Collaboration with teaching colleagues – Team teaching is a powerful way to meet learners’ needs and to have fun together with the learners while teaching.  Team teaching lessens challenging, stressful situations for individual teachers.  Team teaching boosted motivation, confidence, morale, which resulted in a positive classroom atmosphere, therefore motivating the learners and enabling their received a positive learning experience.

 

Use of a wider range of digital platforms – the use of Padlet allowed both tutors to reflect on the sessions and were positive and willing to develop their skills in using this  in education. Staff involved in the project showed a positive attitude to using it to share and collaborate on.

 

The digital action research project created frequent opportunities for the tutors to focus upon aspects of their established teaching strategies, and to collaboratively explore opportunities to develop and try new techniques and resources to improve learner participation both in and between the sessions.  Teachers learn from each other and develop strategies and techniques that can be used in their future teaching.

 

Staff development sessions have previously been held in small curriculum teams, but through the project, this has resulted in the sharing of good practice, especially between the ESOL and ICT teams.  The tutors have been encouraged to collaborate and share ideas in a relaxed and informal environment.  The joint activities have become opened up to enable staff to reflectively evaluate what each team is trialling within their teaching, learning and assessment.  This has improved working relationships between tutors from different curriculum areas.

 

Collaboration between the tutors has helped to identify and find solutions to very practical barriers, such as how to ensure the learners can easily access their online session.  Learners were struggling to find the link to the session, therefore as a Service we have decided to set a reminder e-mail to be sent 15 minutes prior to the session, this will ensure the e-mail containing the link is near the top of a learner’s inbox and therefore more easily achievable.  This is crucial to support a prompt start to the session prior to a learner having confidence in using bookmarks.

underpins the development of the practical action.

The activities planned were to support the learners to access their own Google Docs accounts and be able to document their own reflections/ progress in relation to their journey of developing essential digital skills.

The Service wanted to explore and develop relevant and engaging resources to meet the 

needs of the ESOL learners and promote their development in understanding digital 

terminology as a starting point to further develop and embed their digital skills.

The proposed activities were designed to support a positive learner experience, to develop the 

curriculum offer that progresses the knowledge and skills that the ESOL learners will need in 

order to take advantage of the opportunities that prepare them for their next stage and 

develop their confidence in using digital technologies.  

This would address social 

disadvantage.  The activities would support learners to build on previous learning and 

develop the new digital knowledge and skills they need.  It was important that the foundation 

building blocks of gaining the knowledge and understanding of using correct digital 

terminology is embedded in the learners’ long-term memory and they have the confidence 

to use them fluently and consistently.  From these activities there is a clear progression to 

essential digital skills which all the learners will have the opportunity to develop those skills as their next steps in their digital skills learning.  This initial course will enable the 

ESOL learners to gain the skills, knowledge and confident to explore progressing onto the 

essential digital skills provision.

As a result of the training a glossary of terms was produced containing more pictures than words.  The ESOL tutor commented how she supported the ICT Tutor to develop this learner resource to support the learners' understanding of key terminology. “the use of visual aids such as images, shared screen, demonstrations, videos, glossary are essential to support learners’ understanding of the spoken language.  The course requests learners to take actions using many different verbs: click, double click, open, tab, scroll, etc.  Knowledge and understanding of the terms is essential to be able to take the correct action”.  (See video link.)

Both tutors have considerably used breakout rooms and have clearly seen the benefit to the learners, they have indicated that they will use this function more extensively within their teaching.

 

Look at the video from the ESOL tutor who observed the impact on the learners.

 

Learners have been exploring and developing the use of their loan laptop devices from the Service.  They are becoming less dependent on the use of the mobile phones and developing long lasting understanding of the roles and features of different platforms accessible from their laptops, eg Google search, Google Drive, etc – this is supporting the move to be able to develop their digital skills which they are using in their home-life and preparing them for the world of work.  In week 2 the learners had made a language connection with their ESOL class where words such as document, CV and forms were being used.  Recognisable language was building learners’ confidence.

 

The learners have also been successful in attaining the Entry 1 Digital Skills for Work qualification accredited by Gateway Qualifications.