One health and social care learning champion, Angela Hunt, arranged workshops to look in more depth at some of the issues that were emerging. She stayed informed of developments undertaken by all relevant official bodies and initiatives (eg JISC Regional Support Centre, BECTA, FERL and NLN) and attended their conferences and workshops. She created a quarterly e-learning bulletin, which was sent to all college staff. Champions were encouraged to promote the use of ILT by providing show and tell to their colleagues. This generally happened whilst champions interacted with their colleagues in the staff room. Although some champions did provide group training sessions, there was a need for more formal sharing of ideas and resources generally, by either holding a group session, the provision of a newsletter or some other means of mass sharing of information.
With hindsight, Hunt says, 'I would put more emphasis on maintaining a watch on what is happening internally, and use examples from practice within the College to share with others. I would also find more and different ways to leverage this experience within the College. I could have spent more time understanding existing teaching practice and working with staff to make that more rewarding and exciting using technologies. '
Angela Hunt - e-learning champion
The college learned many lessons learned from the experience - although there does not appear to have been any formal overall evaluation of the impact of ILTs on the college's core objectives. Feedback suggests that there was a need for more structure and planning for the tasks of the champions at the start. In the first year, the champions received some induction but in the second year they received none. The champions don't appear to have been provided with formal training except for the one day or coaching. The roles were expected to take up only a certain percentage of the champions' time; it is unclear whether the time allocated was realistic. There also does not appear to have been a shared view of the tasks and deliverables expected from the champions by the heads of schools. These latter clearly had an important impact through the exercise of their interest, support, expectations and expertise on the performance of the champion. The absence of a champions profile/competency set suggests there might have been more planning for the role. What is clear is that in some schools, the champions have played a key role in preparing many people across the college for e-learning. ..continue to barriers identified by champions
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