Siobhan Sweet, a patisserie lecturer from The City of Liverpool College, quickly realised that she had to think outside the box to help her students. The day her college closed, she sent students a Zoom link for a live lesson the next morning. When they logged on, they saw Sweet making Easter eggs. The lesson was an instant success and Sweet decided to roll with it.
Sweet is just one of thousands of FE lecturers trying to convert their lessons into online formats. It is arguably harder for those teaching more practical courses, where students are likely to be taught in workshops, gardens, kitchens, salons and farms. Wander around a college campus on an average weekday and you’ll see a flurry of activity, with students providing vocational skills training from plastering a wall to baking a soufflé or cutting a customer’s hair.
Now, though, campuses are empty, with the coronavirus crisis affecting all areas of education. However, while the buildings may be shut, learning continues with FE lecturers showing their ingenuity and creativity to find ways to deliver vocational, skills-based training remotely.
The FE community has truly come together within its colleges - and as a wider sector - to share practice and deliver the same quality of education to learners, no matter what their capability, course or internet connection.
So, how are these lecturers tackling it? Below, starting with Sweet, we feature some of the most innovative practices emerging during the college closures.
Sweet sends out the recipe in advance so students can see what ingredients they will need, along with alternatives in case they haven’t been able to get hold of a particular food item. She makes the recipe off camera before going live and making it again.
Proof is in the pudding
The learners don’t bake along with her, but instead, once she’s finished, she encourages them to make the recipe themselves in their own time and send photos to her to mark. Sweet, her students and the wider public - who have started watching her broadcasts via Facebook in their hundreds - are loving it.
“I go to sleep at night already looking forward to the next day,” she says. “I’m actually getting up earlier than normal to do the pre-bakes, and I am really enjoying it.
“You’ve got to grab these opportunities.”
She admits it took some initial learning but the impact - for her and her students - has made it all worthwhile. These recorded lessons are likely become a key part of her teaching in future.
“I did a lot of learning about the technology side of things two weeks ago, and I said to my boss, ‘I think I’m doing more work at home than I did at college.’ It’s a new skill to add and the kids love learning in this way. When we go back to normal, I will carry on recording my lessons,” Sweet says.
Delivering cooking lessons remotely is one thing, but what about students on equine, animal care and agriculture courses? This is exactly the challenge that the curriculum team at Abingdon and Witney College faced.
Normally, the college has a working farm, Common Leys Farm, where students have practical lessons with the animals. Coronavirus obviously stopped all that.
However, with staff still going to the farm to feed, clean out and care for the animals, and CCTV already installed in many of the animal enclosures, students have been able to witness lambs and foals being born from home, helping keep them involved in what is going on.
“We’ve been sending clips to students for them to critique and analyse - they can tell us where we are going wrong, and it’s been quite fun,” says Clair Juler, curriculum manager for land-based studies at the college.
“Where possible, if the students have their own animals they are still able to access - most of the students on the equine courses have their own horses - they are encouraged to take pictures of any plaiting, bathing or grooming of their horses to send us,” she says.
Juler has also been delivering a work experience module as normal, conducting mock interviews over Skype, and her other colleagues have been grooming their dogs and arranging flowers live for students to watch. It’s been a learning curve, she admits, but staff have embraced the challenge and are still honing their skills.
“It’s been trial and error since we started. Staff have been dipping into other people’s lessons to see what each other are doing and how it works, and it made them more confident in having a go,” she says.
“It’s quite intense talking to a computer screen for that amount of time and constantly being creative. But, on the whole, I think it’s been pretty good.”
Michelle Howie, a lecturer at Ayrshire College, has also been delivering live lessons for her beauty therapy students - which she admits was not natural at first.
“In beauty therapy, we are touchy-feely types. All our practical work involves treating others, so doing this remotely was always going to be something completely different for us,” she says.
However, in spite of this, she set about planning live lessons, which she conducts over video conferencing. This involves emailing her students a lesson plan, such as make-up application, so that they know what equipment they need and the start time.
Once everyone is online, she then delivers a lesson in three parts: 10 minutes followed by questions, then seven minutes more teaching followed by more questions, and then a final two minutes to wrap up.
Accessibility for all
After the lesson is finished, she rings all the students individually to see how they found it and if they have any questions. Howie also prerecords all her lessons the day before she delivers them live to ensure that if anyone can’t join along live, they can catch up later.
Oh, and all the lessons have spa music playing throughout. Why? It’s what the students are used to, she says - it puts them at ease and reduces anxiety.
Howie plans to teach facials, nails and eye care as the weeks go on - boosting learning and providing much-needed self-care, too, during these tough times. “Normally, we’d be using models, but the students will all be practising these skills on themselves. If anything, they’ll all have beautiful skin, nails and lashes while in lockdown.”
At West London College, Susana Cortez teaches students with significant learning disabilities and complex needs independent life skills. This involves making hot drinks in their own kitchen and selling them on campus; planting fruit, vegetables and flowers in the polytunnel; and caring for African snails.
Replicating this is hard but wherever possible, Cortez has tried to keep life normal for the students. Now, instead of selling teas and coffees to customers, they sell them to their parents and carers. If they have a garden, they are set tasks to plant seeds, maintain the plants and measure growth.
If students don’t have a garden, they are set tasks to do on the household plants they may have. If they have their own pets, they are recording their eating habits and behaviour - if not, Cortez encourages learners to log on to the virtual tours that Chester and London zoos are doing.
She also calls students over Microsoft Teams twice a day: once at 11am and once at 2pm, so they have as much routine as possible. “Many of them can only process things on a daily basis and often ask me if they can return to college tomorrow or next week. We discuss the virus and how this impacts everyone’s lives and stress the need for them to stay safe at home and regularly wash their hands,” Cortez says.
“It has been challenging for all of us, and has taken longer with the more complex students to get them up and running and happy and comfortable working remotely. But, actually, online learning has gone better than we ever expected.”
Siobhan Argyle, a lecturer at New College Lanarkshire, normally teaches a class of adults Spanish every Wednesday evening - and in lockdown, things are no different.
The students all log into Zoom at the same time each Wednesday, and Argyle sets them all sorts of weird and wonderful tasks to complete before the lesson, such as learning lines for a Spanish play that was then acted out via video conference or dressing up as a figure of Spanish history and explaining who they are in Spanish.
Laughter, Argyle says, is key to keeping sane in this crisis. “The tasks are completely silly but it’s about that connection and making sure everything you are doing online, you’re doing it with humour,” she says.
“They have a WhatsApp group, which is always going off during the week, talking about who they are dressing up as and how their lines are going. They’ve all told me they really appreciated being able to come on, have fun, be part of a community and feel connected.”
That sense of community and connection is clearly abundant right through the further education sector. Across the UK, lecturers and leaders are keeping calm and carrying on teaching in this new normal, whatever it takes.
Kate Parker is a 91 FE reporter
This article originally appeared in the 1 May 2020 issue under the headline “Remote teaching? For these colleges, it’s a piece of cake”
