Well there is often a lot of preparation and paperwork involved in a field trip for both learners and practitioners. No matter how much paperwork you give the learners, often they forget what they need to do, what they need to bring, or even when the trip is and where they need to be…

Having run a fair few field trips in my time, we have had to wait while a student ran home as she had forgotten her passport. Students who missed the bus as they thought the trip was the following week. Students who didn’t bring their assignments and handouts, as they assumed I would!

The VLE is an ideal location to place all that paraphernalia, paperwork and information for any field trip. So all the pre-trip stuff that needs to be done, from risk assessment, completition of forms, equipment lists, the paperwork, etc… place it on the VLE to allow easy access to it by the learners at a time and place to suit them.

As well as pre-trip planning, it can be used on the field trip itself. You do need to consider if you are expecting learners to access the VLE whilst actually on the field trip. In this case you will need to consider what your expectations are for learners in relation to the use of the VLE, and to ensure that the learner are aware of those expectations.

You will need to consider connectivity for those that will be accessing the VLE. You will need to be aware of the sort of devices that the learners will be using.

So if your learners are using the iPod touch to access the VLE, is there free wifi somewhere in the vicinity of the field trip? If they are using the iPhone or iPad, make sure you don’t have any links to Flash video or activities. If they are going to be using laptops or netbooks, where can they use them sitting down? Are there cafés or other places where they could go?

Once the logisitics of remote access to the VLE is sorted, you can then make decisions about how you are going to support the task from the VLE in the field.

Mobile connections are much slower than connections in college, so it’s vital that any resources are made to be downloaded as quickly as possible.

The VLE could also be used for post-trip evaluation and reflection. Students could post their thoughts on the field trip, photographs and links to videos on YouTube etc….

One other key benefit for practitioners is that after using the VLE for the first time for a field trip, when it comes to doing the trip next year with a new group, you will already have all the stuff ready on the VLE.

When I hear the word collaboration I am reminded of the 1970s BBC series Secret Army. Collaboration during the war was something nasty and not to be done. And if you were caught there were repercussions.

Okay so that’s me…

Collaborating together is something we should be encouraging learners to do. Once they enter the workplace they will (as we do) work together in teams, across departments as part of their job.

Collaboration is not only a way of learning, it is an essential skill for the modern workplace.

Collaboration for a learning objective can take many forms. Working together on an assignment, a presentation, a seminar. Learners can collaborate to gather resources and links for the whole group. Leaners can collaborate across different curriculum area for a common goal that benefits them all.

Collaboration for a group task or assignment is something that happens a lot on many FE courses. Students need to form groups, or be assigned into groups, plan, research, analyse and write a group assignment. The end result may be a written piece of work, or could be a presentation, a radio programme (podcast) or a video.

Getting learners within a group to collaborate on sharing links and resources is an effective way of getting learners to work together, but also use a wider range of resources than if they worked individually.

Making learners from different curriculum areas collaborate on joint projects, can be challenging, but very rewarding. We have had make-up students work on performing arts students who then working with motor vehicle engineering students undertook a piece of performance art.

In each of these scenarios, learners will need to collaborate. Though there are many tools out there that learners could use, and I am sure many would use Facebook, there is an implication that all learners want to and can use external third party tools. The VLE though not an ideal solution, has many functions that allow groups to collaborate together, share resources, discuss and also importantly feed into and out to those other tools and services (such as Facebook) that learners will use in addition to the VLE. It also allows for cross curriculum collaboration as learners from different areas will be able to use a common tool.

Using the VLE will allow the gathering of evidence for collaboration which is often a requirement for some assignments.

Collaboration is not always easy, using the VLE can be the oil that allows learners to engage with a collaborative activity.

If you want your learners to do well and get the best grades possible they need to do a little (or a lot) more than what they do in lessons and homework. There is only so much time in a teaching week, and only so much non-class based work that we can expect the majority of learners to do (and have the time to assess effectively). Competent learners will realise early on, more so on HE courses, that they have a responsibility to do more than what is “given” to them. They need to read around the subject as well as the provided reading lists, they need to look at extra original sources in addition to those they receive in class. They should also be reflecting on what they have studied and assessing where they are.

This is often expected to happen in HE, and in FE should happen progressively to support the transition from FE to HE.

There are various ways of providing systems and mechanisms to allow learners to keep on top of the subject, the VLE is just one of many ways that will support and enable learners to stay on top of their subject.

By embedding RSS feeds, extra links to additional resources, links to e-books, etc… those learners who want to take their studying to the next level will have easy access to what they need. Adding in blogs and discussion forums will allow learners to reflect and discuss relevant areas of the subject at a higher level.

Of course this will only really work if both the practitioner and the learners buy into the concept. One practical way of supporting the process is to bring in your learning resources team (library staff) and get them to start the process and creating the relevant area on the VLE. Initially they could create more generic areas for subjects rather than ones that focus on specific qualifications.

If quality of achievement is an issue for an area then using the VLE as one mechanism for enabling learners to keep on top of a subject is a quick win. It may also have an impact on retention as learners who are behind on a subject could use any such area on a VLE to catch up.