One of the requirements for the Designing for flexible learning practice is to write a short story about a day in the life of someone who is considering doing your course, for the purpose of this I thought it would be best to write about a recent induction of a new learner I carried out last week, lets call her Susie.
Susie phoned me at the Forth Street Community Learning Centre to enquire about our computing courses and whether or not they would be suitable for her. I invited Susie to come in and meet with me to go over the courses we offer and how the courses would best fit into what she wanted to learn, we made a suitable time to meet.
On Susie’s arrival we sat out our induction table, which is basically a round table where we hold inductions. I introduce myself and Susie to the centre and explained that this is where she would be carrying out her learning, if she was to enrol. I asked Susie what it was she wanted to learn. Susie rated herself as a very introductory computer user, but on discussion she mentioned that she had the internet at home and was able to send emails easily. This told me that she was more than our average introductory user and that our Level One programme would be too basic for her needs.
I went through with Susie her options, was she wanting to gain a qualification out of her learning – whether that was a unit standard or a certificate or did she only want to do some learning without having set outcomes to meet. Susie was currently looking for a job and thought a qualification at the end would be more beneficial and she would be able to add this to her CV.
I asked Susie the type of job she was hoping to get; she explained that she would like an administrator or reception role as she enjoyed working with people. From the information that Susie told me I was able to establish that our National Certificate in Business Administration and Computing would be most suited as this incorporates both using computers and administration skills which she can apply to an administration role, e.g. customer service, using office equipment and financial skills.
We went through which units Susie would like to complete and made up enough credits in order for her to gain the certificate. I was able to enrol her in all the units she wished as she was able to attend sessions everyday and would be able to move through the material reasonably quickly. Susie began her classes that day and has been attending the centre for at least four hours a day since.
I have included a clipart image of coffee just to reiterate that our inductions are informal and more of a one to one discussion, I feel this is important as we attract second chance learners who are nervous and would feel intimidated by a formal induction interview, it would also be great if we could have coffee in the suite :)
Hi Emma,
ReplyDeletegreat story, interesting that you asked her if reason for study was qualifications as we get a good percentage of students, at level 4, who are only studying for pleasure and quite often do not hand-in any final pieces. I can see that flexible learning would be good for those students too.
tracey
I wonder now, what blockages are their to Susie, that may challenge you to consider flexible learning Emma. Its obvious that the CLC have been developed under the premice of flexible learning, and one of the strategies to achive that was to decentralise as much as possible - placing CLCs out in the "community". South Dunedin, Princes Street, Mozzy, Alex, Wanaka, Queenstown (?)..
ReplyDeleteBut what if Susie lived in Ranfurly? or North Otago?
Your write Leigh, we are offering flexible learning but only in specific locations. This is something we are working on, delivering our courses flexibly and via distance - we have developed our own hardcopy resources which we are able to send out to students, but this is not ideal and we are working on cleaner methods of distance delivery e.g. via OP platforms.
ReplyDelete