Welcome

1.1YOU’VE COMPLETED 2 STEPS IN WEEK 1Play VideoView transcriptDownload video: standard or HD

Welcome

This video introduces you to Diana Laurillard, Bronwen Swinnerton and Neil Morris and provides an overview of the weeks ahead.

This course provides:

  • Video case studies of how training centres, colleges, and workplaces are supporting their apprenticeships by using a wide range of digital tools and services.
  • Documents that provide advice, guidance, and links to further resources to help teachers and trainers in designing the use of digital methods.
  • Discussion forums where we invite you to share your own views and experiences, exchange ideas with other participants, and reflect on what you see in the video case studies.
  • Short quizzes for you to compare your responses with those of others on the course.

It is anticipated that it will take you around four hours each week to complete the tasks in this course – this involves watching videos, joining discussions, reading articles and completing any exercises. In order for you to gain real value from the course, the educators advise you to engage in the discussions, watch the full video case studies, and follow up the See Also resources – so do plan extra time for this as well.

On a course like this you won’t be able to read every discussion post – just sample the discussion and comment as you think appropriate.

The preparation of the course is a team effort, so in addition to our colleagues at the University of Leeds and University College London, we would like to extend our thanks to:

  • Association for Learning Technology, who assisted with marketing and establishing the accreditation routes.
  • UCL Media, who assisted with the filming on-location and video editing.

This course is one of a suite of courses, called Blended Learning Essentials, funded by the Ufi Charitable Trust (Ufi). Their aim is to:

“help improve vocational skills in the UK’s workforce by funding digital solutions for vocational learning. We only fund activity that is ‘scalable’ through technology, ie projects that use digital methods to widen access to vocational learning.”

The other three courses are:

  • Blended Learning Essentials: Getting Started
  • Blended Learning Essentials: Embedding Practice
  • Blended Learning Essentials: Developing Digital Skills.

Who will support your learning?

You can access the FutureLearn profiles of the educators from the links below, and you can choose to ‘Follow’ them:

Making use of what you learn

There will be many occasions during the course when you think something looks interesting, but you have to come back to it later. It is easy to lose sight of these good intentions at busy times. We strongly recommend that you keep a course journal – such as a simple Word document – or build an Action Plan or a To Do list, if you use one. We will prompt you during the activities to make a note of interesting ideas or useful links for example, so that you have an easy record to go back to when it’s relevant.

New to online learning?

If you are new to online learning or to FutureLearn, take some time to explore the supplementary resources in the Downloads section. You can also download a free online book, ‘Studying a MOOC: a guide’ by Professor Neil Morris, your lead educator from the University of Leeds.

Making the most of the resources

To help you make the most of the resources within this course we have made all the videos and crib sheets free to download. You can browse the full collection of videos that are useful for learner discussions and CPD, and you can also download a full set of the crib sheets as a PDF document. We mention a lot of useful digital tools across all the Blended Learning Essentials courses, so we have collated a list of them all for you to download below.

What’s next?

Over the two weeks of the course, you will be discussing the different ways to enhance your apprentices’ experience using digital.

The Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector includes many diverse subject areas and learning and training contexts. The examples and case studies in the course can only cover a small selection. However, through discussions, the diverse cohort of participants will provide their personal examples, making the case studies relevant to a range of different contexts. So no matter what you teach, you should find something valuable for your learners.

You will:

  • come into contact with new technologies
  • see some interesting case studies
  • develop some digital skills
  • evaluate how best to support your learners to develop the digital skills they will need.

On each step, remember to click the ‘mark as complete’ button below – this will allow you to track your progress on the course.

Have your say:

You may have already introduced yourself in the welcome area discussion, but in the Comments board here, tell us about where you are from and your role within the Vocational Education and Training sector. Look through some of the other participants’ comments – you may find some common ground.

As you read through other participants’ profiles, you may find someone you’d like to follow who has similar interests to yours so that you can learn together and share experiences.

© University of Leeds / UCL / Ufi Charitable Trust

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