Three and a half years later

There is a huge gap now between those institutions who have moved ahead with new technology and funded roles like Directors of E-learning, ILT Co-ordinators and staff to support them and those who, with the dmise of ILT earmarked funding, have disbanded ILT groups, returned Champions to lecturing duties and hope that enough people have figured out enough about this e-learning lark to get them safely through next Inspection.

It may have seemed reasonable, on the face of things, to say "Hey, we've given you quite a bit over the years, now it's up to you to apportion the pot you get as appropriate from here . . " or words to that effect. With e-maturity assessments having presented the Powers That Be with the statististics they want to verify that the previous monies have been, overall, well spent and agencies conscious that another LSDA begat LSN behoving to QIA and CEL and now LSIS and a myriad other new sets of initials replacing even ones I hadn't yet figured out what they stood for, wondering how much longer Becta will stay Becta or JISC Regional Support centres remain Support Centres, aren't inclined to want to delve too deeply into what those statistics may comprise.

Let us say that ministers were told that there had been a 10% increase in something that they wanted to have a 10% increase in, probably e-something. What they weren't told was that there had been a lovely 40% increase in, say, a quarter of the sector but a standstill in the other three quarters. Still adds up to a 10% overall. The standstill may have represented a small advance by some and even a small fall back by others. No-one really knows. The ministers certainly didn't.

My concern is for the students at the institutions where things really haven't yet happened, technology-wise. Yes, they've got Moodle. Yippee, now they have course pages with lists of Office documents. actually, that's probably the case amongst some of the so-called best too! Yes, there may be a smartboard in their classroom and some nicer flat screen monitors and faster processors. But no, there's not really much happening on the ILT front. A few dedicated staff valiantly do their best, mainly because they love it, not because they have any extra time to do it. The really smart ones will have figured out that putting good materials on-line and utilising some web tools actually saves them time and gets students' appreciation but they're few and far between and getting snapped up by the 40% guys anyway.

The big problem is that the focus seems to have moved from ILT now and on to other things. The trouble is, things are changing so fast, new tools, new software, new ideas coming through so quickly - and being so much more user friendly and better designed than early efforts, that many staff are feeling left behind. They see Office 2007 on students' machines but hope and pray that they don't get asked how to change a header in Word or adjust a template in PowerPoint. Things they might just have got the hang of have changed, and dramatically.

Moodle is terribly ancient now and clunky in use. It takes several steps to do what some new alternatives can do in one. But Moodle puts a smile on an Ofsted face. Some other software they've never heard of doesn't.

Staff and students are taking pictures and videos now. Great. But how do they edit them so that they aren't piling huge files onto their VLE or zapping their e-mail systems with 10MB attachments? Students can do things at home, no problem. Some staff can too. But, in college, there are still many desktops with no image editing software other than Microsoft Picture Manager (if the can find it) or good old Paint. One college has just bought the Serif suite and will be making Picasa available across the board. It only took 4 years. Now there could be some super staff development sessions and some inspiration when they realise what they can do with pictures and movies but who's going to train them if there is no ILT role? Or no time for anyone else to do it?

There are some great web tools out there that need cost nothing to make available but no-one seems to have time any more to learn about them. Once we had all sorts of things like LSDA Q Projects where I could give a college a few thousand to buy that staff development time and get the good practice shared. They've been long gone. There are still glossy booklets and DVDs issued with pages of excellence here and there but those with a full teaching timetable seldom ever see them let alone have a chance to read them or do much about them.

There is so much happening these days. So many brilliant opportunities but we are going to let down those who are unable to keep up if we continue to look at global statistics and praise or award status only to those who already have it. Is there anything more bizarre than giving special status and more money to thriving businesses so they get more and more of the best students in an area while those who attend the other places get nothing. There is a real need for honesty amongst those institutions who simply have not been able to keep up and for some carefully targeted spending to enable them to provide time for staff to learn.

I am working on a project to bring together the many tutors in FE who still haven't managed to publish course materials or provide on-line access to things for their IT-hungry students.

Moodle has swept the board and, indeed, Academic Boards throughout the FE community and replaced WebCT, Blackboard and other hugely expensive and generally awkward and rickety systems in the majority of institutions. But try getting someone with a bundle of old Word notes, presentations and other bits and pieces to upload them. It's a tortuous process and even if some kind assistants do it for them there'll be more to add next week and they simply don't get round to it. Even those who show some initial enthusiasm soon get fed up with the clunky editing process, the bizarre way some folder structures are presented, the mimimal changes that can be made by normal people to the look and feel of things and the need for someone expert in PHP to rescue everything when the server gives up.

I am a very enthusiastic person but I'm worn out now. I am finding moodle so tedious, slow and whilst I can make pages look a bit better in places, I still struggle to change much more. All that tutors are doing is the very minimum they can get away with to keep the managers happy! We're all missing the point. Students are not finding it a very effeicient way to access things. They're used to the smarter interfaces of Facebook, the great tools that Ajax brings to a number of new applications and being able to store files on-line in a flash.

Ages ago I experimented with using blogs and normal web pages. Tutors can't edit web pages but some can manage most blogs. That provided some opportunity for progress and is being used now to add useful links, news and the like on course areas I have developed. Blogger, though, isn't quite simple enough for others, though, and there were still things like file storage and interactivity to sort out. So I've turned to some of the other new applications out there and listed on my webtools site, http://ahi2000.com/studyzone/webtools .

It's all going to need some tweaking yet and I have to create a nice initial user interface but I'm getting there. The big test will be whether the guy in Business Studeies can be persuaded to use it instead of the photocopier and OHT slides! More information soon.

The Learning & Skills Network came into existence a year ago when the LSDA's activities were divided between a directly-funded Quality Improvement Agency and the non-profit organisation LSN who have to bid in an open market for contracts from QIA and other agencies and organisations. One part of LSN's activities is their E-learning and Technology programme which funded LSN Regional E-learning Co-ordinators, mostly individuals on part-time secondment from FE institutions. This team of Co-ordinators, also known as the NeLSNs, had been around for several years with one or two changes of personnel and had gained an excellent reputation in the field where we worked in close co-operation with the JISC Regional Support Centres and had modest budgets for events and small staff development project grants.

At a recent meeting of what are now termed LSN Associates we learned that LSN planned to start using new technology themselves to bring smarter methods of communication, assessment tools and training and support solutions to not just the FE and ACL sector where we had originally tended to focus our activities but also schools, industry and basically anywhere that we might be useful.

Now the one thing that neither LSDA nor LSN had been doing particularly well in the past was precisely that - using technology effectively. At meeting after meeting we were presented with what may have been sound academic ideas but pretty lousy communication methods so the announcement was more than welcome. Indeed, we had, as a team, expected that we would be training LSN managers, advisers and staff; being the key people in the organisation with proven skills in both the technology and training people to use it effectively.

No. From 1 April this year we are advised that our contracts have expired and that is basically that. What a missed opportunity! naturally we asked 'why?' and the reply was that there is no funding for the e-learning and technology team to do that. It seems that there are, though, literally millions of pounds available but the way the Department or the Learning & Skills Council allocate that money is either so rigidly linked to 'approved strands' of Government policy pronouncements, initiatives and the like or so complex a bidding process that a good chunk of what could have been really usefully spent on either training staff or for that matter helping buy some time for people in the field to get some training gets spent in filling out forms, attending meetings and a good deal of behind closed doors activity. Amazingly, it seems that the crazy business of budgets still goes on as it did in the bad old days - if money allocated to a particular type of activity isn't spent then people get embarrassed and run around trying to find ways to spend it before a random date in the budget calendar! I understand from one source that there is a significant 'underspend' on capital expenditure and that could mean that organisations could, in theory, be provided with grants for equipment, maybe software too to support e-learning development but there is nothing to help them pay for people to learn how to use it (or for us to advise or help them). Whilst some juggling may be possible which will enable an organisation to apply for a grant to buy £10,000 of stuff if they commit to buying £10,000 worth of training from us which, in turn, some internal further juggling may enable the organisation to get some free help and equipment, it is all a bit crazy.

Basically, everyone seems to mean well and have good intentions but have their noses far too close to the grindstone of compliance and seem so fearful of their Department masters that it is difficult for some to see the wider picture. Whatever great statistics may be published to show how brilliantly everyone in education is using new technology now and how well the Government's policies have worked, the truth is that there are still vast areas where ILT use is little more than a PowerPoint show and having a VLE is seen as a statement of maturity in the e-learning age. ILT Champions have all but disappeared in the FE sector and those that remain often have cross-college roles, single-handedly trying to enthuse several hundred staff who have no spare time to learn anything new. If it's not an 'initiatve' then there's no money for it and ILT or e-learning have sunk below every child mattering and equalling opportunities at present.

There is some hope. If LSN are serious about the internal and external communication enhancements then people like me will be able to make our voices heard and rally support for our causes in a way that will get the attention of others in the agency who previously didn't even know we existed. Some of us may eventually be able to get involved in bringing some of the wonders of the new technology to the desktops of decision-makers and demonstrate our skills and start to have some influence. The juggling exercise referred to above might just work and some of the NeLSNs will be able to continue to work in the field and stay on the scene where we can get invited to speak at events and train people in areas previously not reached.

Leaving good people like my colleagues hanging on a thread for weeks is not sensible and the paltry sum that would be required to keep them on board and enthusiastic for a few more months would be a small price to pay for their help in maintaining the image of LSN and, indeed, getting their own staff's ICT and ILT skills up to a respectable level. A lot of other advisers in the field have disappeared as a result of the Government believing that the job is done. It isn't. There's a lot still to do and we can do it. Let's see if we get a chance and what LSN's next move is.