E-learning for adult literacy, language and numeracy: summary of findings

3. E-learning in a polytechnic

This section presents a brief description of our polytechnic case study, provided here to illustrate the variety of e-learning opportunities and the complex evolution of this form of learning. The full case study can be found on Education Counts.

The polytechnic we studied is a large urban polytechnic that has been using e-learning with adults with LLN needs over a number of years. The polytechnic strives to serve adults with diverse literacy and numeracy needs, and its leaders recognise that this provision has to be an ongoing development. The polytechnic’s leaders are highly qualified people. Most of them have, or are studying towards, postgraduate degrees, and all are active promoters of professional development for their staff and their students. This latter provision includes an e-learning course within the polytechnic’s certificate programme for adult educators.

E-learning policy development is inclusive. Meetings of senior managers include presentations from e-learning champions, who typically are people undertaking postgraduate study. These people also tend to be members of national communities of e-learning practice. Senior and middle managers work collaboratively and strategically to develop a range of teaching and learning initiatives needed to accommodate their diverse learners. They also work together to develop principles of good practice in regard to e-learning and to embed literacy and numeracy into foundation and trades courses.

The development of e-learning in the polytechnic reflects not only the maturation of e-learning support services within the institution but also the professional development trajectory of individual tutors adopting this form of learning. The polytechnic’s e-learning coordinator outlined for us the stages of professional development in e-learning that he considered most relevant and that he therefore supported.

• Learner stage: Talk about e-learning. What is it? What are your attitudes to it?;
  
• Adopter stage: Exposure to new technologies, with time to “play”. Embedding skills into a learning activity, rather than teaching ICT skills separately;
  
• Leader stage: Having on board someone with a passion for e-learning or ability in some aspect of it, and who can successfully convey that passion and experience to staff, so that they gain requisite skills. (The coordinator told us that one such person had recently led a workshop session on e-learning under the auspices of the Certificate in Adult Teaching.)

During our study, we carefully considered all programmes within the polytechnic that had adopted one or more forms of e-learning in order to improve learners’ LLN skills. We identified, as a result of this work, the following successful and innovative learning applications.

• Online distance learning designed to develop and refresh numeracy skills: Presented in modular form, and autonomously accessed by learners, this provision is accessed through the polytechnic’s learning management system. This initiative was established 10 years earlier with the aim of increasing adults’ access to careers in health-related fields. The programme is most successful with adults who have all of the following: some numeracy skills, an intermediate or higher level of language literacy, good study skills, and access to the internet at home or on the polytechnic campus. The programme has also proved particularly successful for adults who have lost skills through lack of practice;
• Using mobile phones to enhance the learning of apprentices in their workplaces: An innovative tutor who was an early adopter of new technologies led this innovation in partnership with the e-learning coordinator. The mobile phone component was part of a continuing innovation with e-learning. On finding that her student apprentices were not accessing the polytechnic’s learning management system when off campus, the tutor applied for and won a grant to use mobile phones as part of her teaching and learning strategy. She asked her students to go back to using workbooks, and sent them a daily quiz via text messages. She also had the apprentices use the camera feature of their phones to photograph their workplace achievements. This initiative led to an improved form of work-based assessment and an increase in the students’ general literacy skills;
• A library resource centre designed to support second-language international students and migrants: The centre had evolved to a point where it had successfully incorporated a range of digital technologies and e-learning resources. Centre staff are committed to encouraging e-resource-based learning because, as they told us, it increases adults’ self-access to English-language learning. However, they stressed that this provision must include collaboration among centre staff, second-language tutors and members of other relevant support units. They also emphasised that student access to the resources needs to be guided by the second-language tutors and other support staff;
• The creation and ready availability of a wide range of e-learning resources: These had been developed by several tutors of trades who saw the value of ongoing use of ICT to create materials (including numerous images) deemed relevant for adults with low-level literacy and numeracy skills. Among the many innovations we observed were test questions (accessed through the polytechnic’s online learning management system) complete with drag and drop answers developed with the aim of increasing feedback for students, numeracy and literacy support for foundation and trades students (provision that had increased student retention), and an innovative computer simulation of the complicated task of laying out a building site. The simulation readily drew in young male learners, who were highly engaged by its game-like interface;
• An evening class set up to support adults with particularly low levels of literacy skills: This class illustrated for us the challenge that such adults have in terms of accessing e-learning support. As we emphasise elsewhere in this report, such adults need support to develop their LLN skills so that they can gain maximum benefit from e-learning. However, the evening class showed us that digital technologies can still be brought in at an early stage of this development. With support from their tutors, the students attending the night class were using software designed for dyslexics. According to the class tutors, the class helps adults develop computer skills, including those needed to use email, and also facilitates student recruitment.