National Teaching and Learning
Change Programme
Improving teaching and learning in Adult Learning

Video transcript

Tutor:

I have been working with a Worcestershire local history group but I'd first like to say that I met these people or some of them anyway a couple of years ago when we did the beginners and moving on classes. Later on the chairman of the group phoned me to say that they had formed a local history society and they'd got themselves a grant and bought themselves a digital projector and a laptop computer and didn't know how to use it — so they asked me to go along and see what their needs were so they could all become proficient in not only taking photographs but using their projector and putting on small exhibitions in their community so they could raise funds to finance their club.

The sort of skills they said that they wanted to start with were how to use the digital projector, how to connect it up to the computer, how to take photographs from their digital camera onto the computer and to maybe make a PowerPoint presentation, how to print their pictures so they could exhibit those at village shows. How to record the reminiscences of people in the village who remembered things from long ago.

For the history group and the levels of ability I decided the best way was to give them a data sheet to fill in where I've listed on that the sort of skills that you might expect of people who were used to using computers, such as keyboard skills, word processing skills, using a digital camera, surfing the internet perhaps, those sort of skill levels. They each completed one of these, ranking themselves in order from 5, very good, to zero, no skill at all. After that I took the paperwork back, had all their names and did a little graph to show the skill profile of the group.

The sort of assistance or guidance I would offer to anybody else walking into a strange group, I would suggest that they prepare thoroughly.

It is not the job of the tutor in this sort of environment to foist upon the learners what he or she wants them to do, it's for him to listen to them and then construct around their answers. I think that's really important and it shows a great deal of empathy and the learners I think will accept you better if you take this approach.