LinkedIn Learning continues to be a platform that garners a lot of attention, from the LL content, to the solution itself. Bounce around on some LinkedIn profiles and you will see folks mentioning the certificates they have received from LinkedIn Learning. Learning System vendors who have partnership agreements with LinkedIn Learning for its content, often see high usage (depending on the system, but, talk to vendors who do not have a LL partnership, and you will find the majority wanting one).

LinkedIn Learning is somewhat of an oddity, it is not an LXP (although some folks might say so, I initally thought this as well, but that ended quickly), nor is it a talent development platform, nor a upskilling platform (which they could pitch), nor an LMS, rather it is a digital learning platform – which means that the majority of the content is in a video format. Other content is there too, but “course” and “video” are one in the same.

I have spent the last few months, going in and out of LinkedIn Learning, exploring the content, taking parts of the content, bouncing thru the administration side, to such an extent that I could do an in-depth product analysis in my sleep (with ESP of course).

There are folks who are devotees to LinkedIn Learning. Anything you say in an honest but negative connotation will unleash them onto you (via LinkedIn), with this and that. If you love LinkedIn Learning, this product review will not change your feelings.

This review will consist of three parts (seen throughout)

a. Video reviews – yep, I went thru the system, selected a few areas and recorded with a V/O (me) of what you are seeing and my take

b. Screenshots – To aid in the writing, including screenshots of e-mails LL sends you for your top X Skills (the number is dependent on the number of skills you want to learn).

c. Text

View all the LinkedIn Learning System Review Videos

You can share them via e-mail, downloads and much more. You can also view them under certain sections in the post below.

Key Takeaways

LinkedIn Learning has some weird attributes to it, weird perhaps isn’t the right word, wonky is better suited.

If the content is video or listed as a course, which uh means a video, two items will irk you right away.

• Auto-play – It is nauseating. I personally am not a fan of auto-play which means the moment you see the video it starts to play.  You see this on some sites such as CNN and CBS Sports (which makes the site unusable).  I’ve never met anyone who likes auto-play.  
• Auto-play defeats the purpose of WBT (i.e. e-learning), because it automatically assumes you want to start with the very first chapter of whatever subject, when you may want to jump to chapter four, page five or bounce here or there.  You can do this in the courses/videos I tested, because they all have a Table of Contents (a plus, because there is a lot of content, by 3rd party providers who never have a TOC – and should receive an “S” for shame). 

Big Win

The big win with the video/course (did I mention they are the same thing, just different presentation), is if you go to “transcript” which you will see under the video, next to items such as “Overview”. Click Transcript, and here you see a transcript of the audio. Now, click on any of the text, let’s say the person is talking about income tax, but you see in the transcript, income tax on domestic goods. When you click that specific phrase, the video will jump right to that point.

This feature does exist in some other learning systems, but since this is a review of LL, it is worth mentioning. And why they do not tell folks – especially those learners who are jumping into the platform thru other sources, and not as part of their organization is beyond me.

Anyway it is a huge win.

LinkedIn Learning’s home page

When a learner logins into LinkedIn Learning and arrives on the home page they will see the following

Please note that they will not see “Go to Admin” if they are not the administrator. For example – without the administrator icon

With the administrator icon – this means the end-user is also an administrator

• Browse – Which enables you to browse the various topics available on the platform
• A Search function – Which should be amazing, but uh, I found some issues with it
• Home – The home, i.e. what you are looking at now
• My Learning – This is where you as the learner go to see what’s in progress, saved, my collections, my organization (which means content that your organization finds beneficial to you, can include the organization’s content too, but it does not mean only your organization’s content), Learning History and Skills 
• Me – Your Profile – including links to your LinkedIn profile
• Language
• Company logo 
• And if you are an administrator – Go to the Admin page (this won’t appear if you are not an admin)

Immediately below you will always see

The banner shows various courses/content and there isn’t a clear understanding of what is being “promoted” on the top. Some say “popular”, but I found some of the most popluar (based on people taking the course – which just means they clicked to go into the course, and not that did anything more than that), is not the most widely used, updated, new, etc.

Weekly Goal is where you can set a timer. i.e. this week, I will spend 15 minutes learning. You can select other minute numbers. I selected 15 minutes.

If you are in the midst or taking content whether thru a learning path, learning collection (a series of content), or from your org, you will see them here – but only a few, not the entire list (unless your list consists of two).

Followed below this is a series of playlists, which you can easily assume is tied directly to your organization (employees, which it is not) or tied directly to the skills you are interested in learning – which would slide under “Top Picks”.

In this playlist, I found it to sometimes work and other times not. In my first test, I selected the skills, “Grant Writing” and “Analytics”.

What my Top Picks showed included courses in

• How to plan for retirement
• Something on being a rock star for a conference

In fact, there wasn’t one piece of content tied around the specific skill of Grant Writing, but if I was interested in CSS, well there was one for that.  Analytics, showed a few, but again, not all. 

Then you get to the playlists they show themselves, and I found this not to be consistent. While, “Top Picks” always appears at the top, followed by “Trending Now”, playllists such as “Most Popular” can appear third in line, or down at the bottom or elsewhere.  “New Releases” the same thing.  At one point, I had a playlist for content that can be learned in 30 minutes or less (based on who decided that, is unknown, since uh, if I am taking only a chapter or bouncing around, how do they know how it takes me?).  That playlist though doesn’t appear every time on the home page. 

Other times there are playlists tied directly to what you are interested in, but again, not all the content is representative, and these playlists do not always appear. 

In my skill choices of Grant Writing and Analytics, I did not see a playlist saying “Because you are interested in Grant Writing” nor one for “Because you are interested in Analytics”.  However, when I switched skills to “E-Commerce” and “Accounting”, then I did see the following playlists

You may noticed “Holding your Team accountable” and say to yourself, that has nothing to do with “accounting” which I think everyone on the planet would know means the financial side. This is another issue with LL. It does this often whereas depending on what skill or what you search for, sometimes it hits 100%, other times it takes just part of the word (in this case account) and ignores the rest, and you see a result like this.

As for e-commerce, I was hoping to see specifics on e-commerce, not items such as Shopify Essential Training and Learning Shopify. Great, if I am using the platform, Shopify, not great, if I am not.

Other Playlists include

• New Releases – Which I found to be pretty consistent on dates, say within a week 
• Trending Now – Where it clearly isn’t based on a factor of number of learners taking it or using it, in fact I found content saying “Most Popular” with numbers that were low, compared to other content which had a higher number of learners, but wasn’t listed as “Most Popular”.  If LL uses an algorithim, they need to fix it. 
• Popular – This would be easy to assume that it is based on the number of learners taking it or completed the whole thing, but nope, I found content not in “Most Popular” that had higher numbers of both, compared with some in “Most Popular”
• Most Liked –  This is based sort of on a premise, that if I like it, and others do as well, it must be mean it is outstanding in design or delivery or information or usefulness.  This of course is subjective, because just like a “Yelp” 52 five star steakhouse gets you there, you may end up with a steak that tastes like a shoe.   Anyway, I found this to be inconsistent too, with content on the list, that was not the most liked compared to some other content that wasn’t on the list.  If I see most liked, by darn it, it should be the highest number than anything else.  – I found in my latest test, this playlist did not appear (which you will see in a video shortly), however here is proof that it appeared just yesterday.

One challenge I have with the playlists in general is that the whole push these days is about “skill development”, “upskilling” and skills, but with the playlists, “Trending” for example, has nothing to do directly with my skills I want to acquire or interested in.  And the same applies to all other playlists (excluding Top Picks, which has its own issues).

One note of wonkiness, is that if you change your skills and go back to your home page, the update is not reflected.  You will still see the Top Picks and Because you liked X (the former skill, you had) being shown. In order to see the latest skills you have added or changed to, you need to hit your refresh button on your browser. 

I would think that a company such as LinkedIn would already have solved this challenge, especially since I haven’t run into this issue with other learning systems where you can change your skills.

And there are consistency problems.  When you hover over the content on the playlists some show the number of learners (taking it, which only means they clicked into that piece of content, and not how long they spent on it, or where they went), and yet other content on that same playlist, does not show it.  If you have it, then show it across all pieces of the content. 

Lastly, it is hard to recall your skills, and in order to remind you, you have to go either to “My Learning” or check under your profile to see “Skills”, which you click and it takes you to the my learning page.  It would seem to me that if you list “Skills” next to the area for “in progress”, “saved”,  “from my organization” that would be an added bonus. 

When you click “Show all” it takes you to your My Learning page. 

In this area, you can share the content, or collection or learning path if you so desire.  The “More” if you are an administrator allows you to add the “content” to a collection or a learning path, and you can edit or delete it.  Otherwise the options are “save” which then goes to your “saved” section (if you are a learner).

Collections

Catalog

LinkedIn Learning catalog UI is very slick, but I found the “Popular” category/tag if you will, to once again not be consistent in terms of numbers of learners accessing. 

I am a big fan of filters, but one that I feel would be very relevant is “Skills”, whereas I could select a filter based specifically on my “Skills” that I selected.  Currently, that is missing in the filter options.  

Admin Header

Under People

• Users 
• Curators 
• Administrator(s)
• Groups

Overall I found this pretty simple to figure out and use. I did like the two help sections that appear in “Users” and “Curators”. However the first one, I strongly debate on how it truly boosts activation, since it is only helping craft an e-mail you send out.  SMS? Not possible.  

For Curators though, the information is very helpful

The “Add” button on the top of the header

• Add Learners
• Create Learning Path
• Create Collection
• Add Custom Content

Diving in the Administration Side

This video covers the home dashboard for the administrator, from the data captured – which some makes sense others do not, and some items are clearly missing, to the reporting and “skills insight”.  One of the biggest misses is while the system constantly pushes “collections”, there isn’t a report nor data telling you how many learners in your organization, selected these collections or created these collections.  Nor does it show you what skills are the most popular – i.e. that people created – selected as a skill. 

The skill insights identifies what skills people clicked on – content wise, but that doesn’t really help. I mean, I may be curious to what “Adobe Photoshop” is, and clicked on it, because it was on my playlist, but it doesn’t mean I am interested in that skill.  Nor does it mean, I went thru this chapter and that chapter.

Segmentation of data does not exist. Another miss.  The system tells me how many hours but doesn’t show directly the minutes, rather it is says avg minutes.  Yet another chart pushes hours and I can’t click to see what learner (noted as “Viewer”) went into what content, and drill down that way.

In the Reports there is something called Learner Management Details, but the information presented (required to DL BTW), is worthless. 

What do you get?

• Name
• E-Mail
• Unique User ID
• Business Title
• Invitation Date (includes the time)
• Activation Date (includes the time)
• Last Login (date and time)
• License Assigned
• License Status
• Connected Profile Status (i.e. tied to their LinkedIn profile)
• Total Sessions
• Hours viewed
• Hours viewed per unique login
• Groups

That’s it.  That’s the details you get in this report.  Please show or tell me, how I can really understand what my learners are taking related to specific skills, and additional analysis of skill gaps, identifying strengths and weaknesses?

Settings

Bottom Line

LinkedIn Learning receives a lot of interest, but for those who see the name “LinkedIn” and automatically assume the LL platform will meet the expectations or exceed them compared to the LinkedIn social media platform, they will be disappointed.

The strength of LL is the LinkedIn Learning content, but even there, missteps exist. Popular tags are inconsistent with the number of learners, Trend Now Playlists are not clearly identified as if it is “now” or last week, and trending changes depending on the skills you select, but usually those skills are not even in the “trend now”.

Some playlists appear, sometimes they don’t. And the learner is none the wiser.

The biggest dud of the whole system, is in order for you to see your skills tied to “Top Picks” you need to select skills that has content (more than a few) tied to it. Otherwise, a skill such as “Grant Writing” will show maybe one or two in your Top Picks, and then other content that has nothing to do with “Grant Writing” makes an apperance.

And the biggest fail is that in order to see your latest skills, assuming you update them from the previous skills, is that if you do so, after seeing the playlists for the initial skills and then change, and hit home, the playlists do not update.

To do so

Requires a refresh, by clicking your browser.

My hope?

LinkedIn Learning

considers a refresh

for their whole system.

E-Learning 24/7

Over the course of the pandemic, many employers have put the brakes on hiring. In fact, last year several firms including PwC, Tesla and Deloitte reportedly put a freeze on hiring.

Aside from hiring freezes, data also pointed towards a drop in available vacancies. For example, April 2020 data from Adzuna found that the number of advertised job vacancies slumped by 50% since the COVID-19 lockdown period started. With that in mind, it begs the question as to whether apprenticeships could be a good and viable way for employers to source the top talent that they need to succeed.

With National Apprenticeship Week taking place earlier this month (8th  to 14th February), a light has been shone on some of the work being done by employers and apprentices across the country. Many employers, including Amazon, Thames Water, BAE Systems and BT Group have announced plans to continue hiring apprentices in 2021 – which will provide new opportunity for apprentices to start their career but also for businesses in terms of securing talent for the future.

With this in mind, should businesses look to lean on apprentices in order to boost their talent pipelines, during a time where the jobs market is so volatile following the coronavirus pandemic?

BT announces plans to recruit more apprentices

It may be the case that employers are indeed leaning more towards apprenticeships when it comes to hiring during the coronavirus pandemic. This week for example, telecommunications firm BT Group announced plans to recruit more than 400 apprentices and graduates for its September uptake this year. These positions are said to be across diverse areas of the business including engineering, customer service, applied research and cyber-security.

Alison Wilcox, Group HR Director, BT Group, said that despite the uncertainties caused by the coronavirus crisis, the telecommunications firm has continued to attract and recruit “brilliant people from all walks of life into our business”. The firm’s HR lead added that BT Group values the diverse perspectives that apprentices can bring to the business.

Wilcox’s thinking dovetails with that of Ann Potterton, Head of Apprenticeships at BT Group, who told HR Grapevine that the firm has used apprenticeships as a platform to hire, develop and retain top talent for many years – something that is even more critical during this uncertain period of time. “Apprentices bring fresh ideas and new perspectives to our business, which we truly value,” she explained.

Potterton went on to explain that apprenticeships help the firm to grow their own talent in areas that they have identified future skills gaps, including areas such as digital and cyber security. “We also have a very high retention rate, with many apprentices staying and progressing throughout the company many years after their apprenticeship comes to an end,” she added. Yet, BT Group is not the only firm to have identified the benefits of hiring apprentices to source the talent that they need for the future.

‘Apprenticeships feed our talent pipeline’

Elsewhere, Premier Foods, a food manufacturer with brands such as Ambrosia, Bisto and Mr Kipling in its portfolio, has a number of people who have joined the firm in apprentice roles, with others in the process of upskilling on apprenticeship programmes. Speaking to HR Grapevine, Julie Harris, L&D Business Partner, Operations and Early Careers at Premier Foods, explained that apprenticeships are a good way to develop people while they are training on the job and can apply their new knowledge and skills to the role. “They help us to keep up-to-date with new learning methods, technologies and feed our talent pipeline,” Harris added.

In addition to this, the early careers lead said that the structure of apprenticeships makes it an appealing and accessible option which also enables Premier Foods to attract new talent to the business and continue developing teams. Harris added:

“By offering an apprenticeship programme, we can provide a structured, interesting and collaborative process for new starters to join our business and enter the fascinating world of the food industry."

As is clear, lots of companies in different sectors are continuing to offer apprenticeships for the many benefits that they can bring for both employers and apprentices. According to Euan Blair, Founder and CEO at Multiverse, the “powerful thing” about apprenticeships is that they can provide effective learning in areas where skills needs are the highest.

He told HR Grapevine: “Take data for example: the Government estimates there are over a hundred thousand unfilled data roles, and consequently it’s one of the fastest growing apprenticeships. Every organisation is grappling with the pace of digital transformation right now, and apprenticeships, both for new talent and reskilling existing talent, are an excellent way of meeting this challenge head on.”

I remember when Internet Explorer appeared for the first time on the net. Netscape was the dominant player, and while there were a couple of other browsers, everyone I knew used Netscape, and only used AOL when they could get 30 days free – (The CD). I looked at IE, and was under impressed. But others jumped and in time, there wasn’t a Netscape to be found, IE dominated. I never cared for IE, and would use alternative browsers when ever possible, Maxathon (still around), Opera (still around), Avant to mention a few.

IE though retained its dominance of usage, even with Firefox. Once Chrome came though it changed, and after years of market domination, IEs lead was gone. Edge, which I use, finally did what I was waiting for, but it took the use of Chromium, not built by Microsoft to make it happen.

I bring up the browsers here, because I think it provides or may provide a fitting tale to what you are about to see, and honestly, it has already began, with the announcement of Viva by Microsoft, the answer to your L&D needs (who knew you needed them?) and training empowerment.

Microsoft are masters of marketing, and the hoopla kickoff was nothing sort of magical. Despite the numerous screen shots, and hype videos, and even some early analysis, which I will note here shortly, there are still a lot of questions that have yet to be answered.

There are plenty of folks already jumping onto the bandwagon of Viva, and the weirdness to the whole scene is that the biggest component, module if you will hasn’t come out yet. That is something called Viva Learning, which uh, is the main piece to the entire platform. The best way, I believe to present the details and facts of what is known as of this writing, is to present it in the following approach.

A couple of notes, prior to the Q/A format

My knowledge of certain areas which I cannot disclose specifics, is based on a conversation with a high level exec overseeing Viva. I agreed to what in the analyst industry is an ’embargo’, which basically means you won’t disclose information (that you learned) until a certain date or period – in some cases – the imminent release of the solution (system, product, etc.).

Many vendors in our industry, will use ’embargo’ as a way to provide the info you are seeking, but do it so that you are not out there blabbering to everyone what are the results of your fact finding. Any analyst who ignores this, usually will realize the repercussions soon enough, and in general it just hurts all.

With that in mind:

a. I have not yet seen Viva Learning intertwined with all the other modules, Connections, Topics, and Insights. I will not see Viva Learning until it is close to launch date. When I mean ‘seen” I mean a full demo, with me asking questions, bouncing around, etc. – this is a big difference then watching a marketing video of Viva Learning or other modules created by Microsoft.

b. To get a full analysis and assessment of the whole solution, you need to have all the modules utilized within Viva Learning, I have found testing one without the others to be a waste, because Viva’s potential is a combination of all four, in other words, having topics alone isn’t going to make your learning awesome, nor earth shattering, it really needs Viva Learning. And yes, you can purchase Topics today, and may be wow’d by it.

c. I do know the ‘projected/scheduled’ launch dates of Viva Learning and Connections, but I agreed to the ’embargo’ and thus cannot disclose.

d. Pricing for Viva Learning and Connections, is TBD. (I cannot disclose anything more than that)

Onto the Q/A

This is by far not all encompassing, but I tried to fill in as much as I can, based on what I know, and examined over the days since the launch announcement.  

What is Microsoft Viva?

It’s Microsoft’s answer to L&D (primarily) and training for employees.  I note employees here, because while you will be able to offer this to your customers, I see no benefit in doing so.  Viva was designed for employees, and is structured in that manner.  Could it change? Sure, but from everything I looked at and assessed, especially with MS Teams, I just do not see it in the near future, if at all. 

According to Microsoft it is an Employee Experience Platform.  If you think this sounds like an LXP, then yes, you would be 100% correct.  While an analyst coined the term “employee experienced platform”, and some vendors jumped on it, the majority of that space referred to themselves as LXPs.  

My vibe is that deep down somewhere someone will re-push themselves out as an EXP, using that acronym, rather than staying as an LXP.   So, you can expect to see “Employee Experience Platform”, with some learning system vendors.  But to match Viva head on, they will need to do something, which as of right now, is rare (more on this later). 

Is another acronym needed? No. But that won’t stop some vendors, I mean at the end of the day it is about acquiring customers.  So, as one vendor CEO once told me, “what buyers call us, doesn’t matter.” 

Viva Deux

Viva is fully engulfed, wrapped, tied directly into Microsoft Teams.  This is a good thing in one way, definitely from Microsoft’s perspective and a negative.

If you are a huge fan of MS Teams, which comes with Office 365, and plays a key role on why it is heavily utilized, and you want to leverage Teams for your on-going learning/training/education for your employees (and yes, students too), then you will be able to do so.  But everyone in your organization, school, etc. will need to use Microsoft Teams as well.  

If your company, organization etc. does not use Teams, has no interest in doing so, then Viva isn’t for you.  Microsoft Teams is not a perfect solution for everyone.  As of this writing, you cannot batch export from Outlook directly into Teams, which if you were say an analyst or a consultant or someone who is a one or small entity of people who wanted to bring in say their “customers”, that would require a one at a time approach, which is fine if you have like 10, but having like 2,000 or more, yeah, not worth it. 

Microsoft Teams has a learning curve. Sure you can figure out some things on your own, but to really utilize it, you need to be trained on it, and then retain the information.  I note this, because some folks who are newbies to Teams OR the company decides to jump into Viva headfirst, without training their employees on how to use Teams are going to be in for a rude awakening – and not in a good way.

Viva is made up of four modules.  You do not need to buy all four, in fact, Insights is free, but I have found Insights to be eeeh, without the content (which I will discuss shortly) and the user base (both is needed) to have any meaning. 

Microsoft has dubbed these modules with some marketing speak, so this is directly from their own site. 

Viva offers the following modules, “is from the web site”

a.  Topics (Available NOW) is “Knowledge and Expertise” 

b.  Insights (Available NOW and free) is “Productivity and Well-Being” 

c.  Learning (Date to be announced, Pricing TBD) – is “Skilling and Growth”

d. Connnections (Date to be announced, Pricing TBD) is “Culture and Communications”

If I want to try out Viva, what is available now for me?

As of this writing, Topics is available at $5 per user, per month, per year – you pay up-front.  In other words, $60 per user per year.  To give you an idea, since the $5 seems so low (in your mind, which is why other vendors often show the cost of the learners in a lower dollar amount, knowing your brain will not auto-convert it to the actual larger number)

• At 1,000 learners the cost is $60,000 USD – and that is just for Topics.  I surmise there will be volume discounts, but at what size of users who knows, and anyway, contact Microsoft.  
• 500 learners the cost is $30,000 USD per year. 

If you are an organization that has 25,000 users (that is their term), then your yearly cost (excluding discounts, etc.) will be 1.5M USD – and again this is just for the Topics module. 

To use Topics, please note the following (from Microsoft directly)

• Requires Microsoft 365 F1, F3, E3, A3, E5, A5, Office 365 F3, E1, A1, E3, A3, E5, A5, Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard, Business Premium, or SharePoint K, Plan 1, or Plan 2 license to be eligible for Microsoft Viva Topics.

So if your organization has not upgraded to Microsoft 365, formally known as Office 365, you need to do so, to use Topics. Or yeah, if you have SharePoint, then you need whatever they said you need.  

You can test out Topics through a free trial up to 25 users.  The trial lasts 30 days.  In an upcoming post, I will do a review of Topics. 

Insight is available now and it is free.  To install it, or find it within MS Teams to install it, is not an easy task. Again as of this writing it is not listed under “What’s New” nor “Top Picks” or “Most Popular”. 

Here is how to do it

1. Open up Microsoft Teams
2.  Open up “Apps” which you can find in the lower left of Teams near the bottom of the screen
3. Type in “Insi” – you can type out Insights, but I found just a few letters will suffice
4. You will see “Insights” by Microsoft, it is first one you will see in the row. Click on it, and install. 
5. Now you have it installed in Teams. 

Isn’t that easy?   Microsoft notes you should pin the app.  

Oh I forgot to mention that in order to use “Insights”, you will need an Exchange Online license.

To read more about Insights from the app perspective, and how it works – I strongly recommend you read this  here you go. 

For those not interested in reading “how it works”, read the screenshot instead

This page explains a bit more and what you can do with Insights from the “stay connected” perspective, which is not the same thing as “connections”.  Again, recommended reading.   I also recommend reading “Protect Time“.  My personal experience with Insights, is blech.  I found “focus time” to be like parent time, don’t forget you have homework from 7 to 9 p.m., Wally.   

Anyway, that is just my take.   

What isn’t yet available and how does it work?

The main piece, the one that will drive Viva, is Viva Learning.  As you can see, there are limitations at the moment without it, because Topics and Insights are not enough for me, to say “my learning is now complete. Dump the LMS.”

Viva Learning – Without seeing it fully in action, what can be provided is somewhat limited.  In the main screen of Viva Learning is a catalog of content.  

Microsoft Viva has signed already some 3rd party content partners (I suspect more are on their way), which within the catalog, you will purchase.  Whether this will be based on a per user basis (they refer to this as a license) or in some type of “all you can eat” pricing model, has yet to be defined.   There could be exceptions.  LinkedIn Learning is partially owned by Microsoft, and then there is Microsoft Learn.  I could not extract an answer on if these will be free or not, but knowing that in Office 365, you get access to some free LinkedIn learning content tied around Office 365, and as a Premium member on LinkedIn, you get access to some free LinkedIn Learning content, I suspect some will be.  Again, until you can see it or I can see and verify, this is speculation.  

You can upload your own content too (just an fyi). 

You will be able to do other things within Viva Learning too.  Parts of it remind me of LinkedIn Learning with the playlists of “topics you may like”, the leveraging of the machine learning algorithm for suggestions, and so forth, and the grid format that LinkedIn Learning uses for its catalog (and many other systems too).  You can assign content with required due dates. Search for content within your thread err topics stuff, which will appear separately in your Teams screen, and thus you do not have to jump every time into the catalog. 

Here are some examples of Viva Learning, you will need to scroll all the way down the page to see it.  Please note this does not show all of its capabilities. 

Viva Connections

Without seeing it all in action with everything else, this is limited information.  The mobile app reminds of of so many other knowledge mastery apps other vendors do, when it comes to content, whether it is a video or a PDF.  

There is pinned resources, health checks (huh?), clicking to view content, share it with others and so forth.   I guess “health check” resolves well-being.  

Are they any learning system vendors who are fully 100% integrated with Microsoft Teams?

The answer is yes, and the one who does the best job is EdCast.  You can stay in Microsoft Teams and take content, do everything you could do in EdCast’s system, without ever having to leave Teams.  It mimics the EdCast platform, and the data is pushed back into the EdCast system.  

My vendor says they are integrated with MS Teams.  How is this different than full integration?

Great question.  This is where it gets a bit confusing, and as a result, is easily misconstrued. 

When someone says fully integrated this means that within Teams, everything you can do in the learning system can be done within Teams.  Does it mimic the system itself? In some cases yes, honestly, it should in all cases, but that’s for another day.  The point is, you select content within Teams, that is coming from the learning system you have – it is just viewable in Teams as well (again mimic here or some refer to as ‘mirror’), and thus never leave the system. You can assign learning, you can allow pick and choose, take tests, etc.  The administrator has some functionality as well, but the whole full integration part is truly focused on the learners (the end-users).

Integration just means it can integrate with MS Teams, in other words it works with MS Teams in some capacity depending on what the learning system decided they wanted to do. It does not MIMIC the learning system, nor can do EVERYTHING within Teams that you can do in the learning system.  

What does this mean for the rest of the learning system industry? 

Viva definitely put the heat to the fire, err, to the vendors to move much more quickly then they were planning to or even considering full integration into MS Teams.  I know of one vendor, who after the announcement, were scheduling meetings, and buzzing around, with plans to move faster to get it done.  

And they have integration as we speak, just not full integration. 

My guess is that by the end of the year, you will see way more systems with full integration with MS Teams and they will send out the marketing messaging to state it.  This will become a very competitive landscape as it relates to MS Teams and Learning/Training Content and capabilities.   This I believe is a good thing. 

I only wish more vendors would move faster on such items as an on/off synch mobile app, and a native app. Yes, there are vendors today, who still do not have a native mobile app.  

If I want to buy Viva should I?

Personally I would hold off.  I mean if you find Topics to rock, and you see it as a must for your organization, then go for it, but this is by no means what I would consider learning/training.  It is a component of it and you can find the same capabilities or more so, in plenty of learning systems today – minus of course, within MS Teams.  

Thus if you are using MS Teams as your core communication thing, then Topics wouldn’t be such a bad thing, I just the price is very high for many organizations.  Did I mention it is $60 per user, per year? 

Insights I found, underwhelming, as noted earlier.  I see no plus from a learning or training standpoint.  Unless “Nanny cam” is a popular product at your home.  

Viva Learning is what you want, and it is not out yet.  And everything I can see and gather at this time, says you will want all the modules, although the well-being part is a stretch (ha, a pun!).  

Can I use Viva for B2B/B2C?

No.  I mean look you can do whatever you want with Viva Learning, but it is not designed for B2B/B2C, customer training/education, partner training for example.  I mean there are people who eat tide pods (DO NOT DO THIS), but I am very confident that is not what it was designed for, nor its intended use, whatsoever. 

How do you see an organization using Viva Learning if they already have another learning system?

I think it all depends on how you use MS Teams.  Viva is wrapped in it, fully engulfed, and I surmise as new modules or things come out in the next year or two, it will become even more fully ingrained.  

Do I believe that someone could replace their LMS, LXP or whatever and use only Viva Learning and the other modules for their learning or training?  Sure.  I am quite confident folks will.  I see it though as more of an extension or add-on if you will to another learning system.  Thus, for learners who only want to stay in Teams they can, and for those who want to go into the other learning system, can.  Just as it exists today with Salesforce, it will for Teams.  

Depending on who is your learning system vendor and their capabilities will play a key role into whether you use it as an extension, or jump full heartedly into Viva.  Until Viva has extensive analytics out of the box (and not via an API connection to say Power BI) or has some other standards that exist for learning/training, it will have limitations.  If you want a talent development system and think Viva is going to be able to achieve that, sorry, I don’t see it.  

I see it as an add-on and not a replacement.  However, and this is nothing against 
Moodle vendors here, but if your organization is using Teams a lot, and have a Moodle LMS or whatever, yeah, you could move over, but it depends on what you are using your Moodle system for. 

The same with your LMS, LXP, learning platform – if it is limited and doesn’t have the right GUI (graphical user interface), UI/UX that you want, and you are using it, not at its full potential then sure. 

If you are using SharePoint on the other hand for your learning, and use MS Teams a lot, then yeah, bolt.  I mean if I was LMS365 for example, I’d be concerned.  Same with Shareknowledge.  (Both are built on SharePoint in the cloud).  

Bottom Line 

Look there are plenty of unknowns here.  There are vendors already on the bandwagon of Viva with their customer base, solely as a layer or extension if you will.  Microsoft is a big time name, and they will land a lot of clients, which can easily create a ripple effect, where other prospects think, “a lot of clients” means “system is great” and therefore, who needs X, when this will do it for me. And maybe it will, maybe it won’t. 

I always believe in a hub, and readers know this quite well. 

To me, Viva is just another part of the hub. 

But as of today it is limited.

And what isn’t known is enough of a concern, 

that saying it is amazing is like telling me

the earth is amazing. 

Some parts are,

Others are not. 

E-Learning 24/7 

Schools have closed because of the CoVID-19 pandemic. It is unclear when schools will reopen completely. And so for several months, teachers and students have been apart but learning together. The theme of the recent activities launched by the UP System Committee on Remote Learning was Apart but Together. In relation to this, I was… Read More »#HealthXPH: Learning together even when we’re apart

A version of this post was originally published on December 3rd, 2020, in Education IT Reporter.

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Worldwide, schools and universities are now, like never before, dealing with a large-scale disruption in education. With restrictions still in place, many schools are still closed or functioning at a reduced capacity or with socially-distanced classes, making it challenging to have a stable schedule. Everyone is affected: students, teachers, other school staff, parents.

This unprecedented situation calls for a flexible hybrid learning approach to minimize further disruption and ensure that high-quality teaching and learning can continue. Hybrid (or blended) learning takes any classroom a step further towards the virtual learning environment while still allowing face-to-face interaction and communication, albeit less than in the regular classroom.

Using all sorts of edtech (educational technologies), teachers can create engaging and interactive online learning experiences for students of all ages and across grade levels, provide personalized support, keep track of and assess each student’s progress, and so much more!

3 Ways in which edtech enables hybrid learning

Theoretically, online education eases the job of teachers and enhances learning for students. Practically, there’s a catch. Or more. First, there are so many edtech tools out there that no teacher can test them all and see which ones are the best for their classroom. Secondly, the available technology is often misunderstood and underused, so results are, sadly, relatively poor. Thirdly, and most importantly, transitioning to the virtual learning environment can be extremely hard for both teachers and students.

All these challenges can and must be overcome, as the use of edtech in the classroom is key in avoiding further disruption in education. A comprehensive solution such as a learning management system can assist everyone in dealing with hybrid learning characteristics in more than one way. Here are a few areas of particular interest:

1. Asynchronous learning

   Using platforms such as a learning management system allows teachers to create synchronous and asynchronous activities, which are essential for creating hybrid learning experiences. For example, this helps teachers plan blended classes, which use a mix of self-paced and instructor-led lessons or modules, to support students in their learning process, whether they’re in class or learning from home.

   Adopting the asynchronous learning mindset can be intimidating at first, but once educators get hold of it, they inevitably realize how useful it is. This is because asynchronous learning gives a significantly higher degree of agency to students; it allows them to dictate the pace of their learning process, which leads to better engagement rates with the learning materials.

   ---

   Read more: Adopting the asynchronous mindset for better online learning

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2. Adaptive learning

   Educators can further personalize learning for each student through adaptive learning by automatically hiding or showing lessons based on their progress and monitor engagement with activity display features. This enables teachers to design dynamic learning paths and guide students toward achieving their learning goals, thus adapting the online instruction to their unique learning needs.

   Online learning platforms with automation features also help teachers work more efficiently to spend more time helping individual students. They can do so through the platform itself, by setting online student-teacher meetings or using the limited time they have in the classroom to focus more on addressing any issue a student might have instead of on teaching new material.

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   Read more: Using adaptive learning to personalize learning experiences

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3. Offline access

   Poor internet connectivity and access to digital devices are some of the most significant barriers to remote learning — and this is a reality even in cities and developed countries, not just in rural locations. Many students may not have their own device to learn from, while even more have a hard time sharing the space at home with siblings and/or working parents.

   Schools and universities should make sure any online platforms they use have an offline mode so that students can continue to access materials regardless of internet connectivity and continue to receive an education as seamlessly as possible. Most learning management systems do offer this option, thus partially solving the problem related to digital access.

   ---

   Read more: 4 Examples of the best digital access initiatives

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Conclusion

These are only three aspects of the rhombicosidodecahedron of edtech, hybrid learning, and the future of education. The online learning environment will probably never replace the traditional classroom, but it can complement it to benefit everyone. Finding and using the right tools is paramount in ensuring the right to education for students today so that they can become the successful citizens of tomorrow.

The best time to plant a tree was yesterday. The second best time is now. Now read that again, but replace “plant a tree” with “invest in and implement edtech in the classroom.” The students of tomorrow will surely appreciate that.

The post 3 Ways in which edtech enables hybrid learning appeared first on NEO BLOG.

CEN and CENELEC are proud to announce the publication of their new Strategy 2030.

If you’re a community manager, you know communities don’t happen by chance. You make them happen.

You use your powerful skills of persuasion, understanding of psychology, and knowledge of technology to build powerful online communities.

Today we’re publishing this video to help you explain what community management is, why having a great community manager is so important, and the skills you need to be a great community manager.

If you’ve had to explain the importance and value of your work as often as we have, this video might be as great a primer for you as it has been for us.

Keep doing the work you’re doing. You’re not alone. Your work matters.

University Alliance has responded on behalf of our members to DFE’s Review of post-16 qualifications at level 3.

Our response can be found here, and summarised as:

• Alliance universities are very supportive of T Levels as a progression route to a range of higher
  education provision, and many are utilising their long-standing partnerships with FE colleges to
  support and promote the rollout of T Levels in their regions.
• However the two groups of qualifications outlined in the consultation will be important features of the
  landscape but will not meet the needs of all students. We are concerned that further stratifying
  qualifications into ‘academic’ and ‘technical’ routes and limiting the flexibility for students to
  take a blended approach will limit choice and create a divide that often does not exist in post18 education and employment.
• To ensure as many students as possible achieve at level 3, we see there being value in retaining a category of general vocational qualifications across a range of subjects and sizes which have some overlap with A Levels and T Levels, and do not see this as being at odds with ambitions to put employers at the heart of technical education, which we support.
• We urge the government to reconsider the pace of these reforms. The current timetable  does not allow for informed decision making based on evidence of T Levels uptake, attainment, progression and widening participation, and the impact on progression and attainment of the new Regulated Qualifications Framework Level 3 qualifications.
• There lack of capacity in some sectors and regions for the required amount of industry experience may prove a limiting factor to growth for T Levels. To help address this, the government should increase capital funding to encourage industry to host students for the placement element of T Levels. This funding is especially important when industry may be struggling to recover from the effects of repeated economic shocks caused by the pandemic, meaning hosting students is not a priority.
• We see value in funding a third category of general vocational qualifications as a permanent feature of the landscape, but irrespective of this, removing alternative qualifications without ensuring sufficient employer capacity is in place for successful delivery of T Levels could have a  detrimental effect on the life choices of young people, artificially limiting and restricting access to career pathways.
• Given the regional variance in availability of technical pathways, there should be an assessment of whether these reforms will limit choices and progression opportunities for students (particularly those from disadvantaged groups) based on where they live.

 

For more information, please contact University Alliance Deputy Head of Policy Ellie Russell on Ellie@unialliance.ac.uk

Registrations for courses on the government’s “skills toolkit” that have been celebrated by ministers could be coming from anywhere in the world, the Department for Education has admitted.

More than £1 million of public money has been spent on developing and advertising the “platform”, which directs visitors to free online content provided by the likes of Amazon, the Open University, Microsoft and LinkedIn.

Ministers across government have hailed the success of the toolkit since it launched in April 2020. Education secretary Gavin Williamson declared that it had had a “transformational” impact on the digital and numeracy skills for England’s out-of-work people during the pandemic.

But little is known about who is accessing the content as most do not require registrations. And, as FE Week previously revealed, significant overcounting has already led to revised estimates of “course start” claims in official statistics which continue to include web hits.

FE Week has now discovered that the DfE is also unable to identify from which countries the registrations are coming. The department said the data is held and reported by the relevant providers who “do not provide country data, so DfE cannot confirm the country related to course registrations”.

A number of providers with courses on the skills toolkit have confirmed that they do not filter for registrations that are England-based only.

Toby Perkins, Labour’s shadow apprenticeships and lifelong learning minister, criticised the DfE for “failing to enact themselves the kind of data collection they would routinely insist on from other providers”.

He added: “The government is very happy to make statistically questionable claims about the skills toolkit, yet it’s clear that it has no idea who is accessing the website and to what extent those people are utilising it.

“No one wants to make this small and potentially valuable initiative unduly bureaucratic, but it is important that they are aware of who is using it, who it is reaching and failing to reach, and that information should be both collected and published.

“We all want to celebrate successful initiatives but, without this data, I don’t think it’s possible to be sure how successful the skills toolkit is in improving the skills and opportunities of British workers and learners.”

When asked if the DfE was concerned that it had no grasp on what countries course registrations were coming from, a spokesperson said: “We are committed to ensuring that the skills toolkit is accessible and of value to people across the country.”

They added that the department was “able to identify England-based website visits in line with GDPR” through the toolkit.

This latest revelation comes as FE Week continues to challenge the DfE to release the names of firms that were given almost £800,000 to develop the platform. The department has kept the names a secret so far, refusing a freedom of information request.

Through the same FOI request the DfE did release a breakdown of the 118,980 course registrations by each provider on the skills toolkit as of 1 November 2020, which has caused further concern at the official figures being reported.

A course provided by Corndel called “organisational financial management: an introduction”, for example, is reported as having had 8,090 starts. However, the provider says that it does not track the usage of the materials and no “registration” data has been provided to the DfE.

The DfE has also come under fire for claiming the courses on the skills toolkit are of “high quality”, considering they receive no quality assurance from the likes of Ofsted or Ofqual and many of the courses simply involve short video tutorials or PDF documents.

Sue Pember, a former director of FE funding in the DfE, previously said: “When the DfE puts out its own advertising for the toolkit, it always talks about good quality. But under whose judgment? It may be, but how do they know?”

She added that the DfE should be “cautious” as “website hits or even signatures on enrolment forms do not equate to learning taking place”.

Latest official data published by the DfE claims that, as of 27 December 2020, there have been an estimated 138,000 course registrations. The department does accept that these are “experimental statistics” and says it is working to collect “more robust estimates of registrations”.

The post Registrations for DfE’s £1m ‘skills toolkit’ could be from all around the globe first appeared on FE Week.

I have been doing a lot of reading on remote learning since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic as my work was affected by it. As the pandemic continued, I was scheduled to deliver lessons online, taking face to face delivery and moving to Live Online. At least, this was the suggestion by the organizations I was working with. So, I decided to educate myself.

What I found was a lot of opinion on the subject. Some pro, some con and then others that fall somewhere in the middle.

While Live Online is fine, and fully asynchronous eLearning is also fine, I think a Blended approach is quite effective with certain programs and courses, especially for Higher Education. I am a big fan of the flipped classroom and have used this previously. I like the interactivity and engagement that it learning allows. Further down this post, I will share some of the readings I have read on how to make online/remote learning better and how to use different resources to engage learners and make it worthwhile. But let us first take a look at the ILT to VILT option. The one that many organizations started with and that still many are continuing with as we continue in the pandemic.

Live Online Option

Probably the best reading I discovered, and it came later in my research, was from the Captivate eLearning Community itself. Specifically an Asha Pandey’s post titled “15 Tips and Strategies to Engage Remote Learners Through High-impact Virtual Training”. Around the same time, I attended a webinar (How To Leverage Microlearning To Build Employee Learning Habits And Drive Continuous Learning) where the presenter was Ms. Pandey. I greatly enjoyed her session, so when I saw this post, I read it right away.

In it she provides information on the challenges associated with the pandemic and trying to learn remotely, with one of her biggest points being the quick reaction to moving to remote delivery and not being able to complete a proper analysis of needs, technology and how best to engage learners, if I may paraphrase her writing. The additional challenge I see with this point is that some organizations have not changed. They have not identified that the long, face on camera sessions are not ideal for online learning. And this is unfortunate for all parties. It could be so much better.

Trying to make it better is what the remainder of her article discusses, and I’m going to focus on the first section of her tips here, dealing with Remote Delivery. 

The first 7 tips she has are:

 – Create manageable milestones

 – Highlight the value of the Virtual Training

 – Learner Interaction

 – Reward Learners

 – Encourage Social Learning

 – Continue the connect with remote learners

 – Take feedback for continuous improvement 

I am not going to rehash what has already been written, but there are a couple points that I believe are very important. I believe Learner Interaction is very important in any setting – ILT, VILT, eLearning. Getting learners into the course, to work with it, learn, and get everything they can out of it. But as is noted, interaction is even more important in remote delivery. Adding more interactive content, group work, quizzes, for example, to encourage participation, interaction, to bring learners into the course/module being delivered. Adobe Captivate is a great resource that can help create this type of interactive content. The content I have seen developed by many on this community, as well as in my experience, has the ability to educated and engage at the same time. It doesn’t have to be the main tool to deliver curriculum, but in the VILT environment, I think it could be a nice addition for students and instructors.

Secondly, Encourage Social Learning. Learners learn from each other, and proving a place to do that is required. We should carve out time in the course to allow learners the space to learn with each other. Providing scheduled time for students/learners to interact can be extremely beneficial to the overall success of our learners. The LMS of the organization is typically a great place to encourage this, especially in the Remote Learning environment. Set up discussion boards, let students interact and learn from each other. Use break out rooms in whatever remote delivery software is being used. Give your students time to interact during class time, or encourage them to interact after class.

I highly encourage you to read the full article referenced here, I think it is a great read.

Finding “The Coach”

During my time researching this subject, I decided to attend some sessions at the virtual Adobe eLearning World Conference in June. One of the sessions I attended was delivered by Connie Malamed – “The eLearning Coach” – and based on that session (Instructional Design Workshop: Design Thinking for Learning Design) I decided to check out her site. There is a wealth of information here for Instructional Designers, eLearning developers and anyone interested in education. I enjoy her style of writing and I agree with a lot of what she has to say. You can check out her site here. 

Best Practices for Blended Learning 

I really enjoyed reading “The Coach’s” recommendations and thoughts on the 10 Best Practices for Designing Blended Learning. There is a lot of great information to review on developing Blended Learning and she outlines the many benefits and options available. Again, I am not going to rehash what has been written, but comment on a couple of the Best Practices that I agree with. 

I will start wth the first one: Design to meet learning outcomes, not to use specific technologies. My opinion on this is that we should start with what you are trying to achieve and what you expect learners to take from a course. This is the same way courses are developed when technology does not factor in, such as face to face. In most of these situations, the technology doesn’t matter. In fact, you might not even need it. It’s face to face. I have done plenty of training sessions with printed books and pens. So, just because you have eLearning Authoring software in your tool box, it doesn’t mean you have to use it. Even though it can do some really cool stuff.

Next, point 5: Design from scratch rather than redesign an existing course or curriculum. I am a firm believer that it is much harder to revamp, revise, or adjust a course than it is to develop a new one. And sometimes what is already there just doesn’t work for what you are trying to do now. When faced with reworking a course, I think the best thing you can do is take it down the studs and build up from there. 

Suggestions to Engage

There are some things we can do to help take face to face learning and move to remote delivery without a lot of heavy lifting. We don’t need to think completely out of the box to engage learners with remote delivery. One of the things I would suggest, I have already discussed, providing time in the design for Social Learning. But to go along with this one, I am going to reference a blog post I recently read from HRDQ, a company whose resources I have used in the past. You can read their post here. In this article they discuss Icebreakers, Case Studies and Role Play as engagement tools. 

Icebreakers are a staple in training and are also popular in higher ed. So why would we want to stop using an icebreaker when we move to remote learning? It is probably more important to include them in remote delivery? Introductions, conversations, polls, all great suggestions identified in the article. I am big fan of games as icebreakers, but the game has to relate to the material. So create a game based on the content you are teaching for the day. Bring the learner in with something fun. My gift to you, should you choose to take it.

Secondly, Case Studies are great in education. I love using them, for activities and evaluations. It is a versatile tool that translates well to remote learning. Break up the class into smaller groups with breakout rooms, provide an interesting topic/article, think up some insightful questions, and let them go off for part 1 of a social learning session. Then bring the group back to discuss and debate to solidify material. Role Play is different and my view is they have to be used with the right content. Sales training, interpersonal communication, dealing with challenging personalities, etc. The key in remote learning is to find the right topic, place participants in breakout rooms and then bring them back to act it out for the group. These can take longer, but can provide valuable feedback while getting practice with the techniques presented in the course.

The Wish List

What would I like to see? I would like to see students provided with valuable, engaging content to learn the theory, to think about application and then enter the Remote Classroom ready to discuss, apply, and interact rather than trying to absorb.

This is where tools like Captivate can help Remote Learning. I believe using e-learning tools to create engaging content delivery, in the right places, would be extremely valuable. It would be great to see more elearning/microlearning modules created to help students learn on their own and then come into the “classroom” and apply what they have learned using the time to run experiments, have group interactions and break outs, work on projects and activities, make it more “real-world” than classroom. Enhancing the learning is a great way to use Captivate eLearning modules.

In Summary

Flip it. Mix it up. Make it different. Use effective tools to pass information and spend the face to face time to interact and discuss and apply. That is what I would like to see.

Thanks for reading.

The post Engaging Learners in Remote Delivery appeared first on eLearning.

The Work Programme 2021 gives an overview of the main standardization developments and strategic priority areas CEN and CENELEC are ready to implement in 2021 across 14 business sectors.

Wide Open School (WOS) is a platform developed by the leading non-profit for kids and families Common Sense media. WOS provides access to a wide range of resources designed specifically to help...

....read more

Summary of the review

At the Institute, we are reviewing our degree apprenticeships policy.

The purpose of the review is to:

1. recognise and respond to labour-market demand by increasing the number and range of occupations that can be supported by a degree apprenticeship​
2. create a specific brand of degree apprenticeship (distinctive from other academic or vocational degree provision) that has clear quality characteristics that government, employers and HE in partnership can define, secure and protect​
3. make sure these apprenticeships are delivering the best they can for both employers and apprentices

We aim to carry out a public consultation in spring 2021. This is to gain further views from all stakeholders to help us shape the final guidance.

 

Background

A degree apprenticeship standard includes a mandated bachelor’s or master’s degree.

They were introduced in 2015 and since then higher education institutions and employers have worked together develop degree apprenticeships in a range of occupations. At this time, there was no requirement on employers to show any labour market requirement in support of a degree and little guidance on what a good degree apprenticeship might look like.

Currently, we have:

• 134 apprenticeship at level 6 and 7
• 93 are degree apprenticeships (level 6, 70; level 7, 23)
• 52 are ‘integrated degree apprenticeships’ (the assessment of the degree and the apprenticeship are aligned)

The same policy applies to degree apprenticeships as other apprenticeships. This includes the criteria for mandating qualifications. This can limit the development of degree apprenticeships.

Last year, we set up a working group to develop degree apprenticeship policy proposals. We have consulted with employers, higher education bodies and institutions, Ofsted and the Office for Students.

We met with Gillian Keegan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Apprenticeships and Skills – back in December who agreed to our proposals.

We are currently working with a reference group of employers, higher education bodies and institutions, Ofsted and the Office for Students to develop these further. We intend to carry out a public consultation to gain further views from all stakeholders to help us shape the final guidance in spring 2021.

 

How does this affect trailblazer work?

If you are currently developing or revising a level 6 or 7 apprenticeship, your relationship manager will keep you up to date with policy intention on degree apprenticeships.

You can continue to develop your apprenticeship in line with the current policy or wait until the final guidance is introduced.

Once the guidance is ready to be published, we will provide you with a notice period before it is applied. We do not expect any affected apprenticeships to be revised immediately.

We will support trailblazer groups to update degree apprenticeships that are already approved for delivery, in line with the final guidance. We will phase this in gradually when the apprenticeships are reviewed as part of our business-as-usual processes.

If you have any questions, please contact Jill.Nicholls@education.gov.uk

There’s no doubt that the world looks far different today than it did just a year ago. For so many of us, the outbreak of COVID-19 has dramatically changed the way we live our daily lives. Now, more...

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Organisations around the globe reacted and adapted at a lightning pace when the pandemic hit, and it demonstrated in a matter of days that modern digital workplaces really do work. Collaboration has taken off, internal communication has flourished, and digital workplace tools have become a truly strategic consideration.

What will the ‘new normal’ look like in 2021 for our digital workplaces?

Join us for a lively webinar, hosted by James Robertson, and Staffbase’s resident intranet specialist Frank Wolf, as we discuss all things intranet! We’ll take a deep dive into why putting digital employee experience at the heart of your internal communications strategies is important, and the five key trends to look for this year.

The webinar will be on February 17, at 3pm AEDT, and it will explore five trends for 2021:

1. The importance of employee experience and why it’s at the heart of change
2. How to support your entire workforce, with a particular spotlight on frontline workers
3. COVID heightened the importance of digital communications channels. How will this continue in 2021?
4. Why we should be shifting our focus and adapting to more modern comms channels
5. How Intranets can deliver multi-channel experiences to meaningfully support all employees

Register now!

The post Webinar: 5 intranet trends for 2021 appeared first on Step Two.

I was curious about the problem of engaging with students’ writing during remote learning. How do you know how students are getting on in real time? How do you give feedback in a manageable way? The response I got from this tweet was magnificent – open up the thread to see all the replies.

Let's share some solutions..
What's a good time-efficient tech-easy way to see students' writing (short answers or more extended) and give some dynamic feedback in remote learning world?

— Tom Sherrington (@teacherhead) January 8, 2021

I have tried to compile some of the hundreds of responses into some kind of order. You can access the organised list here with all the comments as they appeared on twitter with links to the platforms and some the tweets with related videos and blog posts. This contains the detailed responses and links.

Remote learning ideas list.

The table here summarises the platforms and apps mentioned so far – easy to find their homepages and youtube explainers via a simple search.

Nearpod	Teams Class notebook	Padlet	Socrative.com
Google Doc	Teams /Assignments	Spiral Education	@Office365MS Lens
Google sheet	Teams Forms	Photo work email/upload	office365
Google slides	OneNote	Using the chat function	@mentimeter
Google forms	OneNote insert audio	whiteboard.fi	Email
Google Jamboard	Mote for Chrome	desmos.com/	Peardeck
Google Classroom	Pobble	classkick.com	seesaw.me
SmartTech	CanvasLMS	goformative.com

There appear to be some main categories of solutions. I’ve described mainly in a generic fashion here – hopefully you can match to the platforms listed.

Key idea	Description
Live writing in individual shared documents or digital notebooks	Each student has a document they write in online that the teacher can also see and comment on. They respond to tasks in the document. Document can be blank or setup with images, links and structured guidance. Eg googledocs, onenote – standalone or built into googleclassroom/ Teams.
Live writing in group documents with individual pages or areas.	Similar to the above but each student is essentially writing into the same document for the whole class ie a section in a document with their name on it – everyone can see other students’ writing or they can work collaboratively. Teacher can see each student’s contributions in their sections.
Using slides as a writing space	As above but using googleslides for writing – each slide pre-prepared with textboxes and students write on their own page. Easy to see each students’ writing and scan between them during the lesson. Easy to link to tasks, resources, create templates.
Using forms for short answers	Using forms in google or Teams to set multiple questions. Students respond to questions individually and teacher exports into spreadsheet to see answers from each student. Helpful tips eg make Qu1 the student name for easy identification. Answers can be long or short – good for seeing lots of answers side by side to the same questions.
Using shared spreadsheets	As before but going straight into the spreadsheet – student write short answers into their allocated column. (harder to mask students answers from each other)
Digital whiteboards	Lots of apps/platforms offer this popular feature. Students write on their digital board and then share their responses as requested. Teacher sees them on screen all at once – answers can be long or short; feedback given verbally or written, to individuals or class depending on the platform eg whiteboard.fi Students and teachers can also write over pdfs of documents.
Digital sketch pads	Similar to whiteboards but students have their own space on a bulletin board that is easy for teacher to see all at once – or scrolling through. See writing progress in real time and add comments for whole group or individuals as they work.
Voice/audio notes	Using voice recording add-ons to record verbal feedback – much quicker to record than to write same amount. Students can playback live or later if done asynchronously.
Photographs of work	The basic idea of taking pictures of handwritten work or other non electronic work and then uploading to share with teacher. Various dedicated apps and use of phones as scanners. Teachers can annotate and return or use for verbal feedback.
Using platform chat function	Making use of chat function in googlemeets, Teams, zoom – to see students’ answers to questions. Good for spontaneous dynamic responses in addition to verbal responses in live sessions. Good tip to use a whiteboard-style count-down so students submit answers simultaneously – so they can’t just copy answers given.
Standard email	Simply sending work back and forth via email – straightforward for longer pieces such as essays or chunks of work completed offline – not for live lessons.
Question response add-ons	Platforms that allow questions to be set in dynamic way during live lessons or planned in advance. eg multiple choice or written answers -good for diagnostic questions. Various apps track each student’s response – as well as creating poll graphs, word cloud responses etc.
Verbal feedback in live session	The obvious thing of selecting only certain students or small groups to be on camera at any point to discuss work directly – work perhaps shared via emailed photographs or live document sharing.

Video Guide: Using Googleforms of equivalent for dynamic or planned question and answer sessions.

Video Guide: Using Google slides or equivalent as a dynamic writing space for easy supervision and feedback

As schools and colleges return to full-on remote learning, I’ve been asked multiple times to provide suggestions to support teachers in this endeavour and to provide CPD inputs for teachers in various contexts. Of course I don’t have students of my own but I have delivered a lot of online training and gleaned a lot from engaging with people sharing ideas so, for what it is worth, here are my thoughts about what is essential and how to blend live delivery with offline learning.

First of all, here is a link to the previous posts focused on tech solutions for checking students’ writing – this contains links to numerous platforms and suggestions from teachers using them.

As ever much of this lies in the detail of the context you’re in: the age of students, the subject content, student access to technology, their capacity for independent work, the functionality of the core platform. However, as far as a general set of guidance goes, I think there are six areas to think about in every context.

The table below outlines the key ideas for each section of the flow diagram. The formatting works best on a full screen, not a phone. View or download this pdf for a different format.:

Key Area	Considerations
Plan the Curriculum What am I teaching? Big picture: weeks Small steps: lessons	Make sure that you and students know what is expected over the span of a few weeks: What am I supposed to know? Give them an overview of the key knowledge content for the unit as a whole. What am I supposed to have done? Give an idea of the range of tasks that should be completed by a certain date a few weeks in future – or keep a rolling list that they can use to check off against. This will support teacher and student to check for completion, gaps, next steps and to gauge the intensity needed in any lessons or tasks.
Plan the Inputs. Live presentation Recorded presentation External source	Explaining new content will be a major factor and is likely to best done by combining live and recorded video with written guidance, depending on your context and the level of live engagement you can secure. Live presentation via zoom or equivalent: great if most students will access – allows for integrated CFEU*, nicely dynamic. Pre-recorded presentation: allows flexible deployment and access for students; requires CFEU to be planned more deliberately External sources via e.g. via Oak National, BBC Bitesize etc : excellent in terms of workload, quality, variety. Need to check content alignment with curriculum and plan CFEU alongside. Paper-based. Relies on students’ capacity to read and follow guidance without support – but offers lots of flexibility. CFEU becomes more complex, the more material is provided at once. If you get a good blend, you do not need to do all your lessons live. However, it’s not going to be as good for students if you hardly ever make direct contact with them. The weakest students will drift. Find the right balance.
*Check for Engagement and Understanding (CFEU) Live session Questioning Chat questions Quizzing	This is the key to the success of the whole enterprise. It’s vital to check that all students are engaging: e.g. attending live sessions if/when this is essential; engaging with the system as a whole – following instructions, accessing messages, accessing resources, able to ask questions Ideas: At key points, use a simple form (e.g. googleform) with questions every student must answer to show they are present, have accessed materials, received the message. Use shared documents where students simply write their name to show they are present or reached the end of a set of instructions. It’s vital to check for understanding – just as in a normal classroom – so that students know what to do in response to the instructional/video inputs. Don’t just assume. If live, sample students by cold calling (choosing who responds) to make sure students understand instructions, followed the content of any presentation, made sense of key concepts, ideas, procedures, vocabulary. Use cold calling with students in live sessions – sample the class by name and ask them to respond . Go even further than you would in normal lessons: Jenny, tell me what I’ve asked you do before next lesson; Mo, what was your answer to the question at the end of that video segment. They may be answering verbally or via the chat. Use chat function or live documents, digital whiteboards and notepads to solicit responses so that students show their understanding – not just saying ‘yes I understand’ and definitely not assuming that silence/no response means they are ok. Remember: you cannot tell if students have understood unless they tell you what they have understood. A screen full of silent faces or an empty chat stream, tells you nothing: ask them. If you do not do many live sessions – relying mainly on pre-recorded inputs and paper based resources – set up at least some live stock-taking sessions on camera or via shared documents at key points in a series of lessons to run these checking processes. Use questions on forms so all students can demonstrate their understanding prior to devoting time to extended tasks. Follow up on students who are missing/ not responding. The more you embed the expectation and routine that you will check that work is being done, that videos are watched, that everyone should listen and respond in live sessions, the more that inclusive accountability reinforces students’ habits: ie they know you will notice; they can’t just opt out unseen.
Plan Student Tasks Writing activities. Questions Reading, research Short-cycle: Live? Long-cycle:  Independent/offline	Ideally, this will form the bulk of students’ time. After listening to video inputs or reading the set material, they will have tasks to complete. The length of tasks will determine how much feedback you can give dynamically. There are obviously hundreds of options here but a varied diet for students will help keep them motivated and engaged: Short response tasks: questions and answers to be completed during a lesson or using online question platforms (e.g. in maths) Short written tasks: to be completed during a lesson – perhaps using shared documents to facilitate dynamic teacher feedback as in the post featured above. Longer question sets: to be completed offline – either self-checked, returned to teacher or discussed in next live lesson. Give them plenty to do! Shed loads of practice. Longer written assignments: structured assignments perhaps via booklets/workbooks that may take several hours – for offline completion and submission for feedback. This can still involve using shared documents so teachers can track progress as students work independently. If student work is largely paper based/hand-written – then expectations about submission via photo upload or in-person hand-in much later in the term must be clear. Open-ended projects could run in parallel to the online lesson flow. (Universal Project Guide KS2/3)
Assess and Evaluate Review student questions Review student writing Check for problems and omissions	There is a balance to strike along various dimensions: – Checking all the work versus checking a sample – Teacher checking versus students checking their own – Checking live during the task completion or checking later after a completion date. The more live and dynamic you can make it, the less you get a build-up of work students create without being evaluated. The shorter the pieces of writing, the easier it is to generate a loop of feedback and redrafting for all students. If you are monitoring on the go via shared documents, or focusing on self-assessment tools, you can minimise the reliance on handing in work for teacher assessment. It could even be all done in this way, on-the-go. It’s important to validate student work completion without falling into the trap of promising to check everything they do – which isn’t sensible or sustainable. At the same time, if they feel their work is never checked, it is demotivating and quality and engagement will drop. Identify key tasks or question sets that you will focus on for checking: This could be the weekly knowledge check; the extended writing task; specified workbook pages.
Provide Feedback Whole-class feedback Comments: live/recorded; written Selected individuals	As far as possible, keep feedback to the things that are easiest to give to everyone: Whole class feedback in live lessons or via feedback notes issued to all students Self-checking quizzes – so students see the correct answers and their errors without teacher marking Comments generated during the lessons or via shared documents where the teacher can manage their workload, leaving written or voice-note comments in the time they have available. Try to blend setting some students off to work independently while focusing on small groups or individuals to give feedback. This can be done live: eg call six students to be cameras-on in a live session to discuss their work while others are set an offline task as the live session continues. Or, it could be in lesson slots devoted to individual feedback – eg by appointment on zoom – whilst other students are working independently offline. Even if it is minimal, there must be some feedback. Students can’t be asked to go off and do a ton of questions or assignment work – if that is never going to be checked in any way. Use the information from assessment and feedback sessions to stock-take on the long-term curriculum coverage as weeks go by, to adjust the content in terms of pace and coverage for the lessons that week.

I recorded a short video for the recent Chiltern TSA CPD event, talking through the same diagram

Happy new year and welcome to 2021. It’s going to be an exciting year for Microsoft Teams, but before we get any further, let’s have a look at all the great capabilities that launched in December.

 

What’s New: Meetings
Virtual Breakout Rooms
Breakout rooms allows meeting organizers to divide the meeting into smaller groups to facilitate discussions and brainstorming sessions. A breakout room can be created in a Teams meeting or a Teams channel meeting, allowing greater flexibility on how you want to meet. Organizers can easily jump in between breakout rooms, deliver announcements to all breakout rooms at once, and bring everyone back to the main meeting at any time. Any files from the breakout rooms can be shared in the main meeting and is available afterwards in the meeting chat. Learn more.

 

End-of-meeting notifications
Microsoft Teams notifies the participants in a meeting when there are five minutes remaining in the scheduled meeting time. The notification appears on screen for 10 seconds and disappears without any user action. This helps you stay on track and wrap up as necessary without unintentionally running late to your next schedule. Notification is triggered for all scheduled private and channel meetings and does not cause the meeting to end automatically.

 

Teams meeting pre-join experience
We have now improved the pre-join meeting experience for Teams meetings including easier discovery of audio, video, and device configurations before joining a meeting. Previously, you had to go to settings to change meeting devices, but now these can be easily adjusted prior to the meeting in the pre-join experience.

 

New languages supported for real-time translation in live events
Translate Japanese, Korean, French, French-Canadian, Spanish, Spanish-Mexican, Traditional Chinese, Swedish, Dutch, Italian, Hindi-Indian, Portuguese-Brazilian, and Russian into up to 50 different languages. Learn more.

Live events limit increases are extended until June 30, 2021
To continue help support our customers, through June 30, 2021, we extended limit increases for live events, including:

• Event support for up to 20,000 attendees
• 50 events can be hosted simultaneously across a tenant
• Event duration of 16 hours per broadcast

Additionally, events for as many as 100,000 attendees can be planned through the live events assistance program. Learn more.

 

What’s New: Calling
Multiple Number Dialing
You can now see a split button in the chat header for audio/video calling. This displays multiple numbers for a single contact making it easier to view available numbers to initiate a call.

 

Live Captions for 1:1 Calls
Whether you’re in a noisy environment or just missed what was said, live captions can make it easier to follow along in calls. Admins can disable this capability if desired, and users have control to turn these off. For the most accurate captions possible, it is recommended to speak clearly into the microphone and avoid having multiple people speaking at the same time.

 

What’s New: Devices
New features rolling out to Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows
The latest app for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows, version 4.7.15.0 is now available in the Teams Admin Center. The latest update includes the following new capabilities:

• Cortana Voice Assistance (Preview): Launching in Preview, in-room meeting attendees can now use voice assistance powered by Cortana to join and end their meetings without touch. Using natural language, people can simply state “Cortana, join/end my meeting” for a seamless hands-free experience.
• Control Spotlight from console: People in the meeting room can now control the Teams meeting Spotlight feature from the Teams Rooms console control. Once enabled, the individual identified as the spotlight will be the main video shown to all participants in the Teams meeting.
• Share HDMI audio: A highly requested feature, users connecting to a Teams Room via HDMI can now share their PC audio into the Teams meeting.

 

Enhanced meeting experiences on Teams phones
Teams phones now support a new video layout including 3x3 gallery view, large gallery view for more participants and Together mode. Using 3x3, users can see the video feeds of up to 9 meetings participants at a time. For even larger meetings, enable large gallery view to show up to 49 participants. Teams phones now also supports Together mode, the meeting experience where participants are transported to a virtual shared space. No matter which style of meeting you select you can always enable background blur to reduce distractions and obscure any imagery found in a video setting.

 

Proximity Join for Teams conference phones
Proximity based meeting join for an available Microsoft Teams conference phone is supported from this update. The Microsoft Teams client on your PC and mobile detect proximity of the conference phone via the BLE beacon transmitted by the phone and allow you to add the phone easily to the meeting from your pre-join screen on your desktop or mobile client. When a user adds the conference phone to the meeting, the phone would auto accept the incoming meeting request. Learn more.

 

New unified communication workstation and phone form factors from Yealink and Audiocodes
Yealink is excited to introduce a new set of peripherals, the WH66 and WH67, an integrated unified communication workstation. The all-in-one format has a built-in speakerphone, wireless mobile phone charger, multi-touch screen and USB hub. Calling is now even more convenient with a dedicated Teams button. All these features reduce the number of tools and wires on a desktop, simplifying a workspace and boosting productivity.

 

The newly certified Yealink MP58 desk phone provides a high-quality collaboration experience for executives and professionals alike. With HD Audio features, a 7-inch adjustable touch screen and a dedicated Teams button, this phone was built with Teams calling and meetings in mind. Moreover, the MP58 can support the innovative Bluetooth wireless handset, adding extra mobility and flexibility to the users by allowing them to leave the desk while on the call.

 

Another newly certified device is the Audiocodes C470, a Teams native high end desk phone. The C470HD is equipped with a large, single surface, full touch interface, incorporating an exceptionally sharp 5.5” color touch screen, with optional support for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Check out these and more devices at http://aka.ms/Teamsdevices!

 

What’s New: Chat & Collaboration
Improved Search relevance
Now when searching for messages in Microsoft Teams, the top 3 messages are generated and ordered by a newly developed relevance model – previously messages were ordered chronologically with the most recent messages at the top of the search results.

Teams learns the relevant characteristics of a message that matters most to you based on a vast array of active and passive signals, for example, who you interact with most frequently or on which teams and channels you are most active on.

Access files offline on iOS
The Teams mobile app for iOS now allows you to access files even when you are offline or in bad network conditions. Simply select the files you need access to, and Teams will keep a downloaded version to use in your mobile app. You can find all your files that are available offline in the files section of the app.

Improvements to video playback experience
Now included in Teams is a faster-loading experience for embedded videos. You will now experience up to 25% reduction in the time it takes a Stream embedded video to load, and up to a 90% reduction in the time it takes for the video to start playing. This means a much faster Stream video playback experience within Teams. Learn more.

Improvements to Yammer communities and conversations in Teams
You can now search for Yammer conversations while in the Communities app within Microsoft Teams as well as add a tab with new Yammer styling in your Teams channels. Learn more.

 

Updated ‘Add a Team to a site’ wizard in SharePoint
We want to make it easier to use the connected value of Teams and SharePoint. People can use SharePoint team site home pages with dynamic web parts as mini-dashboards for group content: pages, news, links, documents, group activity and more - and it's configurable. Choose the SharePoint content that you want to add as tabs in Teams when you first connect them via the "Add a Team" flow from your site. Learn more.

 

Add document libraries, pages or news to a channel in Teams via the updated SharePoint tab
Team members can now use the SharePoint tab experience to pin any page, news, list or document library as a separate tab in their Teams channel. Just go to the "+" button from any channel in Teams, select SharePoint and start pinning resources that your team needs to collaborate better. Learn more.

 

Teams and OneDrive destinations in SharePoint admin center Migration Manager
SharePoint Migration Manager now lets you select a Teams channel or a OneDrive username when setting your content migration destination. Learn more.

 

What’s New: Power Platform and custom development
Power App in Teams – Broad distribution apps
The tight Power Apps and Teams integration empowers you to build custom apps for whatever business challenge you are facing, especially with the recently released Power Apps Teams app. With the Power Apps Teams app you can build custom low code apps to use in Teams – and now you can deploy those apps to your entire tenant. You can still deploy apps to a select team, but this added functionality lets you distribute apps backed with Dataverse for Teams to your entire organization.

 

App spotlight

Many teams today use Jira for project and issues management and Microsoft Teams for collaboration, but not all users may use both – which may lead to some breaks in the communication flow. That’s where Yasoon comes in to bridge the gap and maintain a clear line of communication across both Jira and Teams. With Yasoon’s Smart Connect for Jira app, users can have cross-tool conversations seamlessly – even with members who can’t access Jira – so now everyone can stay engaged and understand the context of every issue being worked through. Learn more.

 

 

What’s New: Management
Restricting Windows and Mac managed device sign-in to specific tenants
You can now restrict Teams sign-in for Windows and Mac managed devices to help ensure that employees cannot sign-in to another organization's tenant using the other tenant's credentials from the device they are authorized to use for work. This policy can also be used to configure access to personal accounts.

Manage Teams displays in Team Admin Center
We are adding the Teams Display as one more device category that can now be managed within Teams Admin Center. Learn more.

 

What’s New: Security, compliance & privacy
Only Invited Users can join directly with new Lobby Setting
A new lobby setting is coming to Teams meeting. We are adding "People I invite" as an option to the "Who can bypass lobby?" setting. Once enabled, only the participants invited by the organizer in the meeting invite can join the meeting directly. Everyone else is sent to the lobby.

Customer Key for Teams available for public preview
Customer Key support for Microsoft Teams is now available for public preview! Customer Key is an added layer of encryption and is already available in Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive. Learn more.

 

What’s New: Teams for Education
Students and educators get a notification when a new Class Notebook page is distributed
We are making a new update that allows any Educator using Page Distribution in the OneNote client to ensure that all students get a notification in Teams after a page is distributed! This notification works for educators using the Class Notebook Toolbar in OneNote Windows 10, iPad, Web and Mac.

Coming soon – Teams for Education policy wizard

In the next few days, the new Education policy wizard will be available. Using this wizard admins can easily and quickly apply global policy defaults for students and apply a custom policy set to the group of educators and staff tailored to their needs. Learn more.

 

What’s New: Healthcare
EHR connector for virtual visits in healthcare
The Microsoft Teams EHR connector let's patients schedule and join the virtual visit from within their electronic health record (EHR) system’s patient portal. Providers can schedule and launch the visits from within the EHR provider portal. Integration with Epic is currently supported by the Microsoft Teams EHR connector, with other EHR systems coming soon. Learn more.

 

What’s New: Firstline Workers
Customizable Praise badges
Now, organizations can create customized Praise badges to express their culture and values when recognizing successes and fostering comradery. Praise can help improve workplace culture and job satisfaction, from corporate headquarters to Firstline Workers. Learn more.

 

 

What’s New: Government
Virtual Breakout Rooms
Breakout rooms allows meeting organizers to divide the meeting into smaller groups to facilitate discussions and brainstorming sessions. A breakout room can be created in a Teams meeting or a Teams channel meeting, allowing greater flexibility on how you want to meet. Organizers can easily jump in between breakout rooms, deliver announcements to all breakout rooms at once, and bring everyone back to the main meeting at any time. Any files from the breakout rooms can be shared in the main meeting and are available afterwards in the meeting chat. Available in GCC in December. Learn more.

Teams meeting pre-join experience
We have now improved the pre-join meeting experience for Teams meetings including easier discovery of audio, video, and device configurations before joining a meeting. Previously, you had to go to settings to change meeting devices, but now these can be easily adjusted prior to the meeting in the pre-join experience. Available in GCC in December.

PowerPoint file sharing
PowerPoint file sharing in Teams allows you to share a PowerPoint file within a Teams Meeting without having to use Desktop or Window sharing. Participants can view the presentation at their own pace, navigate through slides on their own and sync back to the presenter at any time. This gives them time to focus on or revisit relevant slides before resuming back to the current presentation. Available in GCC and GCC-High. Learn more.

Multiple number dialing
You can now see a split button in the chat header for audio/video calling. This displays multiple numbers for a single contact making it easier to view available numbers to initiate a call. Available in GCC in December. 

 

Inline message translation in DoD
With a simple click, people who speak different languages can fluidly communicate with one another by translating posts in channels and chat. Inline message translation helps ensure that every worker in the team has a voice and facilitate global collaboration. Learn more.

Set presence status duration in GCC
Let others know when you are available in Teams by managing your presence status. Users can now change their presence status for a specific period. Learn more.

New offline presence status in GCC
Let others know when you are not available in Microsoft Teams. You can now change your presence to “Offline”. This allows you to have full access to Teams while signaling to colleagues that you are unavailable. Learn more.

Linux Client available in GCC-High
The Microsoft Teams Linux client is now available in GCC-High.

Data loss prevention for Microsoft Teams
Data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities in Microsoft 365 government clouds is now extended to include Microsoft Teams chat and channel messages, including private channel messages. If your organization has DLP, you can now define policies that prevent people from sharing sensitive information in a Microsoft Teams channel or chat session.

GCC support for devices management in Teams Admin Center
Device management support in Teams Admin Center is now available in the GCC cloud environment. Admins can now control the entire lifecycle of their Teams devices, which include an increasing variety of supported device types - IP Phones, Collaboration bars, Teams displays, and Teams Meeting Room devices, all from one place.

It seems that everyone’s looking forward to the new year and the promise that it holds. And who should blame us? It’s 2020, after all, am I right?

For my part, I also think that we should leave other things behind in 2020: learning myths! You know:

• We use only 10% of our brains.
• We remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see.
• We can learn while we’re asleep if the room is entirely dark.

OK, the last one I just made up, but no, you can’t learn while being asleep, darkness or not. I can’t help but admit that I’m a little disappointed :/.

Myths have a way to infiltrate our collective knowledge because they appeal to our intuition, become very popular, get overhyped by being repeated over and over. Ultimately, they get passed down from generation to generation.

The most apparent flaw in myths is that they lack an evidence-based approach. In order words, they originated somewhere, usually in books or studies where rigorous research methods were not applied or simply, that’s where the science was back then.

Once we know better, we can do better.

7 Learning myths to leave behind in 2020

Shedding light on some popular education myths guides us towards much better, evidence-based practices.

Without further ado, let’s explore some popular educational myths that we’d rather forget about in 2021:

1. Teachers should teach according to learning styles

   Attempts to validate the “learning styles” theory have failed or have had weak results. The myth’s intent is a good one: let’s see what our students prefer so we can teach them better. However, classifying learners into narrow groups completely misses the mark as there’s zero scientific evidence that adapting instruction to “learning styles” actually does anything to enhance it.

   First of all, how do you know who belongs to which category? Most get pigeonholed based on self-reporting, which is a very unreliable method of determining learning styles. Even so, if students lean towards a particular style, it doesn’t mean that it’s the most productive way for them to learn. Speaking of unproductive, it’s nearly impossible to develop effective teaching methods to cover all learning styles in their multitude of classifications: Kolb’s Model, Learning Styles Analysis (LSA), the VARK model, etc.

2. Maslow’s pyramid tells us how to motivate students

   “Maslow before Bloom” is a noble idea, so it’s easy to see why Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is still widely accepted in the educational community as being inherently valid. Just take care of their needs first, and then teach them, right?

   The flaw in this whole approach is that subsequent scientific attempts to validate the theory have failed despite its popularity. Not only that, but Maslow himself never envisioned his theory as a pyramid. We also approach it as a “none or all” game in which one “lower need” should be completely satisfied before moving on to a higher-order one — which would mean that everyone should be completely content before setting foot in the classroom. This also puts an impossible amount of pressure on you as an educator to figure out what students need, when in reality, building a good student-teacher relationship is more likely to motivate them to learn.

   ---

   Read more: The truth about “Maslow before Bloom”

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3. Students’ attention spans are shrinking

   The myth that peoples’ attention spans nowadays are comparable to that of a goldfish has spread like wildfire thanks to the media hype. The claim was based on a dubious source from the start, but it appealed to many people who believed that it must be related to smartphone use. The truth is that the research on the link between smartphones and shrinking attention spans is riddled with inconclusive and contradictory evidence.

   We don’t have enough longitudinal studies so far to refer to causation, and most of them base their conclusions on correlational data. Attention span varies from task to task even for a single individual, so even the 10-20 second average attention span estimate doesn’t hold water.

   However, phones can be distractors, which leads to decreased focus and rapid switching between tasks (multitasking). A safer way to counteract these negative effects is to open a conversation around digital wellness and limit screen time whenever needed.

   ---

   Read more: Teaching students how to manage digital distractions

   ---

4. Students learn better under pressure

   “Under pressure” is a great song, but not my favorite feeling. Now, you might say that even if I don’t like it, it might help me concentrate better, with all that adrenaline going through my body.

   And you’re on to something, as some studies show that stress can help memory consolidation. If students become stressed after or around the event of learning, it can help retain information better.

   However, if they feel stressed during learning, recall and recognition performance go down by more than 30%. The result is independent of the learned material and the effect of acute stress seems to be independent of the time of day.

   It’s more likely that stress isn’t black or white, good or bad. A small amount of pressure is fine and expected, but chronic stress has profound adverse effects on learning and health in general.

5. Today’s students can multitask just fine

   Because they are so-called digital natives, students are used to switching from device to device, so they’re used to multitasking efficiently — or so they say. After all, students can also ride a bike, which requires doing more things at once as well.

   Eh, not so fast. Learning how to ride a bike takes some time, and the process becomes automatic after a while. For complex tasks, such as learning, participating in class, etc., this doesn’t happen; they still need to make an effort each time. What happens is that students will rapidly switch from task to task, resulting in poor learning performance.

   The truth is that we’re all ill-equipped to deal with multitasking, as we waste more time doing the switch than on the actual tasks at hand. So the next time students insist that they can text and learn simultaneously, try this experiment together with them.

6. Boys are better at Math than girls

   If I had a nickle for each time I heard this, I’d be able to afford a huge billboard that says: “Boys AND girls can be good at math.”

   In this recent study, researchers have found that “boys and girls engage the same neural system during mathematics development.” This is consistent with other findings that indicate that boys and girls perform equally well in Math. However, “stereotypes that girls and women lack mathematical ability persist and are widely held by parents and teachers”.

   The myth is rooted in the wrong idea that there’s a biological advantage that makes boys more “analytical.” However, it’s hard to distinguish between the biological, individual, and social influences when it comes to performance in different subjects. In other words, girls internalize the message that they’re not going to do well in Math and stop trying early on.

   ---

   Read more: The best 4 tips to get your child involved in STEM learning

   ---

7. Some students are right-brained, some are left-brained

   If you do a quick google search for left-brain/right-brain test, you’ll find around 720 million results. This idea has been around for some time, splitting students (yet again) into two categories: creative and analytical. The first should go for language arts, and the latter should just do science!

   Without delving too much into neuroscience, the left and right hemispheres are connected and always communicating with each other. One side may be larger than the other, but that doesn’t mean that we prefer to use that one more! This study involving more than 1,000 subjects used fMRI scans to put this myth to rest, once and for all, concluding that: “our data are not consistent with a whole-brain phenotype of greater “left-brained” or greater “right-brained” network strength across individuals.”

   In other words, you can’t have one without another, brain connectivity is more important than which side does what, and there’s a real danger in believing your brain is only good at “creativity” or “logic.”

   ---

   Read more: How learning shapes a student’s brain. Literally

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Fact or fiction?

This isn’t an exhaustive list, so I strongly encourage you to check out Urban Myths about Learning and Education for a more comprehensive view on this subject.

Popular educational myths will probably still be around in one way or another. Their allure consists of seemingly simple explanations that sound valid. However, now that we know better, we can leave them where they belong: in the past.

The post Top learning myths to leave behind in 2020 appeared first on NEO BLOG.

Whether you’re a development pro, or new to the field; eLearning development can be daunting. To take some of the pressure off, we’ve put together a list of rules you should follow when starting a new project:

1. Befriend the SME

Subject matter experts (SMEs) are some of the most important people in the eLearning development process. They hold all knowledge needed for your course. But it’s important to remember that SMEs are guardians of this knowledge, and they can be very protective over its communication. There are many tips for working with SMEs throughout eLearning development; but the first step is to book a face-to-face meeting. Before this meeting, make sure you research their role and topic. Demonstrating an interest in their subject matter will ensure you get off on the right foot

2. Remember that you are also the expert

Subject matter experts are unlikely to be eLearning experts. In much the same way that you are probably not the expert in the subject matter of your course. After you have absorbed all the SMEs knowledge, translate it into effective eLearning. Categorise the information gained into three sections:

• What the learner must know
• What the learner should know
• What the learner could know (or ‘nice to haves’)

After you’ve translated the SMEs knowledge, it’s time to apply your eLearning expertise.

3. Don’t speak at your learners, let them ‘do’

Many eLearning courses fall into the trap of overloading their learners with knowledge. Take a step back and let your learners practice the knowledge they’ve learnt. Build interactivity that supports the content. Use system simulations or branching scenarios to let your learners test their knowledge. Create an environment where your learner is comfortable putting their learning to the test, without the fear or risk of failure.

4. Be organised

It seems obvious, but organisation is the key to successful eLearning development. Plus, the bigger the project, the more important this rule becomes. You’ll start your development with a large amount of documents, videos, audio, images and much more. Creating a filing structure from the outset (and sticking to it!) will ensure smooth development.

5. Pay attention to detail

Paying attention to detail is the only way you will create a best-in-class course. You need to ensure that:

• Terminology is correct and consistent throughout the course. For example, does your organisation refer to buyers as ‘customers’ or ‘clients’?
• The design is pixel-perfect. Your learners will notice if a consistent element budges a few pixels out of place when switching slides.
• Your development is flawless. You need to make sure all triggers, layers, buttons etc. are working exactly as expected.

This rule is so important – even the simplest of errors can influence your learner’s concentration!

6. Test, test, test!

This may be the most important rule of all. Ensure your course put to the test before giving your seal of approval. Test it yourself, get your team to test it, and get the SME to test it. Gather feedback and revise your course.

And here’s a bonus tip.

Do not leave testing until the last minute!

Every course will need more than one revision. Don’t leave your testing until the eleventh hour, make sure you have time to collect feedback and put it in place.

The post eLearning development: Six rules you should always follow appeared first on Omniplex.

Some organizations, particularly small and medium-sized, often see the investment in LMS for elearning as an unnecessary expense. However, the unshakable fact is that it's one of the best tools that every organization should utilize for their online training. At the very least, a basic LMS will help you keep up with your competitors. But if you opt for a good quality one with great content and features, you'll be assured of increased return on training investment.

There are various other reasons why an organization should invest in an LMS for training support. Here are a few.

1. Cost-Effectiveness

According to several studies, there are many benefits of investing in your employees, such as increased productivity level and reduced employee turnover rate. However, when investing in your employees, it's also crucial to make sure your employees and your business are equally benefiting. Hence, you must ensure your training program is cost-effective and promises a high ROI. 

The right LMS can achieve this balance as the system helps to reduce the learning and development costs. Not only can you save on things like instructor's fees, room hire, printed material, and travel costs, but after the initial investment, there's an assurance that you'll make a continuous and increasing profit yearly. 

2. Ease Of Accessibility

Besides increasing your profit margins, LMS will help your organization offer training that can be easily accessed by your learners from any location across the globe. The right LMS will make your training available on multiple devices, enabling your learners to learn on the go, at their own pace and convenience. And empower course developers to easily create their eLearning courses and deliver them to remote learners. 

3. Easy Collaboration

Another reason to opt for an LMS is easy collaboration. With the right Learning Management System learners, a training instructor can have access to plugins and other apps for easy and seamless collaborations. This also covers many other things, including other instructors and industry experts. Collaborating allows you to make your training courses more popular, thereby increasing your company's growth rate and helps to attract more learners to your organization.

4. Course Management

This is a significant benefit of investing in LMS. If you are having challenges effectively managing your courses, opting for an LMS platform is your best solution. But, you can only reap the benefits of course management with the right platform. A quality LSM is easy to maintain and provide constant updates, meeting the needs of every learner. Also, you can easily rework and revise your course content, modifying it to quickly suit your learners' training needs. The right LSM offers a lot of incredible features, which makes course creation easy for training instructors such as the drag-and-drop feature, that allows for the easy upload of courses to the system. By categorizing your courses based on topics and delivering them to your learners according to their learning needs, an LSM ensures effective management. 

5. Tracking Goals And Milestones

Progress level monitoring is an essential part of every crucial process, online training included. Tracking your learning goals enables you to determine whether or not your training courses are impacting your learners. By investing in an LMS for training support, an organization easily monitors their learners' progress, identifying whether or not the knowledge acquired is being applied to their real-life jobs.

Gathering data on your learners' progress can also help you to spot their learning gaps, allowing you to provide training that'll fill such gaps.

6. Up-To-Date Data Compliance 

Compliance laws change from time to time. And these changes often have a direct impact on your business. Hence, without a good plan in place, it can sometimes become difficult for an organization to update these changes in its traditional Instructor-Led course. And even if they succeed with the update, it consumes a lot of time. Fortunately, there is a solution. 

Conclusion

Investing in the right LMS / Learning Management System like The Learning LAB guarantees you easy access to the updates integrated into your training courses, and allows you to push the same to your learners immediately. 

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Contact us us for a FREE workshop. We can bring your eLearning vision to life, because education is our thing; we live and breathe it!

Here at TheLearning LAB, we don’t shy away from challenges and we don’t ever stop striving for the very best. Challenge us!

So I saw a twitter thread pointing to an argument about how ROI is dead. And, well, that’s largely okay with me. However, the trigger for the post was from the results of Chief Learning Officer 2020 State of Learning report. And, when I saw them, I saw some problems. The question is whether we’re measuring impact, or not. I’d like to go through them and evaluate each.

(Back to my usual prose, as I need visual support for this. ;)

So, in the report, they indicated that the respondents indicated the demonstrated impact of training in these ways:

• General training output data
• Training output data aligned with corporate initiatives
• Learner satisfaction with training
• Employee satisfaction with training availability
• Employee engagement
• Business impact
• Employee performance data
• Planned to actual budget, expense, revenue data for training group
• Stakeholder satisfaction with training data
• ROI measures
• Net promoter score
• Employee satisfaction with company data

Yikes!  Some of these are problematic at best.  Let’s look at why some of these might not be good measures of impact. And, let’s be clear; impact should be about positively affecting the organization in a meaningful way. Moving needles like fewer errors, more revenue, reduced costs, happier employees and customers, etc.

So, first, what is general training output data? If it’s like what I saw in (then) ASTD’s State of the Industry report, it’s metrics like employees served per L&D employee or cost/seat/hour for training. Which might a useful measure of efficiency, if you can come up with a principled basis for what a good number would be, and then see if you’re above or below that. Unfortunately, what people do is just compare themselves to the industry average. Is that a good indicator? How do you know? Do you want to be just ‘better than average’?

Then, training output data aligned with corporate initiatives. Again, hard to say what this means (and I can’t seem to find the report). However, it sounds like it’s still efficiency, just doing that for things the business thinks are important.

And we go worse: learner satisfaction with training? Er, research I’ve read and heard cited (I think it’s from Salas, et al, but memory fails) says that’s not valid. There’s a .09 correlation between what learners think of learning impact, and it’s actual impact. That’s zero with a rounding error. That’s all about making learning ‘fun’ (instead of ‘hard fun’). Yes, you do want them to think it’s also been a good experience if you’re focusing on LXD, but that’s secondary.

Similarly, with satisfaction with training availability. What’s that matter? That’s not impact!

Some good things buried here: employee engagement should be good; more engaged employees is a good thing. As long as it’s not at the cost of something else, like, say, impact? And business impact is obviously good, as is employee performance data. Presumably positive business impact, and employee performance improving.

Planned to … stuff is all about efficiency again. And that’s ok, but only after impact. Otherwise, well, we’re not costing too much…?!?

Satisfaction again not good.

And, to the original point of the article. ROI?  Yes, what it costs you to move a needle should be less than the cost of what the needle was costing you. However, I could be doing things that return the biggest ROI without doing the most important things. They can be different (e.g. a small program with a better ROI but less overall impact). So it’s only secondary.

Finally, employee satisfaction with company data? I have no idea what that means? But, again, ‘satisfaction’ isn’t really meaningful unless it’s based on real impact.

I’ve complained before about L&D measurement. Here it is, right in front of us. The answer to the question of whether we’re measuring impact or not appears to be ‘mostly not’.  We’re still (largely) measuring the wrong things. And we wonder why we don’t have credibility. Please, please, start designing to improve measurable gaps, and then actually improve the outcome. Otherwise, you’ve no idea whether that bum in that seat for an hour is doing the organization any good, versus just not costing too much relative to the industry average.

The post Measuring Impact (or not) appeared first on Learnlets.

Co-production, crossing boundaries and the (hidden) curriculum: Debbie McVitty tracks emerging thinking on how universities prepare students for a complex world.

The post From work-ready to world-ready – why breaking down knowledge silos is the next frontier in student development appeared first on Wonkhe.

Start to Success represents the latest attempt to identify "low quality" courses. David Kernohan suspects that the metric itself may be low quality.

The post The further adventures of the UK’s worst higher education courses appeared first on Wonkhe.

In light of the current circumstances we find ourselves in with COVID-19, many people are having to work remotely. Because of this, many companies are having to adapt their day-to-day lives with a remote mindset in mind. Microsoft Teams provides your organization a great suite of tools to easily collaborate with colleagues and clients and can help your organization immensely when transitioning to a work from home environment.

What I would like to do is share 5 quick tips I use to make my life a little easier when using Teams. I’m already thinking of doing another 5 tips blog on Teams, so keep your eye out for that one if you find this one useful.

Tip 1: Filtering Your Messages

Sometimes you might find yourself in a situation where you want to find something that your colleague sent you. I know this happens to me a lot, however it can be quite frustrating having to scroll aimlessly through your past messages in chats or channels. Luckily Microsoft has made this easier in the Teams search bar. You will notice that if you search something in the search bar and hit return a variety of filtering options will appear on the left hand side of the Teams window (refer below).

Say for instance you are trying to search for a person in Teams, then you can select the “People” tab to filter by people. You can also filter by files and messages respectively. If you select “Messages” you will see some dropdown options to filter the messages more. You might find these useful, especially when the term you are searching for appears in a variety of areas. The “from” filter simply allows you to filter your results from a certain individual. The “type” dropdown allows you to filter by chat or by channel. Finally the “more filters” option provides some deep filtering options such as a date range and if the result has an attachment. The screenshot below highlights some other options provided in the more filters option.

Tip 2: Slash Commands

Instead of having to go into the menu settings to change certain Teams’ settings, you can go to the search bar and type forward-slash “/” and you will see a number of command options.

Hint: If you prefer not to have to click in the search box, you can simple hit Ctrl+E (Windows) or Command+E (macOS) and then type in your command.

The commands that I really find useful in my day to day work are:

•  /dnd – set my status to do not disturb
• /testcall – to make a quick test call before a meeting to make sure my headset is working and check my call quality
• /call – allows me to quickly call a colleague without having to find them in my contacts or in the chat area
• /whatsnew – to check new additions to Teams – you can also access Teams training in this area
• /activity – to quickly set your activity
• /keys – shows you all the keyboard shortcuts in Teams

Feel free to try all of them out. Again, if you can’t remember the name of the command, all you simply have to do is type forward-slash “/” and it will list all the commands available to you!

Tip 3: Quickly Change your Status

A quick way to change your status in Teams without navigating into the app is to either hover over the Teams app in the Windows taskbar or go to the hidden icon area of the taskbar and you can right-click on the Teams’ icon, navigate to status and select your new status.

Tip 4: Access Apps via the Search Bar

The search bar is quite powerful in Teams and one really neat thing about it is you can access your apps. To access an app, simply type the at “@” symbol followed by the name of the app. You will notice that once you type the at “@” symbol it will provide you a list of your apps which you can either select or type in. In the screenshot below I show how you can use the weather app to quickly find today’s forecast by typing “@weather” and then space followed by the name of the location.

Something I might point out here is you can also access your apps in the new message area of a chat or channel by typing in the at “@” symbol as well!

Tip 5: Send an Email to a Teams Channel

You might find yourself in a situation where you want to send an email to someone like a client, but would also like to include your team members in the email thread. One option is you can obviously do is type all their emails in the email, but that can be quite tedious if your team is large and can be annoying when it comes to tracking messages over time. Teams has a really cool feature that creates an email address for each of your channels in a team. To get the email address of a channel, simply click the three dots that appear when you hover over a channel and select “Get email address”.

Once you’ve sent the email, you should notice it appear in the channel, as shown in the screenshot below.

You can hit reply to the message, but please note that the reply will not reply to people via email, the reply will only appear in the Teams channel.

A scenario where you might find this useful is if you are emailing someone like a client and would like to CC or BCC your team in on the email. You can also forward emails that you would like to share with your team using this method.

Wrap up

Hopefully you find at least one of these tips useful and maybe learned something you didn’t know about Teams. Feel free to drop a comment down below if you want to share some of your own tips or have any questions about the ones I have mentioned. Thanks for taking the time to read and look forward to seeing you in the next blog post!

About the Author:

My name is Colby Timm and I live and work in Vancouver, BC as a developer at Softlanding Solutions Inc. This blog is a personal reflection of all my personal interests, where I scribble down my thoughts and knowledge, focusing on development in the Microsoft space and showcasing some of my hobbies.

Before joining Softlanding in 2018, I attended the University of Victoria for a bachelor in electrical engineering. During my undergrad I worked at PBX Engineering as a Design Engineer and ACD Systems as a QA Analyst.

Reference:

Timm, C. (2020). 5 Tips for Microsoft Teams. Available at: https://codeandsorts.com/5-tips-for-microsoft-teams/ [Accessed 23rd November 2020].

Check out more great Microsoft Teams content here or join our mailing list to stay up to date.

The post 5 Tips for Microsoft Teams appeared first on European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference, 2020.

There is nothing more important than staying healthy. We are reminded of this daily, as we live through the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Academy and Capacity Building day which took place on November 19 has become a key event of the IEC General Meeting, which takes place virtually until November 20.

Organized for the second time only, the event drew 194 participants from 57 IEC member and associate member countries. Moderated by Jan-Henrik Tiedemann, Head of IEC Academy and Capacity Building, as well as Regional Director for the Middle East, the session gathered a very diverse group of panellists from different parts of the globe: International Engagement Manager Clare Hobern, from the Australian National Committee (NC), Manxue Huan, Officer in Charge at the Quality and Standards Academy of Shenzhen University (SZTU), from the Chinese NC, Younes M. Almalik, Advisor to the Deputy Governor for Business Support-Saudi Standards, Quality and Metrology Organization (SASO), the Saudi NC, Eirik Sollie, Sector Manager for the Norwegian Electrotechnical Committee, the Norwegian NC, Pernille Arendsdorf Bengsten, Senior Education and Standards Consultant at Danish Standards, the Danish NC and Maria del Rosario Uria, Director of the Directorate of Standardization and Secretary of the IEC NC for Peru. All these panellits shared their experiences in building awareness and training about IEC Standards and Conformity Assessment, sometimes contributing through the IEC Young Professional Programme or directly in Academia.

Tiedemann insisted on the service aspect of the IEC Academy and Capacity Building department inside Central Office and the teamwork with regional centres. “Contributing to raising quality, transparency and agility is important to us,” he said in his introductory remarks.

He also presented an overview of what was achieved in 2020 so far, including 22 public webinars which drew 4200 attendees and 6000 viewers of recorded webinars. In addition, 18 training webinars for NCs and regional centres were set up.

Survey of NCs

He equally introduced some of the results of a survey conducted by his team to assess the capacity building and training capability in NCs. “The idea was to find out how NCs coped, notably in the current situation due to the pandemic,” Tiedemann explained. 68% of all NCs replied, mostly NC Secretaries, and the results highlighted that a very large majority of NCs viewed training as an essential part of their strategy. Most NCs said that after the Covid-19 pandemic, they would favour a hybrid online and face-to face training approach, rather than simply return to face-to-face training sessions. Among the most essential skills that required training, the NCs put knowledge about the IEC directives in first position, followed by standard drafting/editing and consensus building. 77% of those surveyed did not have access to an online training platform.

Launch of new online training platform

Online Learning and Development Coordinator Ian Gardner presented the IEC Academy new online training platform tool based on the Moodle open source online training platform. The design of the platform was built inside the IEC and there is no licensing fee required to use it. Two courses are currently available, IEC Convenor and Project Leader, as well as New Standardization Expert. For more information on the platform: https://academy.iec.ch. All webinars can be found at https://www.iec.ch/academy

Feedback from NCs and other users is welcome and can be sent to academy@iec.ch

Tiedemann also participated in the Affiliate Country Forum to give specific information on capacity building and training for Affiliate Countries earlier this week.

The days of exclusively on-campus experiences may be numbered as blended learning is now the preferred learning and teaching model of many UK students, lecturers and leaders, according to new research.

Co-created through collaboration with more than 1,000 representatives from UK universities, ‘A new dawn for higher education?’ is the inaugural report from the sector-wide Learning and Teaching Reimagined initiative, led by Jisc, Emerge Education, Universities UK, and Advance HE.

“We need to not just make the best of the situation but build on it”

In a survey, educational leaders were asked what the balance of teaching delivery was or will be at their institution at the following times; pre-lockdown, this academic year 2020/21, next academic year 2021/22 and in 2030.

According to the survey, almost all lectures are expected to be delivered online in 2020/21, with a blend of online and face-to-face delivery for seminars and tutorials with face-to-face delivery prioritised for workshops, laboratory practical work and studio work.

“Lecturers see this as a key opportunity for UK higher education to re-think learning and teaching practices, especially as their confidence and awareness grows,” the authors of the survey explained.

Some 49% were confident in using digital technology to deliver learning and teaching at the start of lockdown, while three-quarters (74%) were confident at the start of academic year 2020/2021.

However, a “sizeable” number of respondents said they don’t see any benefits to developing and delivering increased online learning and teaching.

Around 37% of lecturers are unclear on plans for delivering learning and teaching this academic year, while the figure rises to 71% for the next academic year, 2021/22.

Lecturers also expressed anxiety about replacing in-person teaching with online delivery methods and felt they are under significant pressure to adapt and deliver whilst feeling time poor.

“Lecturers find it more difficult to build up relationships and rapport with their students online,” explained the authors.

“They’re concerned their interactions have become depersonalised and about muted in-person interactions.”

From the students’ perspective, the survey showed that learners like online learning mainly because “it’s more convenient, saves time, is more flexible and enables review of content”.

However, 77% said physical/social interaction is important to their learning experience and most learners prefer an element of in-person learning and teaching.

“The world has changed, and we’re seeing sector-wide agreement that we need to not just make the best of the situation but build on it,” said Paul Feldman, Jisc CEO.

“Students, lecturers, and leaders are all saying that they wouldn’t want to return to purely in-person teaching, they see what’s happening now as the path to something bigger and better.”

Based on the research, a number of recommendations for universities, sector agencies and government were made to help progress digital transformation in learning and teaching, in preparation for 2021/22.

These ranged from universities accelerating the adoption of blended learning with close involvement of students to ensuring their professional development plans include digital training and peer support mechanisms.

“Embedding this at the heart of university culture will be key to transformation”

Noting the transformation already seen at many institutions Nic Newman, partner at Emerge Education, added that to continue that momentum with long-term strategies, “we must now focus on the student experience. Staff training and digital confidence will have a key role to play”.

“The real challenge will come in scaling up, and this needs to be driven by pedagogy, curricula, and learning design,” pointed out Alison Johns, chief executive at Advance HE.

“Embedding this at the heart of university culture will be key to transformation. Now is the time to help people become fully aware of how digital can support this change.”

There is sector-wide commonality acknowledged Chris Hale, director of policy at Universities UK.

“Many university leaders are facing similar challenges, so it has been hugely beneficial to come together to think about them collectively.

“Those conversations are invaluable in determining how we, as a sector, chart our way forward,” he added.

The post Blended is preferred learning & teaching model in UK, survey finds appeared first on The PIE News.