JISC

TUC Education provides mainly role-related training annually to ~35,000 union representatives, union health and safety representatives, and union learning representatives per year. Provision is organised in Trade Union Studies Centres, located mainly in 60 selected Further Education Institutions in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.  

The statutory frameworks governing industrial relations, occupational health and safety, and lifelong learning substantially influence the structure of provision. Courses include 2 day/12 hour short courses, 5 day/30 hour or 10 day/60 hour courses organised usually on a block or day-release basis, and 1 year/~216 hour certificate courses. The latter include the TUC’s HE Access course in Contemporary Trade Unionism, and a Certificate in Occupational Health and Safety. Since 200 the TUC has encouraged the delivery of its courses by online distance learning, with over 1300 learners to date accessing courses using a range of platforms. The success of this relatively unstructured programme convinced the TUC that its online distance provision should be consolidated and developed. An internally funded TUC project running between late 2002 and mid 2003 produced a 2 year development strategy which was endorsed by the September 2003 TUC Congress. Along with a very substantial growth in the proportion of TUC learners learning online, this strategy envisages, inter alia, the following.

1. Learning materials and discussion-support tools to be hosted centrally on a commercial VLE application.
2. Course registrations to continue to be handled centrally via the TUC’s web site, with allocation of applicants to cohorts handled centrally, rather than regionally as at present, and with minimum geographical constraints on how course participants are attached to cohorts.
3. Tutors employed in trade union studies centres to provide tutoring, with minimum geographical constraints over which tutor(s) is/(are) attached to which cohort of learners.
4. Moderation and accreditation for online learners to be handled centrally rather than, as at present, regionally.
5. Online learners to be enrolled to a small number of institutions whose MIS systems interoperate with the centrally hosted system housing the learning materials and discussion-support tools.

The TUC’s plans were being firmed up when JISC issued the MLEs for Lifelong Learning Phase 2 call, and there was sufficient overlap between the TUC’s objectives and Themes 1 and 2 of the call for a decision to be taken to apply for funding.

Aims and Objectives

The overall aim of the project is to apply know-how from previous JISC funded MLE-related activities to the online distance delivery of TUC courses for trade union representatives, with a particular emphasis on:

• several colleges each sharing access to a single VLE;
• data-sharing between the TUC and individual colleges, and between the awarding body, individual colleges, and a single VLE;
• business-focused dissemination of knowledge gained.

The specific objectives are to:

1. capture know-how from previous and current JISC funded MLE-related projects and initiatives, in particular those of the Shell Project (http://www.shellproject.net/);
2. build on the extensive track-record of Tameside College in the transfer of data between student record system and MLE, taking particular account of its recent experience in the “dispersed learning model” of Tameside’s Treasury-funded Passport to Learning project;
3. apply this to a medium scale, UK-wide development involving adult work- and home-based online learners, an industry-based national training provider (TUC), a national awarding body (NOCN), a large non-FE learning partnership, and a number of FE institutions;
4. achieve reliable, secure, production-quality, interoperation between
   • a small number of individual college student record systems and a centrally hosted learning materials, discussion-support system, and portfolio-building and viewing system;
   • the TUC’s online application system, a small number of individual college student record systems, and the centrally hosted learning materials, discussion-support system, and portfolio-building and viewing system;
5. resolve the management and/or cultural and/or institutional and/or business issues that will inevitably arise during a radical implementation of the kind planned, documenting these (and their solutions) for dissemination purposes;
6. disseminate project findings within the JISC community and more widely.

Project Methodology

This focus of this implementation project is on the establishment of a replicable model for online distance learning delivery of national workplace-oriented learning programmes, designed in such a way as to simplify the flow of data between systems, to reduce the extent of multiple, parallel, hosting of learning materials and discussion-support tools. It uses standard project management methodology.

Implications/ Deliverables/ Stakeholders

Key deliverables within the project include:

• sample Service Level Agreements embracing the inter-organisational relationships which implementing this project will require;
• a LIP implementation and conformance guide structured to fit the processes of TUC Education;
• a rangeof dissemination events relevant to e.g. providers and awarding bodies wishing to apply or modify the project’s approach;
• a project web-site.

Stakeholders within the project, in addition to the organisations within the project partnership include:

• each of the 60 UK FE providers engaged in the provision of TUC-approved courses;
• the many TUC affiliated trade unions whose members take part in union education online;
• workplace and home-based learners from across the UK.