Sharing Good Practice - Class Notebook

This past year has been a bit of a learning curve for many staff at SERC, whether your role is academic, corporate or management. Terry Hickland, Lecturer in Construction Plant, School of Construction, Engineering Services and Skills for Work, outlines how Class Notebook helped him.

Terry comments, “Class Notebook has made life much simpler, through creating e-portfolios and uploading learning material specific to each class. Admittedly, there is a lot of work in the beginning with uploading the learning content and setting up files but, once in place, it can be easily transferred to each new class intake that is created.”

Owen Parks, Deputy Head of Learning Academy, comments, “The vocational areas within TFS traditional require a substantial paperwork trial that has centred around building evidence of learning. This required considerable time to manage and update the portfolio of evidence and the learners progress along their career paths. With the current Covid restrictions meaning minimizing transfer of documents, there was a move towards Digital of electronic portfolios. These offer quicker feedback and reduced management of assignments as they are only a click away. Typically, the team would have used printed versions which were often handwritten and then required correction with some students even losing pages as time progressed. 

The move to an e-portfolio had several benefits:

• Faster feedback time
• Less time was spent re writing sections on hard copy print outs
• No need to carry hard copies of assignments
• Automatic tracking of learner progression and feedback provided

Some time was set up converting and moving information into the correct format but much more efficient process after all work has been set up. This also includes a better student experience with less duplication and quick feedback. Students can edit work quicker and easier on their phone. The teaching team took the time to learn how to use One note and were able to learn the package in a short period i.e., less than 1 week before piloting during the induction week.”