TAD Centre
Lesley Sweeting is the Access Co-ordinator at Middlesbrough Adult Education Service (MAES) and Co-ordinator of the Curriculum area for Business Management and Professional which includes post-16 Teacher Training courses. Lesley also teaches and assesses the City & Guilds certificate in FE Teaching (7407) and the Delivery of Learning (7302) qualifications at the TAD centre in Middlesbrough..
As an adult and community provider MAES offer part time courses in a range of venues across Middlesbrough (of which the TAD centre is one). TAD first subscribed to SmartScreen in August 2004 for the 7407 support and in 2005-6 we added more qualifications. We have recently just re-subscribed for the education & training bundle. We didn't want to disadvantage learners by not offering the same range of support as other providers and we also have been embedding ICT across our curriculum for some time, so it seemed logical to subscribe.
Learner and tutor access to SmartScreen helps us meet our objective of increasing ICT across the curriculum and means that tutors are using ICT more and more, both in and out of the classroom. It has saved our learners time in searching the net, which has led to less queries about course content because they can self-check. Initially in 2004-5 we felt that the courses were not supported as fully as they could have been but in 2005-6 with the updating of the site, it was utilised more and a greater percentage of learners found it helpful. For tutors it is helpful to have the proformas all available at any time for use and in downloadable formats.
We already offer extensive support to learners in more traditional ways and via the internet plus, we will have a new VLE available to our learners this academic year which is part of a Tees Valley wide initiative. Therefore, SmartScreen sits within that as an additional resource available to learners on specific courses.
At the TAD we have about 50 learners on SmartScreen supported courses although this will increase to about 80 in the coming year as we are going to be delivering the City & Guilds Classroom Assistant NVQ and the Assessment and Verification (A&V) units for the first time.