WAES is an adult education college for learners aged 19+ offering a range of free, funded, and full cost courses for learners returning to education, wanting to learn something new, or improving their skills and knowledge to improve career prospects or progress to further and higher education.

TEACHER TRAINING

Amongst the wealth of courses and qualifications available, WAES offers the Level 3 Award in Education & Training (AET) to learners and staff wishing to take their first steps towards pursuing a career in teaching and/or training adults.

Lessons are structured into 1x3 hour session per week x 16 weeks. The course is in it's 3rd year and enrolment numbers are quite low, between 6 and 10 learners per cohort.

The course is delivered by a very small team of tutors, mostly by one course leader with some input from other professionals. The face-to-face element is an important part of teacher training so needs to remain but could be reduced if elements of the taught content were delivered online.

One of the USPs of the course is that it includes exposure to digital learning and use of digital accessibility tools as a teaching method yet their is very little time to include this element within the course as it is structured currently.

The delivery model therefore raises a few issues including:

• Low numbers of enrolments

• Limited course offering (dates)

• Accessibility to the days/times (due to work/life issues)

• Minimal introduction to digital learning (time constraint competing with teaching content for actual assessment)

  
  

Therefore the main business need is to consider a change to the delivery model to enable an increase in the number of enrolments and give learners more of a taste of accessible digital online learning (both practically through the course) and as additional learning,

The solution must therefore include some face to face and online learning - a blended approach.

The course content aims to address the learning gap by providing a holistic view of assessment in education from what it's purpose, types and methods, and considerations such as meeting learners needs and use of technologies. In addition there will be opportunity for learners to share and reflect on their actual experiences or planned experiences for their own assessment practice.

The entry requirements call for a minimum of a pass/grade 4 (C) at level 2 or GCSE in English and Maths. Some learners will have just managed to achieve these whilst others will have excelled. Many learners that attend WAES also have English as a second language so may find issues with understanding specific terminology.

Learners may therefore join the course at entry level (Low Order Thinking Skills - LOTS - Blooms Taxonomy) or higher with the aim of all developing further to levels 2 and 3 or more and (Higher Order Thinking Skills - HOTS - Blooms Taxonomy) as they progress through the course.

The assessment criteria is pass/fail and includes 1 x15 minute micro-teach which learners must plan, deliver and evaluate.

The course is made up of 3 units:

Unit 1 - Understanding Roles, Responsibilities and Relationships in Education and Training

Unit 2 - Understanding & Using Inclusive Teaching & Learning Approaches in Education & Training (includes micro-teaching)

Unit 5 - Understanding Assessment in Education & Training

PURPOSE

The main purpose is to produce online content for one unit of course delivery that also supports further reading and training in use of digital and assistive technologies.

For the purposes of this DLI project I will focus on developing Unit 5 as a stand alone online unit. (This would be part of a blended delivery with the other units being a mix of face to face and online)

• Choose and justify 3 appropriate assessment methods for your own learner assessments

Specific - This outcome is specifically about "appropriate" "assessment methods" and asks for chosen answers to also be "justified" - it uses clear and direct language

Measurable - This outcome clearly asks for 3 methods to be provided

Achievable - This outcome is reasonable in it's expectation about what the learner should be able to do following completion of the module

Relevant - This outcome asks for answers from "own learner assessments" and is therefore relevant to the learner as it's asking them to consider answering with examples from their own teaching practice

Timely - This outcome is something that learners can implement in their own teaching practice immediately