It all began on the morning of Thursday 20th December with the whole of the Student Services division congregating in the LRC's HE Centre. The Director of Student Services started with a presentation on recruitment and success rates. It was interesting to see how much competition the College now faces from provision across other College and Sixth Forms. He then got us thinking about self-assessment and the College's strengths and weaknesses in preparation for work on our SARs (Self-Assessment Report) - this generated some lively opinions amongst some! Following this we divided back into our divisions to work on our own SAR.
The Director of Learning Resources divided us into groups in which we focused on specific aspects of the service and thought about its strengths and areas for improvement along with what evidence could be provided to back up our statements. I led a small group looking at use of resources and e-resources. I found this activity a really good way of not only highlighting our recent successes, but also of bringing to light certain aspects for improvement which have been overlooked in the past. Here's an overview of my groups' discussion:
Strengths: significant improvement in provision of print and e-books following an increase in budget which allowed for collection project end of 2011/2012; purchased new e-resource Key Note to support business and subscribed to free e-resource Primal Pictures Anatomy & Physiology Online; upgrade of LRC PCs improved experience of accessing LRC eResources; this academic year has seen a considerable increase in the number of LRC resources embedded into Moodle courses; staff have worked to improve liaison with BTEC business tutors; LRC works hard to promote resources and can identify several publicity methods.
Weaknesses: 2011/2012 student questionnaire shows low awareness of resources; LRC awareness of reading lists and assignment details across College is patchy; analysis of usage data from Learning Resources pages in Moodle shows some areas rarely viewed; Moodle courses containing LRC content not widespread; no consistent monitoring of induction takeup, specifically e-resources/starting your research inductions; low use of DVD collection; past few years have seen a decline in the level of access provided to physical resources due to changes in opening hours.
At lunch we all headed back to the HE Centre for lunch and the annual quiz and raffle (in which I won a bottle of wine!). The afternoon began with a presentation from one of our Vice Principals on the changes to Ofsted's Common Inspection Framework after which we finished with an LRC senior team meeting tidying up loose ends from the morning's activity.
The following day was more laid back with updates and brief training. I gave an E-resources update highlighting new e-books purchased, changes to existing LRC eResources and new LRC eResources. One activity my colleague ran was based on teamwork and I thought she came up with a very ingenious idea: she had given us an activity to do first in small groups. For the second part, she gave each group a small jigsaw which we had to put together in our team and to shout out as soon as we'd completed it. Well there we were, all shouting FINISHED!, and she was going round saying that we hadn't! We soon twigged that in actual fact our individual jigsaws fitted together to complete a bigger picture, so we had to come together as a whole team to complete it - I thought this was a great idea. The College closed at 2pm that day so after we had finished we all headed off to the pub for a very well-deserved drink!
No comments:
Post a Comment