a fun, engaging and tasty way of getting to grips with numeracy and online basics, as part of the Action on Adult Maths programme run by NIACE.
More than 80 centres held Baking with Friends events at various locations from full, commercial kitchens to a simple room with a clean bench and a fridge. The reaction to the campaign was hugely positive, with 90% of participating centres using the event to promote their adult learning provision, and 85% saying that their events raised awareness of adult numeracy support.
We were especially pleased to hear that 80% of learners that took part in a Baking with Friends event said they felt more confident with both maths and computers and the internet after taking part.