Research from the front: A Developing Digital Project

The Education and Training Foundation (@E_T_Foundation) is the expert body for professional development and standards in Further Education (FE) and Training in England. 

Through their work, the ETF supports teachers and leaders across the Further Education and Training sector to help them achieve their professional development goals for the benefit of learners and employers across England. 

Since its inception, the ETF has supported a range of activity to improve teaching, from small scale projects involving single departments or individuals to region-wide activity promoting change and sharing of effective practice.

This work focuses on empowering practitioners to focus on effective practice that is most helpful for their own challenges. The wide range of activity that they deliver is brought together under the banner of Outstanding Teaching Learning and Assessment (OTLA).

In September 2020, the seventh phase of OTLA projects funded by the Education and Training Foundation was launched, with the collaborative research project between two general FE colleges’ GCSE English Language students and lecturers one of 36 projects exploring approaches for teaching English and Maths in the post-16 sector.

Objectives

The intention was to investigate how two practitioners in separate settings could work together to develop students’ confidence in transferable skills and in the demands of the subject.

The overall objective was to produce collaborative, inter-college evidence-based research.

The research was centred around this question: how can we engage GCSE English students using digital technology for learning?

We aimed to:

• encourage post-16 learners to work collaboratively and online with others they may never meet and where they are separated by distance.
• seek to address current challenges in teaching, learning and assessment during online and face to face lessons via the deployment of digital or web-based resources.
• engage with, and positively develop, the student’s view of the subject itself, exam questions, and with new ways of learning.
• enhance attainment, retention and progression for such learners.

Approach

We have been delivering co-teaching, learning and assessment methods across multiple digital platforms, such as delivering live and recorded webinars.

We have been collecting results in the form of questionnaires and surveys, aiming for around 100 student responses across both colleges. Although questionnaires and surveys run the risk of being ‘data-rich, but information poor’, the forms used have allowed for both multiple choice skills development and open questions. 

The completion rate has been high as students find them accessible and relevant. We have also responded to individual students after completion of the surveys to discuss their learning needs and ways to progress. In the near-future we hope to conduct in-depth face to face interviews with learners on site, aiming for 10 responses (5 from each college).

Teaching notes and survey methods will similarly reflect ‘learner voice’.

GCSE English November 2020 survey summary 

Evidence was collected continuously via real-time review of student’s engagement in the webinar sessions, in class via the practitioner’s reflections, participants’ survey completion, face-to-face interviews with learners, anonymised completed tasks and subsequent feedback and results of assessments.  

The practitioners met online on a regular basis to collaboratively reflect on how our teaching and learning practice was developing in the current context. Central to this aspect is the teachers sharing and reflecting on practice in terms of online versus face-to-face delivery, and how we responded to what worked well/not so well.

Feedback from students was used to inform how the practitioners design and deliver subsequent sessions, facilitating students’ insight and impact on their own learning and how we incorporate this information and thus influence lesson planning.

Expected Results

We hoped to understand from the participants – students and practitioners – more about how post-16 learners (including adults) can be encouraged to help themselves learn, progress and achieve in the subject via digital tools.

Additionally, we wished to engage with, and positively develop: digital teaching, learning and assessment practice (TLA); the student’s view of the subject itself and with formal assessment tasks; build on and enhance student’s self-confidence and transferable skills relevant to the modern workplace…Currently, we are half-way through completion of the project.

Results will also be gauged by how students engage with the adapted TLA and the project in general; student work / feedback exchanges as well as in their confidence in approaching exam-style questions and assessment objectives; their enjoyment of the subject; and in formative in-class assessments, mock exams; and ultimately in summative assessments.

Further research

We would like to invite practitioners in the GCSE English Language re-sit domain across the FE landscape to participate in further research, informed by the outcomes and objectives from the current OTLA project will be published in summer 2021.      

Matt Gordon, English Lecturer, Waltham Forest College & Jan Calvert, English lecturer, Shipley College