Call for institutional expressions of interest in the FE & Skills Study

UPDATE (4 Aug 2014): Thank you to the many FE Colleges who responded to the call below for expressions of interest in participating in the FE & Skills study. We had a terrific response and have closed the EOI form now.

Dear colleagues,

We would like to invite you to contribute to our investigation of Further Education learners’ expectations and experiences of their digital learning environment. The FE Digital Student project is part of the Jisc Digital Student study. The project is gathering evidence between July and December 2014. We want to analyse evidence of both staff and learner perspectives in order to make recommendations about the services that could be provided to support FE learners’ use of technology.

How can you get involved?

Collecting documents: We are looking for documentary evidence that you could share with us, such as internal evaluations of learners’ technology use, e-learning or ILT policies, IT planning documents, college self assessment reports or Ofsted reports. These will be analysed for the desk study phase of the project. We can keep them confidential if required.

Learner focus groups: We also want to facilitate focus groups in a small selection of colleges to hear learners’ voices about their expectations and needs of technology in their studies. We will be focusing on learners doing apprenticeships, A Levels, and vocational qualifications (not higher education foundation or top up degrees). We are especially interested in speaking with cohorts of learners either just starting their courses or nearing completion of them.

Staff consultation events: The findings from the desk study and student focus groups will be discussed at a series of national events. We will invite those in FE Colleges with an institutional role in supporting and developing ‘digital’ learners, to these events. This might include those working in learning resources/e-safety, resource management, e-learning/ILT, IT support, learning support, career planning, estates, institutional strategic planning, or developing a 21st century curriculum in a subject area.

Please register your interest by completing this online form by 30 July 2014

We look forward to hearing from you,
Best regards,

Professor Rhona Sharpe, Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, Oxford Brookes University

Keep in touch with the study at
Web: digitalstudent.jiscinvolve.org/wp/fe-and-skills-digital-student-study/
Email: fedigistudent@gmail.com
Twitter: #digitalstudent