[Music playing] [A Guide to Online BTEC Explorer Courses for Tutors and Trainers] Christine
Hepworth-James: Good afternoon and welcome to today's webinar all about our online explorer
course. My name is Christine Hepworth-James and I'm the curriculum development management
for the South-East of England, and today I will be presenting this webinar for you. Just
a bit of housekeeping before we start. Today I'm joined by some of my colleagues who are
readily on hand to answer your questions that I may not know the answers to, so please do
submit any questions using the chat box as we go along, as we will be taking a pause
halfway through the presentation to run through your questions. Plus, there will also be a
Q&A session at the end. If we run out of time, don't worry, we'll be taking all of your questions
and be putting them into an FAQ document to share with you post this event. During today's
session we'll be giving you a brief overview of the online Explorers. We'll also be showing
you how to navigate the online course on the Pearson learning hub, showing you how you
can support your learners, showing how you can access your learner work submissions,
a bit on enrolling onto the course, both for yourselves and for your learners, a piece
on the digital credentials that come along with these courses. Of course the pricing
model, we'll be running through that with you, and again at the end there'll be a period
where we can have a session on Q&A. A quick overview, here we go. The online BTEC Explorer
courses have been designed for adults who are either in work or out of work and may
be looking to change roles. Maybe they've done something in the past and are considering
returning to that particular sector. So it could be good for the likes of the work programme
or kick-start, etc., and you may be able to tap into the AEB where applicable also. It's
also for adults to progress onto maybe an entry level job role or an apprenticeship,
or even a BTEC course in one of the sectors that they have been working towards. The benefits
for the learners is to explore the different roles in a sector and find out if these suit
their interests, their personalities, and their skillset. There's going to be a lot
of reflection built into these courses, so they'll be able to develop skills to work
independently right throughout. They will be supported and guided by your goodselves,
tutors, to complete the activities online, and there will be an opportunity to gain a
recognised qualification at level one on course completion, and also [?accept 0:02:54.0] a
unit, and also there will be an opportunity to gain a digital credential from Pearson,
which they can share on the likes of their own online platform. We'll be coming onto
all of this a little bit later on. The benefits for tutors, well, it's a strange environment
at the moment and it's all to do with flexible delivery, and that's what we have here with
a blended learning format via our Pearson learning hub. Accredited qualifications are
built in and the learning content is digital learning content for high quality delivery
also. The learning support can be delivered in many ways with this. It can be group work,
it can be one-to-one, it's very, very flexible for that purpose. You'll also be able to track
and monitor your learner work online. What do they look like? We have ten different sectors,
so ten different courses. As you can see, these are all around the usual suspects that
you would expect. So we have them in the likes of business to sport and hospitality, all
the way over to logistics. So plenty there for learners to choose from. I'm going to
show you now how to navigate onto the course itself, so I'm going to jump onto the learning
hub, so hold on tight and here we go. Initially what you will find when you start to buy courses
is a dashboard that's similar to this. These are all course cards, and as you can see there
are many different subjects. For the purpose of today's demonstration, we're going to be
looking at the business demo, and this is what happens when you click onto your course
card. This is from a learner perspective, and you can tell that because at the top left
here you can see 'View this course as learner'. There's a drop down there that you will be
able to choose from later on as a tutor, but this will be fixed for the learner. Each course
setup will look exactly the same. They will all start with an introductory video on that
particular sector, and it will go on to also include areas on what job roles are also found
within each sector. As you scroll down, you can see that there are three modules. We have
module one, which is where the learner finds out all about themselves; module two is to
find out about the sector; and module three is all about their next steps towards their
careers. Underneath all of these modules there will be lots of activity. A learner can either
start the course straightaway, or if they were to click on this button here, which is
business, you would see that the course itself will start to list at the bottom. You'll see
the whole course starting with job opportunities in the sector. This will give the learner,
if I click on it, some information to consider before they start the course itself, and it
gives also information on what operational functions, etc. So plenty of information for
them to absorb before they start. If we go back to the actual structure, here we have
the three modules. Every single module will start when you click on it with an overview.
So module one has an overview, module two has an overview, and module three has an overview.
What the individual will do is they would click on overview and it will give them further
information about that particular module. It's not an awful lot of narrative, just a
little bit of narrative. If they were to click 'next', it would take them to the first activity.
As you can see with this activity, it's all about a personality test. Task 1.1 is 'Have
you ever taken a personality test?' All they would need to do with this is to, we've given
the directive here to go and search online for a free personality test and record the
results that you get below. You can see here that you've got text boxes that the individual
can fill in as they go. So if they were to do their personality and they came out as
the Campaigner, let's put that in. Individual traits maybe, I don't know, they're a free
spirit. Their strengths? Maybe they consider themselves to be observant, that's what all
came out in this personality test. They may have a weakness and maybe they find it difficult
to focus. Career paths? Well, maybe they're suggesting they could be a writer, who knows?
That's all that the learner would do, they would just compile this and then we have two
tabs down here. One is to save their answers and one is to download. So at this point,
if they're quite happy, they would just simply save those answers. You can see the way all
the boxes have turned into the colour green, which means yes, good to go, everywhere has
been filled in. Of course it would remain red if not, but they can still come out of
that, save it, and go back in again. They don't need to do it all at once. Further down
they've got the second task, do you agree with the results? They're saying ask a friend
or a member of the family if they agree with the test, and how do you think this result
is useful? So here again is the reflection side of things, and they just put in a little
bit of narrative there. Great, all agreed. So we're going to save those answers and we're
going to save those. What they can do from here is they can actually download it, and
I'll show you what that looks like. So it comes out in a document, and this is what
they can download and chat to their friends, family, peers and tutors. As you can see,
there is the campaigner; free spirit, observant, etc. Okay? So what they would do is, they
would simply keep going back to their modules and working their way through all of module
one. As they do it, you'll see green ticks start to appear so that they know they have
completed that particular area. Module two, as you see, another overview, again with lots
of activities for them to work their way through. Then again, module three, they've got all
of those next steps towards their career with an overview and more activities. So lots for
them to come up with. When they've completed all of the courses. Progression groups at
the bottom here, and this lays out how they can progress onto other jobs and/or qualifications.
So if they were to click on that, it clearly spells out to them the different routes, and
it takes them all from level one all the way up to level seven. It gives the learner an
idea of the different types of qualification, whether it be either vocational or academic,
the type of job roles, and an indication of how many years' experience you would need
to fit into these job roles. So that's another really good discussion point, but you can
use that right at the beginning as well as part of the induction, because some tutors
find these really, really helpful. The other tab that they have that they can see is the
recap button, and they can recap their answers before they submit their work for the tutor
and for marking. If they look at answer recap module one, they click on that. You can see
here this is all of his work; campaigner, free spirit, all agreed, and all of that module
is in one easy-to-print download document that they can then share. If they didn't like
what they wanted there, or they wanted to change some of the narrative, they simply
need to go back into the business, back to that particular module, into the personality
test, for example, and you might decide, yes, I want to be a writer or a journalist. As
long as they save those answers, go save your answers, there we go. Responses saved. As
soon as they back into the list, down to the ‘recap your answers', they look at module
one and then you can see here it's updated 'writer/journalist'. So it just keeps a tab
on them all the time. At the top here they've also got other navigation tools. You've got
answer recap module one, answer recap module two, and answer recap module three, so there
are different windows they can actually go in to access this sort of information and
put their answers in. That's kind of it for the learner. So they basically need to work
their ways all the way through this. What they would need to do is they would need to
complete one module before they go on to the next. So they would need to save as they go
and then submit what they've finished. So for example, with the personality test, there's
a button at the bottom where it says, 'submit' and it will tell you, 'Your submission has
been received', then the tutor will be able to see that work, which we can look at a little
bit later. So it really is a question of just save it, review it, download, and submit at
each chunk. What does it look like from a tutor's point of view? We saw this drop down
earlier on. If we were to use that drop down and put 'Staff', it would give you a very
slightly different view. If we go to the course main page, you will see that at the top left
you've got two more tabs that have come up. Also, when you scroll down to the bottom,
at the bottom of the list you'll see the tutor guidance here which outlines the qualifications
and sector units that the activities are mapped to. This is a little bit of gold dust, this.
It's only visible to those staff who are enrolled onto the course, which once you're a user
you can actually do that with your colleagues. What we really strongly suggest is that you
do familiarise yourself with this prior to delivery. You can see with this, the business
guidance in particular is saying, 'the business explorer is mapped to the following units'.
So we have two units here; the self-assessment and career progression. It clearly says, ‘If
the learner successfully completes the Explorer course, they would be eligible to receive
the qualification which is the level one award in work skills.' It also gives you the link
for the specification, and it also gives you the link for the units. When you scroll down,
it then gives you the mapping for the sector units. So the business does have two units
you can choose from; how and why businesses operate, and planning and enterprise. Again,
when the learners complete one or both of these units, they will achieve a unit certification
only, not the full qualification. Again, the specification can be found here, and the units
can be found via this link. Within the tutor guidance, if you scroll all the way down,
you'll get very clear guidance on what assessment criteria the learner will need to achieve.
So you can quite easily see that for these, the assessment criteria for learning outcome
one, if you look at the Explorer course location of evidence, it will tell you that module
one, activity two, self-assessment, task 2.1 are mapped over to 1.1 and 1.2. So that takes
an awful lot of work out of your hands when it comes to mapping this programme across.
Does that make sense? I'm sure it does. Now then, the other tab you have here is ‘Instructor'.
Course admin doesn't work for this particular course, because this platform is used for
many programmes, but you will have instructor. If you click on instructor, it will bring
up another page, another dashboard, where you have some more tabs that have opened up
for you. This will give you some course info; how many learners are enrolled onto the course
programme, for example, so it will look a little bit prettier than it does here. The
main area for you here is ‘Recap' and this is all to do with how to access your learner
web submissions. As you can see, if you click on ‘Recap' all your learners will be listed
underneath the module that they have submitted work for. So for module one, we can clearly
see there are four learners that have completed and submitted their work, and it's available
for you to download and take a look at. Same for module two, there are four learners, and
module three we have good old Ellen. Ellen has managed to complete her module three.
What you can do, using the recap tool as a tutor, is you can download that work from
here. What would happen is the date of submission will come up in the .pdf document. If you
look at the lower left there, you can see the 22 October and it's a .pdf document. So
if you were to click on that, you would then get the learner work in a .pdf format. It's
a little bit [?bawdy 0:17:07.0] on here because this is a demo, of course, but you will be
able to look at this. It gives some marking on it, but you can also create a sample from
the SV from here as well, because the SVs can look at this sort of work, or the SVs
can look at it straight off the learning hub. So that's how you can actually see the learner
work once they've submitted it. If they just save it and they don't submit it, you won't
see it, but once they've submitted if you can see all of the learner work there.