Tag Archives: learner voice

100 ways, vle

100 ways to use a VLE – #46 Ask the learners

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I am still surprised by how many practitioners don’t even consider asking and listening to their learners about how the VLE could support them in their studies.

I remember a conversation from a few years ago with an HE institution and they said that something like 70-80% of the calls to their VLE support line were from learners having problems finding content on their VLE. The reason they couldn’t find the content, was because it wasn’t there. The students were using the VLE with some of their lecturers and made (what they perceived) to be a valid assumption that other lecturers would use the VLE in the same way. They weren’t and as a result, difficulties in finding the content and the calls to the VLE support line. Imagine also how many learners who were having the same problem and didn’t call the support line.

These learners wanted to use the VLE, they had an idea of how they wanted to use the VLE and were not able to use the VLE in the way they wanted as some of the staff had decided not to use the VLE in a consistent way as their colleagues were.

The lesson to learn is that consistency is not only important for learners, but listening to what learners were asking and wanting is also important.

One of our business staff decided that he should ask the learners how they wanted to use the VLE. What came out of the exercise were some really interesting observations from the learners about how they wanted to use the VLE. As a result the business team decided to change the way in which they used the VLE across all their courses.

One of the challenges for learners is understanding the functionality of the VLE, but the question we should be asking them is not what functions they want to use on the VLE, but what their needs are, and using the VLE to meet those needs if appropriate.

So we should never be asking our learners, “do you want to use a wiki on the VLE?” More we should be asking “what do you find difficult, where do you need help?” and then using the VLE to solve those problems.

At the end of the day, learners should inform practitioners about how they want to use the VLE and not lead how it should be used. They however shouldn’t be ignored. Where we can let them inform, but also be aware that the learners are there to learn and using the VLE to enable them to learn to new things and new ways of doing them is also valuable.

So are you asking your learners?

stuff

Posterousing the Learner Voice

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Talking with a manager today we were discussing how we could use various technologies to capture the learner voice. In the FE sector the learner voice has become strategically important and is part of the inspection framework.

There is a great focus in the Common Inspection Framework on involving learners in developing policies, provision and activities. This builds on the learner voice concepts and involvement strategies that are common in the FE sector. Ofsted are likely to expect similar strategies across all provisions, not just colleges and LSC provision.

It’s not as though we didn’t listen to learners in the past, we certainly did, but we probably didn’t have the systems and processes to effectively capture the learner voice and importantly feedback to them.

In my own college we have a robust system for capturing the learner voice across the college, however it doesn’t capture all the feedback. Sometimes learners want to provide feedback on their own curriculum area (which they can do as part of the college wide learner voice) but may not think it important enough to talk about at a college level, but want their voice heard at a “local” level. Also though the system is robust it may not always capture everything. There is also a need from a local perspective in capturing evidence that would feed into the Self-Assessment Report (SAR) and be used to develop a plan for the following year.

So back to the conversation with the manager.

We both knew that we could tap into the existing system, but wanted to allow learners to use video and audio. We already have the technology in the classroom and the library to capture video and audio (using the iSight camera and microphone built into the iMac). Learners could also capture video and audio using their mobile phones, these media files can then be easily moved to the computers or sent direct.

The key question then was where should the learners send their media files?

Using e-mail was rejected very early on, we have limited space for our e-mail and archiving and saving attachments seemed very clunky and time consuming. That was also the reason using gmail was also rejected.

We also wanted a simple system for learners, so using a service like Blogger or WordPress went out the window.

In the end we started looking at Posterous.

Posterous originally started as a service that allowed you to use a single e-mail account to send “stuff”. Posterous would then convert the stuff into a blog with separate postings for each individual e-mail. Posterous will also automatically encode the video and audio too. But this would only work (at that time) with a single e-mail account, so not entirely suitable for the needs of the manager.

However recent updates from Posterous have created a mechanism that would work for capturing the learner voice.

You can create a Posterous blog and then “anything” sent to a specific e-mail account you choose, whateveryouwant@posterous.com. So you can give that e-mail address to your learners who can then send their video and audio files to it. They can also send text, or photographs of handwritten comments.

Once received at Posterous, the e-mail (with the stuff) is held in a moderation queue, once moderated it will be published. Now you probably don’t actually want this content in the public domain (dirty laundry and all that) another nice feature of Posterous is the ability to make the blog private.

So learners can easily create media files, using college equipment or their own devices or phones. They can e-mail these to Posterous, which will encode it for the web. The manager can get notifications via e-mail and so will know when learners have posted stuff. They can moderate the “postings” so they appear on the blog. They can then view what the learners have said. The manager can also open out the blog to other staff who have an interest.

At this level the system works quite well.

To take a stage further, the manager can add tags to postings, making it easier to see if there are pattens or collate from different groups.

The learner voice is important, using technologies such as Posterous makes it easier for learners to use different media and for some learners a different mechanism that they prefer, to enable their voice to be heard.

vle

Hearing the Learner Voice

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For most people, talking and listening to learners is the ideal way to gather feedback from learners as part of the learner voice in FE.

However there are many technologies and services out there that could be used in addition to talking and listening face to face.

I have mentioned on the blog before about using the VLE to gather the learner voice.

There are various tools that can be used for this, there could be an open discussion forum that allows learners to discuss the college and the provision. Though care must be taken in order for this open forum not to be abused and if moderation does take place that it is open and fair.

A closed discussion forum can also be useful in allowing evidence of discussion and feedback in one place. Within this kind of forum the only people who can see the discussion would be the learner and the college.

A further method of using the VLE would be to use something like the Feedback block on Moodle that allows users of the VLE to provide either a poll of some kind or more detailed feedback on the provision in the college.

Most (if not all) learners have a mobile phone and I would expect most (if not all) of these have a camera capable of taking video. You could encourage learners to make short videos using their mobile phones about their experiences at college, what they would like to see different at college as part of learner voice. There needs to be some mechanism for collecting and collating the videos, providing a central e-mail address or MMS text number could be used for remote collection. Another way would be to upload the videos to a college network resource or even the VLE.

SMS is another key way for gathering learner voice and is a technology that many learners will be familiar with. SMS textwalls are one way of collating SMS messages from learners.

Our iMacs in our libraries have built-in webcams and even if you use PCs, using a webcam to capture short video clips from learners can be a simple way of collecting the learner voice.

Online service such as Wallwisher can be used to collect and collate comments from learners as part of learner voice.

By providing a Posterous e-mail address and creating a private Posterous account, learners could just e-mail their “voice” and using Posterous would allow learners not to just send text, but also audio and video too.

So face to face discussions with learners are a valuable way of gathering the learner voice, there are also many different technologies, tools and services that would allow the learner voice to be collected in different ways.

How do you listen to the learner voice?

100 ways, vle

100 ways to use a VLE – #77 Learner Voice

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One of the things that the VLE can be used for is to capture the learner voice.

During inspection, Ofsted will look for evidence that providers have a learner involvement strategy and can show how learners are influencing the improvement of provision.

Source

It provides an ideal location for learners to involve themselves in providing feedback and commentary on the provision in the college.

There are various tools that can be used for this, there could be an open discussion forum that allows learners to discuss the college and the provision. Though care must be taken in order for this open forum not to be abused and if moderation does take place that it is open and fair.

A closed discussion forum can also be useful in allowing evidence of discussion and feedback in one place. Within this kind of forum the only people who can see the discussion would be the learner and the college.

A further method of using the VLE would be to use something like the Feedback block on Moodle that allows users of the VLE to provide either a poll of some kind or more detailed feedback on the provision in the college.

The VLE will never be the only way in which colleges can capture the learner voice, however as one mechanism among many it can be useful tool.