Training - Teachers go online for the ‘Wow’ Factor

In association with Echelon Learning and Well Drawn Productions, Westminster Kingsway College (WKC) has completed six interactive, intranet-based teaching and learning modules that use video to highlight examples of best practice in teaching and learning.

Based at seven centres in Camden and Westminster in central London, WKC is attended by 20,000 students, with a teaching staff of between 300 and 400. The college offers a wide range of further, adult and higher education programmes, available for people of all ages from 16 years upwards.

WKC’s stated mission is to support all of its students in realising their ambitions as learners within a ‘diverse and fully inclusive educational community’.

"We aim to maximise the potential for learning and achievement of each student," says head of personal and organisational development, Peter Armah. "The college is committed to widening participation and lifelong learning."

The WKC Teaching Best Practice Programmes are suitable for both new lecturers needing to acquire new skills and for existing teachers as part of their continuous professional development (CPD). The programmes are designed to help all users develop lesson planning, management and delivery skills.

"Using actual classes with WKC teachers and students enabled us to communicate programme content clearly in a context familiar to users and helped us in this latest production spill the beans on the magic ingredients that really make a ‘wow’ teaching session," says Peter Armah. "The overall aim was to develop programmes that were generic, easy to use, accessible from anywhere, and flexible."

The issues the programmes address include achieving effective differentiation, managing classroom behaviour, managing punctuality and attendance, ‘integrating key skills into the curriculum’, and ‘making effective use of ILT’.

The programmes are suitable for team discussion, reflective practice, independent and active learning. They can be used for curriculum team meetings, college planning and development days, area learning days, centre days and cross-college days and by advanced practitioners for 1:1 support.

Evaluation takes place in a variety of ways including evaluation forms, informal feedback, lecturers, CTLs, HoDs, advanced practitioners, senior management team and from the number of hits to each programme recorded.

Showcased in July at the JISC RSC for its London e-Learning Jamboree, the WKC Teaching Best Practice Programmes are now also being licensed for other colleges undertaking teacher training, priced at £600 per programme or £3000 for all six. Further details from Hugh Garai at Echelon Learning on tel 0208 568 1500 or email hugh@echelonL.com
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For images relating to this story, contact Peter Muir on 01296 715228 or echelon@pmpr.co.uk

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Released July 2006 on behalf of Echelon Publishing by BLP&PR

Media contact: Peter Muir Tel + 44 (0)1296 715228
Email: echelon@pmpr.co.uk

Sales contact: David Hill Tel + 44 (0)20 8568 1500
Email: david@echelonl.com

About Echelon Learning

Echelon Learning is a consultancy-led publishing house that integrates electronically-delivered knowledge and learning into the development of management skills and business performance.

Echelon Consulting spearheads the company’s service with the development of new content in meeting clients’ requirements. This is usually derived from analysing employee knowledge and learning needs captured during client learning programmes.

Where appropriate, Echelon Publishing then offers this new content to a wider audience by publishing the material in generic format. This is made available in the form of easy to use ‘learning nuggets’ and is complimented with business development information licensed exclusively from one of the market’s best-known providers, Bloomsbury.

Echelon e-Learning provides the electronic systems which enable content to be published, distributed and usage tracked, and offers work-based solutions to a global audience. Now Echelon’s blended learning based on a bespoke site populated with material selected to support specific courses, builds knowledge prior to the event and refreshes application when back at the desk.

About Echelon Publishing
Echelon technologies help organisations place solutions at people’s fingertips, whether solving everyday business and work-related problems or helping gain qualifications and continued professional development.
Echelon:
• Has a content management system enabling informational or learning material to be developed or converted into XML so that it can be published and distributed in text and/or via the web.
• Has a learning management system to provide ready access via the web to highly structured information, which is easily searched and retrieved, and whose usage can be tracked and learning logged.
• Publishes and/or reformats content for professional bodies and commercial organisations to help students and employees maintain or develop requisite skills throughout their careers.
• Supports people from the outset of their careers in working with professional bodies to develop and deliver the learning content required by students in preparing for examination.
• Frees up the knowledge and learning contained within a business so that people have ready access to these resources in helping them to solve problems or develop their careers.