JISC

Sarah Davies, session chair, set out a number of issues that the Lifelong Learning projects have had to address:

• Vocational Barriers
• No desire to enter HE
• Lack of info about learning opportunities
• Difficulty in tracking student progress
• Difficulty integrating learning with existing skills and experience
• Difficulty in communicating vocational qualifications and experience

She referred to Gill Scott's (Learner Suppor Development Manager for Greater Manchester Strategic Alliance - GMSA) work on joining up learning and recording – the use of PDP and e-portfolios, progression pathways, course information, achievement tracking and combining many experiences in learning into one award.

Bill Pollard from Cheadle and Marple Sixth Form College raised points about students' motivation to apply, including:

• Web2
• A teacher perspective
• Peak District site – generally apply to HE
• Moss Side – no tradition of applying to universities
• e-Media courses – students learn visually
• Usually bad at extracting information from written material

The key may be a group of people with the same learning objective.

Information was given about a web browser called ‘Flock’ and a site called del.icio.us; both help in tagging and recording sites.

Flock acts as the students’ personal web browser and NOT the one provided by the institution - this makes it easy to bring in streams, easy to tag and share sites with peers either locally or in a wider group. Ultimately as they individually use keywords they can use their resources to share in a wider online community. Some institutional controls have had to be implemented to reduce overload of web traffic.
This gives "extra in and extra out" – students add the software for their studies and their social life. 

Bill Leivers from Loughborough College discussed a number of issues surrounding lifelong learning, such as:

• Progress Files
• interoperability
• FEC and HEIs
• accessibility using ACCLIP standards (RNIB connection)
• interoperability between eProgress File and college eBusiness Systems using automatic population of eProgress Records
• electronic registers

Loughborough College have also developed KS3 and KS4 extension in the Leicestershire 13-19 Agenda. This allows a seamless transfer within the 14-19 community in Leicestershire. There is a need to engage with what the students want and acknowledge the students’ desire for engagement with the college.

Mark Stiles, Professor of Technology Supported Learning and Co-director of the Learning Development Centre at Staffordshire University raised  points including:

• Work based learning
• SURF – Staffs University Regional Federation
• Looking at the uptake and use of foundation degrees
• Foundation degrees involve Work Based Learning
• How does one get institutions to work together across HE and FE?
• Staffs use and have taken part in a number of JISC projects: X4L, WBL, COVARM, XCRi, SUNIWE(SURF-NIMLI-WETTON)
• There is in particular a need from projects to support the companies and employers with resources in work based learning - more so than the students. Employer Engagement is vital.
• Impact of WBL Way Architecture - moving towards seamless supporting network of employers, mentors, tutors and learners
• Harvest Road (Hive) – repository route to provide learning content across the consortium.

He also suggested a range of current issues, including:

• Validation Support
• Access and Identity
• HIVE Services
• Mentor Support
• Resource 'Holes'
• Portal and other services
• Course Descriptions
• Employer Engagement
• FE/HE WBL Progression

Some of the technologies used to facilitate Lifelong Learning are as follows:

• uPortal
• Tocat 
• Hive 
• Google Groups, Blogs and Docs 
• Moodle 
• JORUM

Dr Gill Ferrel of JISC Infonet discussed:

• Camel Project – Sharing Experience between institutions
• Collaborative Approaches to the Management of eLearning
• Invitation to institutions to form a community of practice
• JISC, ALT, HEA – organisations in the frame.

She also mentioned the Uruguay farmer support network, which was:

• Planned collaboratively
• Documented before and after
• Focused on things which matter 
• Expertly facilitated 
• Strong emphasis on tacit knowledge

The partner institutions for this were Leeds College of Technology, Loughborough College, University of Greenwich, Staffordshire University.