May 2010

Not much activity this month. The IT diploma students have finished the controlled assessment and are getting ready to go on their work placements. They have been using their Mahara ePortfolios to create their CVs which will be submitted to employers prior to their placements. I hope to get some feedback from some of the employers about the content and usefulness of CVs presented in this way.

Following the meeting with the creative media diploma tutors and our school contact, I arranged for two members of staff from the school to have access to the learners PDPs as agreed and provided instructions for logging in. I have been checking to see if anybody has looked at the PDPs, and to date they have not even logged in to the course. This is very disappointing as the school liaison was keen to participate and had expressed a special interest in being able to see the learners attendance and punctuality information, rather than waiting for register information to be sent to the school.

They had also agreed that the learners would be able to access a chat room, in the course, on the Learner portal during their IT sessions when at school. This has not happened and Nik, the course tutor, has spent several Thursday afternoons waiting for somebody to join him in the chat room! I spoke to some of the learners to find out why they were not accessing the chat room and they said that their school teachers needed them to spend the time on their Functional Skills. We have a meeting arranged in early June which will be an opportunity to ask why the school contacts did not access the Learner Portal.