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Rapido Training on the Excellence Gateway

20 January 2010

The challenge

Rapido Training wanted to ensure that it would be able to develop its systems and make improvements to its assessment methods. The main challenge was to find a way to look at how it could develop its assessment methods to offer more choice to learners in the future. Traditional methods of assessment include written work and observation in the workplace, but there are other methods available which may meet the needs of learners more closely.

Many learners have stronger verbal communication skills than written and prefer to talk about their knowledge than to write it down.

Apprentices and Train to Gain learners are employed and so often find it difficult to find the time to write assessments. Furthermore, marking assignments and providing written feedback is time-consuming for assessors and may be difficult for learners to understand.

It was on reflection of these issues that Rapido Training decided to research and develop an e-strategy that will allow the offer of other methods of assessment, which may more closely reflect the needs and preferences of the learners, particularly those with limited literacy skills.

Staff found that a good starting point to developing their e-strategy was through investing in self-assessment methods, by using Generator and WeLPs (work-based e-learning positioning statement) tools.

The activity

David Rowe met with Quality Manager Emma Barrett at Rapido Training and offered advice and help to facilitate many improvements. This included the loan of technology resources to enable Rapido Training to effectively evaluate the equipment and technology and determine an effective focus for any investments, so effectively a “try before you buy” policy.

Benefits of loaning out equipment and trialling resources:
“Borrowing equipment from JISC allowed us to see what resources were on the market without spending a lot of valuable time researching what is out there. It also allowed Rapido staff to use the kits so that we could evaluate them.” 
Emma Barrett, Quality Manager

The JISC RSC South West also provided advice for how to research and prepare both a LIG 5 bid, to secure funding for the future to help support and further invest in technology at Rapido Training, and an application for the Technology Exemplar Network. David Rowe provided support to Rapido during the writing phase, helping to clarify and refine Rapido's ideas and enabling it to realise its potential.

This also involved provision of information regarding excellent websites and free-to-use software available from the web, such as: Photostory and Glomaker.

The outcomes

Rapido Training has been able to successfully identify and improve its use of technology and has an e-strategy in place to continue this development.
“David has been an excellent source of support and has been positive and encouraging throughout our partnership. He has offered flexible and individually tailored support and guidance on all of the above issues, and has provided motivation when we have faced barriers to uptake using the technology.” 
Emma Barrett, Quality Manager

The assessor teams at Rapido Training have led the way in trialling the use of different methods of gathering evidence:

The Childcare team has:

The Health & Social Care team has:

• digitalised its learner records by using laptops to record learner assessment records and progress records; and
• improved communication with learners by developing the use of remote emails and text.

Teaching Assistant and Business Administration teams have:

• used photos of activities or products created during observations or collected by the learners themselves.

Key skill team has:

• developed remote practice assessments and interactive e-learning within learners' workplaces using a dongle for mobile internet access.

The primary benefits of the above improvements have directly led to

increased:

• ability to meet learners' preferred learning styles;
• opportunities for providing immediate feedback;
• opportunities for authentic professional discussion;
• flexibility of delivery to meet the working patterns and lifestyles of learners;
• timely achievements;
• quality assurance; and

decreased:

• time spent assessing;
• portfolio size; and
• travel time and costs.

Mobile communication and increased flexibility of delivery is now playing a much bigger part in how students and assessors communicate.

It has been recognised that the photographs learners collect on their mobile phones can be used as very good evidence for NVQ, though very sensitive issues of confidentiality and the protection of vulnerable people means that this is not appropriate for those within the childcare or health and social care sectors. Instead, assessors are exploring the use of photographs without including children or people, such as photos of display boards, equipment or environments.

The impact

Through the self-assessment process, Rapido Training has been able to prioritise its development activities, identify key milestones and plan a long-term strategy. This has had the added benefit of providing a tool against which it can measure its progress and identify its successes.

In addition, such developments have had a positive impact on learners in several ways:

• Increased timely achievement
• Increased ability to meet learners' preferred styles of learning and assessment
• Increased flexibility of learning and assessment delivery location and times, which means that learners can undertake learning or assessment in the places that best suits their needs
• Increased ability to offer immediate feedback increases learner confidence