Welcome to the January issue of the Vocational Learning Resources Newsletter. With another lockdown now in place, the FE and Skills Content team have been looking at how we can best support our members during this difficult time period. In this newsletter, we’re looking at the new free access period for the Vocational Learning Resources, our VLR webinar series for teaching practitioners and introducing Louise Auckland, the new Licensing Manager for FE and Skills.
Free access to Vocational Learning Resources
In response to the new lockdown restrictions we will be making access to our Vocational Learning Resources free of charge for the remainder of the Academic Year, from Monday 18th January to 31st July 2021.
If you need to support your vocational learners to carry on learning from home, Jisc’s vocational learning resources provide coverage in the following subject areas:
- Construction (https://construction.jisc.ac.uk/)
- Digital and IT (https://digitalandit.jisc.ac.uk/)
- Education and Childcare (https://educationandchildcare.jisc.ac.uk/)
- Hairdressing (https://hairdressing.jisc.ac.uk/)
- Health and social care (https://healthandsocialcare.jisc.ac.uk/)
This will be for all Jisc Member FE and Sixth Form Colleges in order to support organisations to deliver distance learning in these subject areas and to allow learners to continue their studies.
The resources which are curriculum-mapped to NVQ, SVQ, BTEC, C&G, CACHE and NOS are engaging and interactive. The learning resources include realistic work-based scenarios within quizzes, case studies, animations and videos. All resources support accessibility and inclusion, so alternative formats, such as transcripts or audio files, are available where needed.
Our support site (https://vocationalresources.support.jisc.ac.uk/) provides information on how to make the best use of the resources, as well detailed information about the units covered (https://vocationalresources.support.jisc.ac.uk/curriculum-support/). This offers reassurance to teaching practitioners and students alike that they are using resources that support the learning objectives of their courses.
Please stay safe and remember that physical closure of spaces doesn’t need to stop learning! We’ve got great resources to help your students continue and succeed in their studies.
Please do share this information with your curriculum leads and teaching practitioners to help them in their own planning. If you have any questions, please do contact us at content.feandskills@jisc.ac.uk
VLR demos for teaching practitioners
As you may have seen mentioned in our e-books for FE January newsletter earlier this month, we are running some introductory webinars on our Vocational Learning Resources, specifically for teaching staff. This is to offer teaching practitioners a demonstration of our resources, what they cover, how they can be used and what teaching practitioner support is available.
Each webinar will have the same content but will be repeated at different times over the week so staff can select a date and time that suits them. The webinar will be around 30 minutes in total with an optional Q&A section at the end.
These webinars will be taking place on Zoom and we will be sending out the meeting invite details very shortly.
Here are the dates and times of the upcoming webinars:
- Monday 1st February: 3pm
- Tuesday 2nd February: 1pm
- Wednesday 3rd February: 10am
- Thursday 4th February: 4pm
- Friday 5th February: 11am
These webinars will be a great opportunity for staff to get an overview of what’s on offer and ask the team any questions they might have so please do let teaching practitioners know about this opportunity.
Introducing Louise Auckland, our new Licensing Manager
Louise Auckland joined JISC recently as the new Licensing Manager for FE and Skills and looks forward to working with all FE members on their content needs. Louise has worked in Libraries for the last 10 years and understands the content needs of the FE and Skills sector.
If you have any content requirements or would like to discuss existing Jisc FE Agreements Louise would welcome your comments, please do not hesitate to contact her directly: Louise.Auckland@jisc.ac.uk
Stay in touch
Email: content.feandskills@jisc.ac.uk
Twitter: @FE_Jisc