This is a brief presentation which was given at the BETT exhibition 2013 about our JISC Advance project on teaching students how to run a webinar to increase their employability skills. 4 JISC Advance FE and Skills projects presented information at a workshop.

1. Students for Webinar Employment
Skills
‘Student4WebES’
Ellen Lessner
e-Learning Coordinator
Emma Procter-Legg
Project Manager

2. Students for Webinar Employment Skills
Students for Webinar Employment Skills is an evolutionary project for us which
I will describe briefly. But first, I’d like to clarify what a ‘webinar’ is. It is an
online session which can be used for meetings or teaching and is a platform
which generally has the ability, along with video and audio, to display
information on a whiteboard, allow ‘chat’, application and web sharing and
audience response for 3-300 people depending on the platform. Recording the
session is a key feature of a good webinar platform.
Why have I given you this definition? Our initial assessment of 256 Level 3
students showed that only 6% of them could define what a webinar was!

3. Evolution of our recognition of
employability skills for the 21st century

4. Evolution of our recognition of employability skills for the 21st century
• This presentation gave me the opportunity to reflect on our evolution into the digital
literacy age, which includes making sure that our students have employability skills
for the 21st century. We are a normal FE college with 5 sites and we offer a broad
range of courses – SLDD, BTEC, Community Education, A level and Foundation
degrees.
• We have been influenced by the outcomes of the JISC Learner Experience Projects
from 2006-2010 (as well as the Demos report and the Google Gen report) whose
findings showed that many students used technology well but were dependent on
their tutors and institutions to be shown how to use it appropriately in educational
settings. These projects highlighted the importance of the student voice and
experience.
• We put in place an online Digital literacy induction for all new students 4 years ago,
covering systems, plagiarism, Moodle, backing up your work, and other features we
wanted to make explicit to new students. We learned not to assume that young
students knew more than we did about technology and how it would be used in the
college. This was our thinking when we put together the application for this project.

5. Professional Futures
Programme

6. Professional Futures Programme
The vehicle for the project is the Professional Futures programme, now in its second year. It came out
of cross college consultation and the recognition that we needed to be more creative in our approach
to preparing students for employment in the 21st century.
The Professional Futures Programme:
• Spans all levels of the F/T L3 curriculum with a Core (cross curricular) tutorial programme
focussing on personal development and employment skills. (e.g. Mind set, creativity, interpret a
pay slip, CV building, E&D in the workplace, how to sell yourself)
• Designed to foster enterprise and work-ready skills
• ‘Live’ assignments and cross-curricular collaboration which reflects real-world, employer-driven
demands

7. Student4WebES
What are our aims?

8. What are our aims?
• The rationale for this project was to recognise that today’s students will need some
different skills to be fit for work in the 21st C.
• The aim of the project is to develop employability skills for L3 students in relation to
using video conferencing and webinars.
1. Students are being trained to use a webinar platform (Blackboard Collaborate and Cisco
WebEx) and how to set up to run a webinar.
2. We are in the process of setting up 7-15 short 10-15 minute webinars with local employers
around the theme of ‘What does an employer want from an employee?”
3. In addition, we aim to produce:
• A student centred guide to running a webinar
• Recordings of employer webinars (with full consent from employer) for use by other
students
• Support a conference, run by theJISC RSC SE, on the theme of employability skills
using video conferencing and webinars.

9. What have we done in 3
months?

10. What have we done in 3 months?
• Initial assessment of general understanding of webinar and employability skills from 256 L3
students across the college
• Recruited a Core student group who would have the initial webinar platform training on
Blackboard Collaborate and run the employer webinars
• Students discussed and researched the importance of consent forms
• Intro to webinar tutorials – Offered to all second year Professional Futures students in
November and December (JISC RSE SE)
• Advanced webinar training – completed by 8 students and 4 staff members in December
2012.
• Contact with employers – examples: Waitrose, Harwell Science and Technology, Wenn
Townsend Accountancy Firm, Active Nation Vale of White Horse Leisure Centre, Morgan Cole
Solicitors, Puma Hotel – Lygon Arms Spa.
• 1 completed webinar – 6 on schedule to be completed by the end of February
• 256 questionnaires
– 93% couldn’t define ‘webinar’
– 98% had broadband at home
– 77% had used Skype or straight video linking
– 98% had worked in the past 3 years – paid/unpaid/volunteer
– 16% had had a telephone or video interview for a job

11. How are we
doing it?

12. How are we doing it?
• Support from SMT and JISC RSC SE (excellent training and recording of
training materials for reuse and support of the Steering group)
• Google Site – keeping track of all activities and paperwork
• Blog – maintained by Emma and with views from nearly 800 people in a number
of countries.
• Twitter feed
• Project Manager and Leader – FE doesn’t do a lot of research so might not
know how important it is to have the right number of people looking after a
project.
• Support from Professional Futures Team – taken up training and support the
running of the Core programme
• Enthusiasm of Core student group – attending meetings and learning with us!
To find our Google site and blog, search for Students4Webes

13. Student webinar skills = employability

14. Student Webinar Skills = Employability
• Sometimes simple ideas work well. We hope that we can
demonstrate what a professionally valuable skill running a webinar
is in the 21st century – from interviews skills through to work
meetings and in all levels of education. (Exam boards are now using
webinars instead of asking staff to travel long distances for a day’s
training).
• Employment skills gained/reinforced through working on the project;
reliability, time management, team work, cascade learning and
contact with a range of employers.

15. Just at this
moment

16. Just at this moment (1 February 2013)
• We are learning quite a lot about running a project and being realistic. For example,
in retrospect it should have been a year long project. A 6 month project means a very
short time schedule and we perhaps didn’t realise how long it would take to attract a
core group and get going with our plans!
• Timetabling meetings – Much harder to do in college than perhaps in HE? Students
have to catch busses home and have (heavy) work/study commitments. Remember,
98% of our students appear to be working.
• We are now delivering the ‘Introduction to webinar’s to first year Professional Futures
students on 2 campuses.
• We have bought a one year license for Cisco WebEx as well as the training and use
of Blackboard Collaborate for project webinars.
• More webinar moderator training for staff and other students (to be done by the Core
student group)
• Pulling it all together: find out how we’ve done and look for information in late
February for the JISC Advance RSC SE Employability Conference 22 April at our
Witney campus

17. ellen.lessner@ abingdon-witney.ac.uk