News: Nottingham College awarded for innovative online learning resources

We have been officially recognised by the Blended Learning Consortium (BLC) for the positive steps we have taken to develop and improve our online learning resources in order to help students achieve their full potential.

The College was selected from more than 100 UK college entries and was presented with the ‘Learning Impact Award’ at the Independence Learning Day Conference held by Heart of Worcestershire College.

The Heart of Worcestershire’s BLC is now in its fifth year of running. With over 40% of FE Colleges in the UK now members, it regularly creates and provides a variety of blended learning resources for different learning levels and subject areas.

Nottingham College Learning Technology and Resource Manager, Petra Hosey, accepted the award on behalf of the College. She explains: “The focus of the award was for two projects worked on over the past two years. One was a push for online Maths and English resources to be available to all curriculum areas and the other was a development of online tutorial modules. Both projects were hosted on the College’s Online Learning Platform and utilised both BLC and in-house-created resources.

“As a result, students were able to access these resources anytime, anywhere, so they could work at their own pace and on any device to develop important skills such as grammar, spelling and punctuation. In addition, this had a positive effect on tutors as it meant they had more time to plan and prepare lessons.”

The projects were led by Nottingham College English Tutor, Richard Buckley, and Learning Technology Coach, Patrick Pemsel. Richard said: “It's fantastic to have the hard work of the team recognised and it shows that we're heading in the right direction in how blended learning should be used in FE to help our students achieve more and develop their skills.”

Whilst the College’s creation of online Maths, English and Tutorial modules wasn’t entirely unique, the key reason the College was acknowledged above its peers was due to the implementation of live feedback and reporting on the projects. These easy-to-access reports about learner progress, as well as their feedback on the various activities, provided a method for evidencing that a positive impact was made.

Petra adds: “This year, we have announced the implementation of our MIL-O program (My Independent Learning – Online), a direct evolution of the projects. Now having a dedicated space for learning of this nature and a mandatory number of hours to be completed, the College aims to further boost the learner experience through the readily available, interactive and online learning.”

If you're interested in finding out more about the BLC, please take a look at the website.