Overview
A number of factors combine to determine the level and quality of use of ICT in learning and teaching, in common from pre-school centres1 through to colleges and community learning settings. This section of the report evaluates these factors.
Policy and planning are important in identifying the aims of using ICT in education and in determining priorities and resources. Education authorities and the centres for which they are responsible have key tasks related to enabling, implementing and monitoring the use of ICT for learning and teaching. Colleges, community learning services and other institutions of learning have similar issues of planning to meet learning and teaching needs.
The successful implementation of policies and plans depends crucially on the clear identification of key players and their roles and responsibilities in taking forward the agenda set by policies and plans. Not all of these key players currently provide the level of leadership necessary for successful implementation of the policies and plans.
In recent years, improvements in ICT infrastructure and resources to support learning and teaching have increased the potential availability of ICT for learning and teaching. However, there remains much room for improvement in effective access to ICT for learning and no consistent pattern of use is emerging.
One of the areas that has received least attention by managers in authorities and in centres is that of the management of learners and digital content. Effective use of ICT by learners and teaching staff demands that they can interact with ICT-based learning and teaching materials in such a way that learners’ education benefits. Issues around this area include user accounts, personal file storage, communication tools such as e-mail and discussion forums, and the storage of and access to appropriate software and ICT-based learning and teaching materials.
The confidence and competence of teaching staff in the use of ICT is a key determinant of the effective use of ICT for teaching. Many teaching staff now use ICT routinely in their teaching. In more than a few cases, they use it in a way that enriches their teaching, through, for example, the use of animations, simulations and online video, as well as appropriate use of Internet sites. However, too many teaching staff have levels of confidence and competence that are not yet high enough to enable them to make effective use of ICT in their teaching.
The level and quality of technical support is very important in maintaining the confidence of learners and teaching staff in the reliability of access to equipment and software. Where this support is prompt and effective, learners and teaching staff do not hesitate to plan for the use of ICT in their learning and teaching. Where the level of technical support is poor, user confidence that they will have reliable access falls, and learners and teaching staff make far fewer plans to use ICT.
Key positive factors contributing to effective use of ICT in learning and teaching
Aspects for improvement
Notwithstanding the positive factors referred to above, there are a number of areas in which improvement is required to remove remaining barriers to the effective use of ICT in learning and teaching.
All education authorities fully accepted their role in taking a lead in policy and planning for ICT in education in their area. In all cases, the authority took responsibility for planning the wider aspects of infrastructure, such as network equipment, connections to the Internet and services for learners and teaching staff. Under arrangements for devolved management of schools, headteachers generally had responsibility for provision of ICT equipment and software within their establishments. One authority had an ambitious policy of achieving one-to-one access to computers for all learners and teachers.
Key features of education authority policies on ICT in education included: development of learners’ and teachers’ ICT skills; recording and monitoring of pupil progress; e-learning; and ICT equipment and software acquisition.
Education authority managers generally saw the main role of the authority as one of building the capacity of schools and pre-school centres to make effective use of ICT in learning and teaching. In most cases the principal focus was on arrangements for the acquisition, maintenance and replacement of equipment in schools. In this context, a few authorities had contracted with third parties for a managed ICT service in their schools. They offered programmes of continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers and promoted programmes of ICT skills development for pupils under the ICT curriculum area of the 5-14 National Guidelines.2 Education authorities did not, in most cases, have well-developed and comprehensive policies or arrangements to promote effective use of ICT in learning and teaching. Decisions on hardware and software acquisition and deployment were often not linked closely enough to the needs of learners and teachers, nor were these decisions based on a well-considered rationale for the use of ICT in schools or on a wider learning and teaching policy. However, more than a few authorities supported the use of ICT in learning and teaching through locally-devised websites or intranets that gave guidance on materials and methodologies for their use.
Schools and pre-school centres had responsibility for devising their own policies for the use of ICT in learning and teaching. All pre-school centres visited for this report based their programmes of ICT skills development around Early Learning, Forward Thinking,3 but very few had an explicit ICT policy. In more than a few primary and secondary schools, there was no distinct ICT policy, but learning and teaching policy documents made useful reference to ICT for learning and teaching. In most schools that had an ICT policy, its principal focus was on setting out guidelines for acceptable use of ICT by pupils. Generally, these guidelines referred to the use of computers and did not include guidance on the appropriate use of other ICT equipment, including mobile phones and portable audio players. Very few ICT policies made explicit reference to the use of ICT in enhancing learning and teaching. This may be explained by the fact that policy statements in many schools were several years old and did not reflect the current approaches to using ICT in learning and teaching in these schools. Commendably, more than a few school managers now placed much more importance on integrating their thinking on ICT in the curriculum into the school’s more general learning and teaching policy.
The strategy outlined in Early Learning, Forward Thinking and in the 5-14 National Guidelines had provided clear guidance on the development of young people’s ICT skills. However, many recent applications of ICT in education post-dated the 5-14 guidelines. In most pre-school centres and primary schools, teaching staff incorporated development of these ICT skills into the wider curriculum and learners developed their skills through, for example, work in environmental studies or play. In a number of primary schools, classroom assistants extracted small groups of learners to develop their ICT skills through language or number work. This generally worked well. In secondary schools, the responsibility for delivering the 5-14 ICT content lay usually with the computing studies or business studies departments. In almost all secondary schools, learners in S1 or in S2 (or in both years) followed a discrete programme of ICT skills development, largely unrelated to the use of ICT in the wider school curriculum. Schools needed to implement more fully the development of learners’ ICT skills through the subject disciplines.
Secondary schools’ interpretation of the 5-14 guidelines was at times unduly influenced by the professional interests of computing studies or business studies teachers. As a result, in a few schools, all learners had to develop simple computer programs or understand the working of a central processing unit, knowledge and competence that contributed little to their broad range of ICT skills for learning and life. Very few schools included appropriate educational use of mobile phones, digital cameras or portable music players in their programmes of ICT skills development.
All colleges had devolved to subject departments the responsibility for the use of ICT in vocational studies. Most colleges had an ICT group with an overview of developments across the college and a remit to promote good practice. Part of the remit of these groups was to make recommendations on ICT budget allocation in the light of competing bids from departments. Most colleges had a vision for the use of ICT to allow learners to develop skills in independent learning and to promote enhanced engagement and motivation of learners.
However, there was generally insufficient central support for classroom-based curriculum initiatives. Colleges did not generally collaborate effectively enough with each other to share materials and good practice. Commendably, the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council (SFC) had initiated a number of joint further and higher education projects to produce online learning materials and to implement new approaches to pedagogy and use of ICT.
Almost all plans of CLD services contained references to the potential of ICT to enhance learning experiences in communities. In one authority, the CLD service had developed a draft five-year plan for neighbourhood ICT. In more than a few cases, CLD managers referred to budget constraints as a factor that limited their ability to plan effectively for the wide range of ICT-based learning needed in communities.
Policy priorities varied within and between sectors, including:
A common strand linking almost all priorities set by education authorities, schools, colleges and CLD services was the importance placed on providing ICT equipment as the principal driver for increased use of ICT for learning and teaching. While it is certainly true that without equipment little activity can take place, very few centres gave sufficient attention to issues such as the most effective deployment of equipment to maximise opportunities for its use in learning and teaching. Very few centres or authorities placed enough emphasis on developing teachers’ and learners’ capacity to make best use of ICT equipment in the curriculum. While a few centres identified and disseminated examples of good practice in using ICT for learning and teaching, most teaching staff and learners did not have sufficient opportunities to identify and develop effective approaches to using ICT. One supplier of interactive whiteboards offered subject-specific training in the use of its products and a few members of the teaching staff in a few schools had benefited from this training.
Almost all documents relating to quality improvement contained references to ICT. These documents included service improvement plans for education authorities, standards and quality reports in schools, and operational plans in colleges. Many such references were vaguely expressed and not amenable to effective monitoring. Only a few centres used systematic monitoring tools that led to identification of strengths and weaknesses and appropriate action plans. These monitoring tools included the HMIE guide to self-evaluation of ICT in learning and teaching,4 and Measurement of the Impact of ICT on Children’s Education (MIICE).5 However, in general, centres did not implement effectively enough the planning, implementation and monitoring cycle. As a result, they had only a partial, and sometimes anecdotal, identification of the benefits of ICT in learning and teaching, and of barriers to further progress.
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Under arrangements for the devolved management of schools, education authorities had given headteachers and other heads of centre a wide range of responsibilities in relation to provision of ICT for both learning and teaching and for administration. These responsibilities included budgeting, decisions on some elements of technician staffing, purchase of software licences and some discretionary element of hardware choice. However, most education authorities maintained a very close relationship with centres to provide services where economies of scale produced significant savings on purchases. These services included authority-wide agreements with hardware suppliers, technical support services and help desk facilities, and schemes of CPD. However, in most cases, education authorities restricted their role to facilitating such services and did not generally require compliance with arrangements for centrally-offered services. For example, an authority may have negotiated with a supplier for computer hardware running a particular operating system, but a secondary school may have bought computer equipment running a different operating system for its art department.
A few education authorities had contracted out to third-party suppliers the provision and management of ICT services for education. These arrangements, including overdue refreshing of equipment and maintenance and support, had not always met the needs of learners and teaching staff in centres across these authorities. Authorities had reflected carefully on the level and quality of service they required from such arrangements and at least one authority had negotiated new levels of service more suited to the needs of its schools.
A few education authorities had very effective curriculum support teams, mainly staffed by seconded teachers and supported by authority officers. The remit of these teams was to support ICT-based learning and teaching approaches in schools. Generally, these teams had a greater impact in primary schools than in secondary schools. This was largely as a result of the greater progress with effective deployment of equipment for the integration of ICT in the curriculum in primary schools. In one authority, the support team had produced a very effective set of learning and teaching materials for the implementation of the 5-14 National Guidelines for ICT.
In all schools visited, the role of the headteacher included leadership for effective use of ICT for learning and teaching. In almost all schools, a depute headteacher or other member of staff had a remit as ICT coordinator and shared leadership of this aspect of learning and teaching with the headteacher. The extent to which school leadership focused effectively on realising the potential of ICT was very important in establishing an ethos that promoted effective use of ICT for learning and teaching. It was also very important in facilitating the most effective use of the available ICT by teaching staff and learners. In some primary schools, the headteacher was very proactive in encouraging staff and pupils to use ICT appropriately and in providing appropriate resources. In such cases the ICT coordinator received very effective support from the headteacher for the work of embedding ICT in the curriculum. In most cases, especially in secondary schools, headteachers generally concerned themselves more with policy, guidelines and budgeting, and less with pedagogy and effective learning using ICT.
In all early education classes within primary schools visited for this report, teaching staff enjoyed wide discretion to embed ICT in children’s activities. Many teachers worked with other early education staff to do so effectively but, in general, there was too little monitoring of ICT activity in pre-school classes by members of the senior management team (SMT) of the primary school. Managers in education authority pre-school centres that were not attached to a primary school generally provided effective leadership for the use of ICT in children’s learning. The variable quality of provision of ICT equipment and infrastructure in private and voluntary nurseries was a result of the often poor leadership for ICT in these centres.
In those primary schools that had appointed one, the ICT coordinator worked well with class teachers to make effective use of ICT. In some cases, no time had been allocated to the ICT coordinator for these duties and a significant minority of coordinators spent large amounts of time attending to technical problems and difficulties with printers, user accounts, software and other non-curricular aspects of ICT. This meant that they had less time to promote effective use of ICT in the curriculum. In schools where ICT contributed significantly to the enrichment of the curriculum, the ICT coordinator had generally played a significant part in this enrichment.
Teaching staff in pre-school centres and primary classes had clear responsibilities to use ICT to enhance and enrich pupils’ learning and their own teaching. In some schools, classroom assistants and support workers worked well with small groups of learners to develop their ICT skills or used ICT effectively to enhance the curriculum.
In many secondary schools, an ICT committee had the delegated responsibility for determining policy on ICT for learning and teaching and for recommending aspects of implementation to the school’s SMT. In most cases, these committees focused on resource issues, such as recommending how many interactive whiteboards to buy, determining between competing bids from departments and faculties for funding, and liaising with the education authority for hardware upgrades. A few ICT committees promoted effective approaches to embedding ICT in the curriculum.
The recent Masterclass project, a Learning and Teaching Scotland (LT Scotland) initiative, trained over 600 teachers and other education workers to be champions of ICT in their establishment. Additionally, over 300 headteachers took part in Masterclass under the Leadership for Learning programme. These initiatives had provided opportunities for identification, dissemination and adoption of good practice in the use of ICT in learning and teaching. In a few schools, Masterclass-trained teachers worked in isolation and did not have sufficient opportunities to disseminate and promote the good practice they had developed through the initiative.
Many principal teachers and heads of faculty in secondary schools recognised fully their role in promoting effective use of ICT for learning and teaching but were often unsure about how to achieve this. In many cases they relied on the initiatives of individual class teachers in their department or faculty who effectively took the lead in ICT developments. In this area of middle manager responsibility for developing ICT in the curriculum, much depended on the priority placed by the headteacher on this important aspect of middle managers’ duties.
A significant minority of teaching staff in secondary schools took very seriously their responsibility to make effective use of ICT in their teaching. They understood the potential benefits for them and their pupils of the imaginative use of ICT in the classroom and beyond. However, in too many cases, class teachers failed to understand these benefits or value the potential they offered and therefore did not make serious attempts to incorporate effective ICT resources into their teaching. Many cited lack of access to, or unreliability of resources as a barrier to their use.
Very few secondary schools made explicit to learners the value of their use of ICT to ensure and improve learning. As a result, learners were generally unaware of any responsibility falling on them to enhance their own learning through independent use of ICT. In one secondary school ICT policy, there was even an explicit statement that learners were to use the Internet only under the direction of their teacher. Almost all schools and colleges had an acceptable use policy that they required learners to sign. These policies focused on issues such as security and appropriate use of the Internet, and penalties for infringement of the policy. An increasing number of colleges expected learners to make independent use of ICT through lecturer-directed independent study or a college VLE.
All colleges had a senior member of staff with responsibility for the curriculum and, in many cases, this person took forward the development of ICT in the curriculum. In addition, all colleges had comprehensive arrangements in place for ICT technical support, generally involving a senior post holder with responsibility for academic and administration systems. Department and faculty heads generally had responsibility for promoting the effective use of ICT for learning and teaching. Almost all colleges provided access to online learning materials and resources. In many of these colleges, an e-learning manager or similar post holder had responsibility for promoting and supporting the development of online materials across curriculum areas. However, through the absence of a coordinating strategy across the sector, many colleges were working in isolation from each other and were duplicating resource production at considerable expense.
Responsibilities for ICT in CLD were generally included within the arrangements of each local authority for the delivery of its education functions. CLD officers contributed effectively to policies on ICT and ensured that proper consideration was given to the place of ICT in capacity building and in the delivery of learning in the community.
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Schools, colleges and other centres had benefited in recent years from significant improvements in infrastructure to support ICT for learning and teaching. Almost all schools had access to broadband Internet connections. Colleges benefited from fast Internet access through connection to SuperJANET4.6 Glow (formerly the Scottish Schools Digital Network) will use SuperJANET4 to supply its high bandwidth interconnections for all Scottish education authorities. This infrastructure has proved very reliable and should provide an effective platform for future developments.
Within schools, colleges and other centres, rapid development of effective infrastructure was evident. Almost all centres had upgraded to switch-based7 distribution arrangements and these were capable of delivering data and applications to the desktop at high speed. However, in more than a few school buildings of considerable age, managers had difficulty in installing an effective and comprehensive system of structured cabling to deliver fast, effective services for learning and teaching. A number of colleges and a very small number of schools had implemented thin client8 systems as a cost-saving measure, most commonly by way of recycling old computers as terminals but these systems had not met learning and teaching needs in all cases, particularly those where intensive processing was needed, such as in programming development environments or graphic manipulation applications and where this processing could not be achieved quickly enough by the server.
In some rural environments, geographically dispersed centres placed a heavy burden on education authorities to provide the same level of service as in centres in urban settings. The affordability over the long term of high bandwidth rural networks covering very large areas was a concern to a number of rural authorities.
The level and quality of resources within centres varied more widely than did the centrally-procured infrastructure services. Under arrangements for devolved budgets, headteachers in schools made arrangements to purchase equipment and software to meet the particular needs of their schools. This was usually within a purchasing scheme negotiated by the education authority with suppliers, and schools were able to realise best value through participation in such schemes. However, equipment budgets devolved to schools by authorities were not always compatible with authorities’ targets for equipment refresh cycles. In more than a few schools, a significant proportion of ICT equipment was more than five years old and included a large number of computers older than the refresh cycle should have permitted. Slippage in authority budget commitments for refreshing equipment was often a contributory factor.
All schools had identified benefits to be gained from the use of interactive whiteboards in conjunction with data projectors. Almost all schools had purchased at least one system and many secondary schools had equipped large numbers of classrooms with boards and projectors. Secondary science departments had purchased digital microscopes, data logging applications and simulation software. Art and music departments gave pupils access to a useful range of applications that supported and enhanced creative thinking and processes. In one urban secondary school, teachers and learners were using digital audio players to access podcasts that supported modern foreign language learning.
A number of special schools had acquired sophisticated equipment, with very simple interfaces, to enable and encourage young people with severe learning difficulties to broaden their opportunities to express their feelings and emotions. This equipment, specially configured to address particular problems of communication among the pupils and between them and teaching staff, used sound and light as tools for communication of pupils’ feelings and emotions. Although highly sophisticated in its functionality, it was extremely easy to use and was implemented in a whole-room environment so that pupils could make use of it from anywhere in the classroom and could communicate with a freedom of movement and expression not possible without this equipment. Information on such resources is available from the CALL centre at Edinburgh University.*
Pre-school centres and primary schools provided a wide range of ICT equipment for use in learning and teaching. This included programmable roaming devices, digital still and video cameras and technology toys. While most establishments had these items, in many establishments limitation of funding did not permit a level of provision of such equipment sufficient to meet the needs of all children and teaching staff.
Many schools and colleges had purchased laptop computers to allow greater flexibility in deployment of resources to meet need. A few schools were implementing wireless networks, particularly in conjunction with laptop computers. Most teaching staff welcomed this enhanced flexibility of use of ICT but many reported difficulties with arrangements for recharging batteries and for movement of the equipment from room to room.
Almost all schools were unable to obtain sufficient software licenses to allow effective access for pupils and staff to applications that, in many cases, had the potential to transform learning experiences and teaching approaches. Such applications included many examples in geography, art, music, technical education and the sciences. In almost all cases, the price of licenses was such that too few, or even no, licenses could be afforded by departments. No schools or education authorities visited for this report had taken advantage of open source software9 to ease the overall financial burden on software budgets. Almost all primary schools had provided simplified office applications for learner use, in particular word processing software.
All colleges had sufficient numbers of computers to meet the needs of their learners. Not all of these computers were of a high enough specification to cope well with the full range of applications that staff and learners wanted to run on them. All colleges had a target refresh cycle but not all achieved this target. The most common cycle length was four years but more than a few colleges specified five years. A five-year refresh cycle meant that learners had fewer opportunities than with a four-year cycle to develop vocational ICT skills on the up-to-date equipment and software that they would find in industry and commerce. All colleges benefited from the infrastructure provided through SuperJANET4 and, in general, provided fast switched access to services within their institutions.
Under the BRITE10 initiative, all colleges had acquired a range of assistive technology to meet the needs of learners with additional support needs and most colleges had supplemented this resource with other technology to meet the needs of particular individual learners. More than a few colleges had an extensive stock of such assistive technology, including a wide range of adapted input devices.
Generally, college staff and learners had good access to appropriate software for learning and teaching but there was very little use of open source software. Many colleges had negotiated campus-wide agreements for supply of commonly used software and many of these agreements allowed staff and learners to install the software on their home computers at little or no cost.
All colleges and a few secondary schools had acquired VLE applications. A small number of education authorities had implemented a VLE. Colleges had been working with their VLEs for longer than schools and a few had adopted a systematic and comprehensive approach to making learning materials available thorough the VLE. However, the majority of colleges had not exploited as fully as they could the benefits of this publicly funded resource11 and in these colleges, learners made little use of the VLE. A small but increasing number of colleges were considering moving away from commercial VLE systems to a VLE based on open source software, with an expected reduction in recurring costs.
The various arrangements for managing CLD in local authorities supported a wide range of strategies for the provision of ICT for learning and teaching in communities. In all cases, local authorities had taken advantage of the People’s Network12 initiative to connect public libraries to the Internet and to equip libraries with computers and software to meet local need. Library staff had devised and implemented a wide range of initiatives to deliver resources to communities. These initiatives included customised websites, wireless access allowing members of the public to use their own laptops in libraries, ICT-equipped vehicles to deliver services to remote areas and the use of mobile phones by remote learners to receive learning materials.
However, more than a few initiatives in youth and community work suffered from poor infrastructure and resources. Many ICT initiatives in youth and community work had only fixed-term funding and the sustainability of such projects was an area of concern to authorities.
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Centres deployed a wide range of services to manage learners’ access to and use of ICT. These services included network accounts, network-based file storage, access to e-mail, shared folders for learning and teaching materials and, in the case of a few colleges, comprehensive managed learning environments. Not all centres offered the complete range of services to all learners and teaching staff.
All schools and colleges with local area networks provided learners with network accounts. These accounts allowed learners to login to the range of services and applications available to them, including commonly used applications, printing facilities and Internet access. In more than a few schools, particularly in the primary sector, and in a few colleges, these accounts were generic. Individual learners did not have individual accounts or access to network storage. In the case of colleges that did not allocate network storage as a matter of course, most learners who needed network storage could arrange access to it but the learner or the class lecturer had to identify the need to the college. The allocation of generic network accounts had the added disadvantage of not allowing all learners to have individual e-mail accounts.
The main reasons for centres not allocating network accounts to individual learners were:
The benefits of allocating individual network accounts included:
In a few colleges that did not implement network file storage, learners received solid state memory devices13 as part of their bursary allocation and this helped them to take advantage of many of the benefits of the college network. However, not all computers had easily accessible ports into which these devices could be inserted.
Across all sectors, most centres had recognised the value of making learning and teaching materials available online to learners. Some centres used commercial applications to manage structures of shared folders into which staff placed resources and from which learners accessed these resources. These structures were usually organised to reflect the departmental arrangements of the centre and learners accessed folders according to topic and level. Benefits to learners were apparent in centres where this approach was well supported and where staff and learners were proactive in adopting this approach. In one secondary school, the technical education department had collected together a useful range of resources for revision of S4 craft and design topics. These resources were available to pupils through the school network and learners made good use of them.
Almost all centres provided staff and learners with e-mail services but the scope of these services varied from a single account for a whole class, mainly but not exclusively at early and middle stages in primary schools, to individual accounts in primary and secondary schools and in colleges. Many of the systems in primary schools allowed communication by e-mail only when users were in the school, while in some secondary schools and colleges the e-mail service was web-enabled and learners and staff had access to their accounts outside the centre’s local area network. Despite this recent significant growth in learner and staff access to e-mail, very few teaching staff promoted its use as an effective tool for communication between staff and learners for homework, announcements, or requests for help and guidance. Commendably, a small but increasing number of learners were using e-mail accounts to store their work so that they could access it from home. They e-mailed their work to themselves and accessed it from home. When complete, they e-mailed it back to themselves and accessed it in their school or college.
An increasing number of teaching staff realised the benefits of the use of e-mail by learners to communicate with other centres, with organisations of use to them in project work and with individuals and bodies interested in the work of their class. For example, in one primary school, a P1-P3 class e-mailed a Museum of London designer for information on constructing a display, and groups of its P6-P7 pupils used the JapanUKLive14 website to correspond with school children in Japan and compare their homes and countries.
Most education authorities were proactive in providing a range of services online to schools. Examples included Wiredshire15 in Aberdeenshire, Stirling Grid for Learning,16 Highland Virtual Learning Community,17 Edinburgh Grid for Learning,18 and North Ayrshire’s Online service.19 These online services included links to learning and teaching materials, information about CPD opportunities for staff, authority announcements, library catalogues and a range of policy documents.
Learning and Teaching Scotland (LT Scotland) was playing a very important role in making available to learners and teaching staff a very wide range of online resources from its comprehensive website that covered almost 30 online services, ranging from Early Years Online to National Qualifications Online. Of particular note was the area of the website20 that focused on modern foreign languages, the Modern Foreign Languages Environment (MFLE).21
The Scottish Further Education Unit (SFEU) has a remit to meet the developmental needs of the college sector. It organised activities through two areas, college development and learning effectiveness. From its website,22 it promoted communities of practice, advertised its development events and promoted wider discussion of current issues of interest to college staff. SFEU focused, among other initiatives, on building the capacity of colleges and individual staff within them to take forward curriculum innovation through ICT.
Most schools and many colleges had no clear strategy for selecting, organising, managing and distributing the very wide range of resources available for learning and teaching. Very few schools had implemented a VLE as a structured repository of learning and teaching materials and none used the facilities of the VLE to assign learners to courses, track progress and produce reports on progress in learning (a managed learning environment). There was little collaboration between teaching staff in individual schools or between schools to gain maximum benefit from shared materials development. The richness of online learning and teaching opportunities in many schools was influenced by the importance placed on these opportunities by the headteacher and other promoted staff as well as the individual enthusiasm of class teachers. Too few schools took maximum benefit from the resources of the LT Scotland website.
Most colleges had appointed a manager with responsibility for the development and use of online learning and teaching resources and these managers worked well with lecturers and departments that recognised the benefits that ICT brought to the learning and teaching process. In the few colleges with a well-developed VLE, large parts of the curriculum were available online, including materials from the National Learning Network23 (NLN). The good progress in these colleges was due, in no small part, to the firm commitment by the college senior management team to realise the benefits of ICT in learning and teaching, along with a systematic implementation of a strategy to embed ICT in learning and teaching.
From uncertain beginnings, ICT-based school administration systems had begun to play a useful part in reducing the administration burden on teaching staff. In particular, many schools had deployed computers in classrooms and staff bases to facilitate online monitoring and reporting of pupil attendance, and report creation. Many schools used ICT to produce reports on pupils’ progress. Some parents, particularly those with children in primary school, had concerns about ICT systems for reporting progress involving "tick-box" approaches.24 In some cases, unacceptably slow processing times for the online attendance system had led more than a few teaching staff to stop using the system. However, an unexpected result of deploying computers in classrooms for administration purposes was that teaching staff had been encouraged to investigate their use for teaching. One college had invested heavily in ICT for administration purposes and had developed a comprehensive suite of software to manage student applications, enrolments, on-course reporting and activity measurement.
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In general, the confidence and competence of teaching staff in their use of ICT had improved in recent years and many staff were now using ICT effectively in their teaching. A number of factors had contributed to this increase in confidence and competence.
However, in all schools, a few teachers (for example, as many as eight or nine in a large secondary school, or one or two teachers in a primary school) made very little use of ICT in their teaching. In such schools, the detrimental impact on the learning experience of large numbers of children and young people was high.
Many colleges worked in partnership with SFEU to develop lecturers’ thinking in relation to pedagogical issues raised by the use of ICT in learning and teaching. In this regard, the eMerge programme had been a significant carrier of college staff CPD. Some elements of this CPD advocated a distinct "e-pedagogy" but did not make clear how such a pedagogy built on or extended more general notions of how to make effective use of resources in learning and teaching. More than a few teaching staff in colleges had undertaken study to develop skills in supporting online learners.
All education authorities had arrangements in place to identify the development needs of teaching staff. They provided programmes of CPD to develop and enhance the capacity of staff to exploit the benefits of ICT in learning and teaching. These programmes were delivered both by education authority staff and by third-party providers. All authorities appreciated the importance of targeting CPD on specific needs and priorities, and their programmes included development opportunities in such areas as interactive whiteboards, digital video editing, and use of technology toys. In many cases, uptake of CPD opportunities by teaching staff was hindered by problems in funding class cover arrangements for those who wished to attend CPD events.
Very few education authorities evaluated the impact that CPD in this area had on learning and teaching. Commendably, in one education authority, quality improvement officers identified good practice in the use of ICT in learning and teaching through classroom observations in the authority’s schools. This good practice then received wider dissemination through authority-sponsored conferences and events.
In all sectors, the confidence and competence of teaching staff in their use of ICT in their teaching varied widely. A small but increasing number of staff were making imaginative use of interactive whiteboards, materials from the Internet and commercial software to enhance their teaching and enrich the learner experience. However, the majority of teaching staff needed to progress beyond the basic use of presentation software to display the contents of the equivalent of acetate slides previously used with an overhead projector. Such substitution of a computer and data projector for an overhead projector represented little educational gain. However, it was, for many teaching staff, a first step to becoming effective users of ICT in their teaching. Effective motivation for such beginnings in ICT use for many staff was the presence in their teaching room of the necessary ICT equipment to allow them to incorporate ICT into the learning and teaching approaches. While many were competent in their use of the types of application packages for which they had received training under the New Opportunities Fund,25 far fewer were confident in the use of imaging or sound equipment and software or in the use of specialist software for their own curriculum area.
More than a few college lecturers had developed useful skills in production of online learning materials and had incorporated into their teaching a wide range of such materials. Most college staff had an opportunity to study for a generic ICT qualification such as the British Computer Society’s European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) but such generic programmes of study did not meet the specialist needs of lecturers for ICT skills development in their vocational area, and completion rates were generally low.
CLD staff and librarians had access to CPD relevant to the development of their ICT skills. Typically, staff developed these skills through study for qualifications such as ECDL. Overall, programmes of staff development in ICT for CLD staff gave insufficient attention to the effective use of ICT in teaching.
>> Signpost to improvement in the ICT confidence and competence of teaching staff |
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Education authorities, pre-school centres, schools and colleges had different levels of support for ICT equipment and software. No pre-school centre or primary school visited for this report had a dedicated ICT technician working solely in the centre or school. All secondary schools had one or more technicians, with at least one of these technicians experienced in or qualified in the maintenance of computer systems. All authorities deployed teams of technical support staff who worked to maintain and develop both central and local systems. In some councils, this service was carried out by technical staff working within the department responsible for education. In others, the education authority relied on the council’s corporate ICT services for support for its schools. Education authorities that relied on the latter arrangements generally identified more issues with the quality of service provided than did those authorities that managed their own technical support. All colleges had centralised their ICT services and teams under a senior manager.
In pre-school centres and in primary schools, peripatetic technical staff were important in providing technical support. They backed up the first-line support usually available in school through ICT coordinators or enthusiastic and knowledgeable class teachers. In general, pre-school centre and primary school staff reported satisfaction with the level of technical support provided. In some cases, response times from these peripatetic technicians were not good and equipment lay unrepaired for unacceptably long periods. On the other hand, more than a few authorities reported that the first-line diagnostic skills of class teachers were not well developed and that technicians often found that they had been called to schools to deal with problems that should have been resolved at local level. Typical problems that could be resolved locally included paper jams in printers, the cleaning of mice, and inability to install software.
Many secondary school technicians were highly motivated, knowledgeable and very effective problem solvers. They worked well with central ICT support staff to provide an effective service in their schools. Only a few had been given opportunities to update their ICT qualifications and most were self-taught in many aspects of their work. In the majority of secondary schools, technicians received valuable support from staff in the school computing studies department and even, in a few cases, from senior pupils with an appropriate range of skills.
Teaching staff and learners in secondary schools valued the support they received from the school ICT technician but were much less positive about the quality of service provided by support staff from the authority. In a few cases, software problems that had been passed to the central service for solution remained unresolved for several weeks or even months.
All colleges had policies and procedures in place for ICT technical support. Colleges budgeted for their own support service and almost all placed high value on its effectiveness. However, the large numbers of users (up to 15000 in some colleges) and range of equipment in colleges meant that, in order for technician tasks to be manageable, some flexibility in user activities was lost. For example, in many colleges, users could not personalise their desktop or benefit from a roaming user profile. This small loss of flexibility was compensated by a high level of reliability of systems that, in general, met well the ICT needs of learners and staff. Most problems with systems and equipment in colleges related to the age of some computers and their poor performance in running the modern software required by learners and staff.
Technical support for ICT systems in CLD was a mixture of local and central provision. In most cases this worked effectively and was valued by staff and learners. However, in one authority with an outsourced maintenance service, CLD did not receive support from the service provider and CLD staff and learners complained of inconsistency of treatment.
>> Signpost to improvement in technical support |
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