A three year project

1

• A three year project
• sponsored by the Higher Education Funding
  Council
• through its Fund for the Development of Teaching
  and Learning
• to build cross-institutional online
  communities and resources to support the
  development of subject specialist pedagogy among
  students on programmes of Initial Teacher
  Training for the learning and skills sector.
• delivered through collaboration between major
  HE providers of ITT (Learning and Skills Sector).

2
The partnership is led by the Consortium for
PCET and the University of Huddersfield.The
other project partners are Bath Spa University
CollegeThe University of GreenwichThe
University of Wolverhampton
3

• For the purposes of illustration here, imagine
  that
• 1. You are a newly appointed teacher working in
  an FE College, in Adult Education or as a trainer
  for the NHS.
• 2. You have experience and expertise in what you
  teach (e.g. ICT or Biology), but you have had no
  training in how to teach.
• 3. You are the only person teaching that
  specialism in the place where you work.

4

• Specifically, suppose that your new job is in a
  FE college and is to teach web-designers and
  systems developers at levels 3 and 4 (what QCA
  calls ICT Practitioners)
• How could you get help and support in teaching
  your specialism and what kind of support would
  you want?
• ASSOCIATE ONLINE
• is designed to be the best that you could hope
  for
• (in the absence of an experienced, accomplished
  and sympathetic colleague with the same
  specialism).

5

• an essential aim of the training is that
  teachers should have the skills of teaching in
  their own specialist or curriculum area.
• Equipping Our Teachers for the Future Reforming
  Initial Teacher Education for the Learning and
  Skills Sector. DfES 2004

6
Online means generally (and Moodle specifically)
have great potential in a context of

• LS teachers largely being dispersed by geography
  and isolated by specialism
• limitations in the prevailing strategic response
  to the requirement - work-based mentoring
• new, rich, varied and flexible opportunities to
  learn now available through digital technologies
• the impact of new teachers themselves having had
  a meaningful and positive experience as
  e-learners
• A VLE (Moodle) that
• can be cross-institutional
• is designed to support a Social Constructivist
  approach to learning

7

• By 2007/8 and the start of QT(LS), we aim to
  provide
• A subject specialist online community (SSOC)
  for each of the 50 LS sector and subject
  specialisms identified by QCA
• A robust but flexible set of facilities for each
  SSOC that provides a variety of engaging means of
  developing the appropriate pedagogy
• SSOCs tailored to the needs of twelve(?)
  participating institutions and used by 10,000
  trainee teachers.

8

• The purposes of the Associate Online project will
  have been achieved if, in 2007/8, trainees in
  participating institutions have
• Learned through online processes that involved a
  diverse and engaging set of e-learning
  experiences
• Enhanced their effectiveness as trainers/teachers
  of their vocational area/subject specialism.