We would like to invite you to contribute to our investigation of learners’ expectations and
experiences of their digital learning environment in the skills sector. The scope of the study covers work based learning (including apprenticeships), adult and community learning and offender learning. The Digital Student Skills study is part of the Jisc Digital Student project and is gathering evidence between August 2015 and January 2016. 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 skills sector learners’ use of technology.
We would like your help to inform this study through:
1. Sharing documentation: 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, provider self assessment reports or Ofsted reports, blog postings etc.
The recently completed FE study demonstrated that the formal research literature is thin on
the ground, so we are particularly interested in evidence from the ‘grey literature’. The
material will be analysed for the desk study phase of the project and we can keep your
information confidential if required.
2. Learner focus groups: We also want to facilitate focus groups in a selection of skills sectors and environments to hear learners’ voices about their expectations and needs of technology
in their studies. We will be focusing on learners doing basic skills and apprenticeships,
vocational qualifications (not higher education foundation or top up degrees). We are
particularly interested in speaking with groups of learners either just starting their courses or
nearing completion of them. Please get in touch if you have a group of learners we can speak to.
3. Staff consultation events: The findings from the desk study and learner focus groups will be discussed at a series of regional events. We hope to see teachers and trainers with an
institutional role in supporting and developing ‘digital’ learners at these events. This might
include those working in learning resources/e-safety, resource management, e-learning/ILT,
IT support, learning support, institutional strategic planning, or developing a 21st century
curriculum in a subject area. It is likely that we will also invite a number of learners to some
of these events.Please let us know if you are interested in attending one of these events in early 2016.
Please register your interest in participating in this project by completing this online form by 21 September 2015.