by Alan Nelson
The recent inaugural meeting of our Distance Learning Forum was a big success. It was an idea that came out of the launch this year of our new peer-enriched learning courses, where users add their ideas and opinions to the content for others to see. This got us thinking that perhaps we could facilitate a bit of peer exchange between our clients.
We set out to organise this event not really knowing what the reaction would be. The idea was to invite clients who provide distance learning resources for their students, to come along for a day and share their experiences with each other. We decided that we should start with a small group and were delighted when of the 20 people invited, 18 said yes. Even with a couple of inevitable last minute drop-outs we ended up with more on the day than we had originally planned.
Jacqui introduced the day, facilitating everyone introducing themselves. Our main worry prior to the day was that it might be difficult to get people to open up, but it was obvious immediately that people were going to talk. The great beauty of an event like this that brings together people from different professional bodies, is that although people all do similar things and are facing similar challenges, they do not directly compete with each other. Not in the main that is - we did have several accounting bodies present and three marketing bodies, but everyone was friendly and happy to share their experiences.
First item on the agenda was Chris Bestley, the Director of Education from the Institute of Sales Promotion. He talked us through his experiences managing their Diploma in Promotional Marketing over the last 25 years. What came across was that getting it right involves lots of small decisions. Everything they do is for a reason. From the way they market the qualification to the way they stay in touch with the students during their study, through to the way they organise the marking of the scripts, it is all designed to maximise the success rates of the students.
Next up was a presentation of the way the Pensions Management Institute are using the new assignment submission, marking and tracking system to manage the workflow of assignments between students and tutors. This provoked a lively conversation about the way in which paper scripts get marked and how this differed to doing it online. There are clearly significant advantages in managing it all online – reduced administration costs, better tracking and control etc – and it is easier to monitor consistency of marking, but the markers find it different to actually writing on the scripts, highlighting areas where a student’s answer could have been improved.
We had hoped that over a buffet lunch people would continued their conversations, but with most people not knowing each other we weren’t sure how well that would work. We needn’t have worried – we had to bully and cajole people back into their seats to restart.
The afternoon session was all about marketing. We had asked all the participants to bring along examples of things they had done to market their qualifications and the distance learning services that support them. Kate Jackson’s experience at CIMA, where their Study Systems are now a major source of revenue and command a marketing budget to match, contrasted strikingly with the British Promotional Merchandise Association, where the modest number of expected learners on a brand new qualification dictated a much more modest budget for marketing.
As expected, what came out of the session was not a simple list of what you should do, but a vast range of ideas and experiences that people could take away to think about.
When you ask people at the end of a day like this, how they think it has gone, they are never going to say that they thought it was rubbish and will never come again, but even taking this into account I was struck by the enthusiasm people had for the idea of repeating the experience. This was reinforced by the fact that people hung around chatting at the end rather than rushing off. We clearly haven’t exhausted people’s enthusiasm for learning from each other. I think the Distance Learning Forum may be here to stay.
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