With Ofsted putting safeguarding at the top of their agenda, JISC’s regional support centres have been encouraging the sector to think again about how to help staff and students become responsible for their own safety online with a new online resource.
Last year Ofsted sent a clear message to further education providers about how seriously it takes the safeguarding agenda when it demanded that a designated safeguarding officer be appointed in each and every provider. Gateshead College became the first to appoint a dedicated member of staff in January 2010.
In fact, Ofsted consider safeguarding of students and staff to be so important that it’s a limiting grade – which means that how well a learning provider performs under the ‘safeguarding’ topic affects other grades given to the college. Making ‘inadequate’ provision for safeguarding means the college is unlikely to be rated higher than ‘satisfactory’ and Ofsted will return, likely unannounced, within 8 months of the full inspection.
But what do we mean by safeguarding? Traditionally it has meant taking all reasonable measures to ensure that the risks of harm to children’s welfare is minimised – including the risks posed by the internet. Although e-safety is hardly mentioned in Ofsted advice, internet activity is clearly a big risk area in the duty providers now have to prove they are keeping learners safe across the board.
In the further education and skills sector the issues are broad – for example, students are not just being bullied, but may also be involved in bullying. Other areas of concern are students becoming both perpetrators and victims of fraud and digital identity theft. In the work based learning environment, where learners may be more isolated, there are even more complex challenges around staying safe online.
After so many years of innovative technology use in colleges, why is now the time for a new resource? Julia Taylor, from JISC’s regional support centre (RSC) for learning providers in the south west of England, explains: ‘In colleges we’re seeing more and more widespread use of technology, along with a new wave of teachers who are more interested in using it in their lessons
‘Not only that, but it’s more difficult to manage security now. Tech savvy learners present a challenge because they come into colleges with their own personal devices and a wider and more comfortable attitude to technology than some of their tutors.’ Ofsted’s consideration of safeguarding did drive some providers to look at e-safety. However, staying safe online has been underrepresented in the inspection guidance. Other providers saw the need to tackle e-safety because of organisational risk of an incident.
Julia describes a shift in the way learning providers are thinking about safeguarding: ‘It’s useful for us to focus away from merely protecting people from the dangers that technology can present. We want to move the discussion towards a strategic approach to helping people become responsible users. It’s about assessing and balancing the risks so that both staff and learners have the skills to actually manage that new technology effectively.’
Safeguarding, and equality and diversity [...] are considered to be essential in assuring the quality of the development and well-being of young people and adults. The grades for these two aspects may therefore limit other grades, including the grade for overall effectiveness.’
Ofsted
The approach means making young people conscious of the implications of having some of their photos online long-term and the idea of a digital footprint – for example, how information you post on Facebook could be reused in order to solicit more information than you mean to give out. Because we’re not talking about children, students have also to consider their work potential and reputation.
Jason Curtis, learning technologies and information officer for the RSC in the West Midlands, says: ‘If you only think about protecting learners, you end up with a very guarded and closeted person that will leave your institution more vulnerable to risk. Instead we’re proposing a continual cycle of enlightenment where colleges drip feed responsibility to learners to make them more savvy and responsible.’
Malcolm Bodley, e-learning advisor at the eastern England RSC, adds: ‘Colleges have no control over what learners do on their own mobile devices. It’s all about educating people about the technology that’s in their hands.’
A new online space is now drawing together this advice, a number of hands-on resources, and plenty of useful contacts to help learning providers who may be new to the issue. But there’s also opportunity for those who are doing it well to share what they’ve learned.
Julia says: ‘We want this new portal to be a place where people can find the most relevant resources from all the wealth of information out there – and some impartial advice on what can be quite a complicated topic.
Clearly that’s not all about students. One challenge is that as staff increasingly conduct both their work and personal lives online, they sometimes see any enforced obligation to conduct themselves in a particular manner as quite repressive. Jason highlights that support for tutors is one of the main cultural shifts in the proposed approach.
The approach the RSCs are advocating involves educating tutors that their online activity can be monitored by students. The wider world of the college – students’ and staff families and contacts – can also be impacted by a positive attitude to responsible technology use.
E-safety in the post-16 sector requires a more democratic ideal of what it is to stay safe online – the RSC team behind the new online resource have used the term e-responsibility to describe the need to promote ‘digital values’ for staff and learners.
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