The Tes FE Awards 2019 takes place on Friday 22 March. The deadline for buying “early bird” tickets is Friday 15 February. For more information, visit tesfeawards.co.uk.
Barking and Dagenham College’s Stem Centre was built five years ago as a state-of-the-art creative teaching and learning space. But it was the ethos of cross-college collaboration, and an innovative approach to enrichment, which originated there that secured the centre the 2018 Tes FE Award for Best Teaching and Learning Initiative.
The main objectives of the centre are to widen access to science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) subjects, to connect Stem-related knowledge and skills to a range of vocational areas, and to use the practical teaching and learning facility to enhance learners’ transferable skills.
Ann McDaniel, the college’s assistant principal, says: “We’re trying to invigorate the students’ ideas of what science is about, and how engineering, maths and technology come into whatever job they’re doing. It’s a college-wide initiative that’s built into the scheme of work and into induction activities, too. So all students get an opportunity to work in the Stem Centre.”
Crime scene investigations
Students studying public services work in projects with a scenes-of-crime officer to train in crime scene investigation, looking at how to photograph, mark, gather and bag evidence and carry out investigations using blood spatter analysis, fingerprint lifting and e-Fits - all undertaken as a joint initiative between vocational teaching staff and the Stem Centre team.
Motor vehicle and engineering students access the centre to work with the Stem team, developing problem-solving and design skills with projects such as building a solar car, and studies of the current trends for green energies.
Stem Centre staff also work with local schools whose pupils come in to have a go at activities on offer, giving college students an opportunity to gain work experience by supporting those school visits.
Enrichment activities
Rosie Honeysett is a teaching and learning champion and lecturer in beauty and complementary therapies at the college. She uses the centre with her students for a range of subject-based enrichment activities, as well as curriculum-related tasks.
The key to success is making activities vocationally relevant, she says. “I find that if it links with the subject that they’re doing, they are really enthusiastic. They want to go to the Stem Centre and make bath bombs and beauty products because that’s the course that they’re enrolled on.”
Honeysett explains that sessions such as these inspire entrepreneurial skills, as well as a higher level of vocational expertise that boosts learners’ employability. She adds: “A couple of my students went on after that to set up their own business, making all different aromatherapy products and selling them at markets we had in the college.”
Experimental curriculum delivery
The inter-departmental collaboration allows teaching staff to be more experimental in curriculum delivery, creating a library of lessons that can be tailored to fit specific groups, which Honeysett says “sounds like a lot of work” but has made her “life easier”.
She explains: “Normally, when we have an idea for a session, we speak to our colleagues who run the Stem Centre and they help us plan and prepare. We’ve got quite a few lesson templates now, so we don’t need to do that stage every time. We mainly use their technical support now and their space to deliver the lessons in.”
Honeysett is currently working on a collaboration with the sports department to team-teach anatomy and physiology in the Stem Centre. In addition, she has plans to combine her complementary therapies curriculum expertise with other college departments, as part of a project to potentially develop a health monitoring app.
Inter-departmental projects
The great success of this initiative is inspiring further inter-departmental projects across the college and encouraging staff to consider new ways to approach the curriculum. Essentially, it pulls together a range of staff expertise, develops a greater understanding of college activity and stops teams from working in silos. Ms McDaniel says: “Students and staff meet people from other curriculum areas, increasing communication, creativity and the development of problem-solving. It’s about that cross-fertilisation of ideas.”
The approach to teaching and learning has seen a move from traditional pedagogical methods to a more hands-on delivery. The project has motivated students to become more engaged in their subject and develop valuable transferable skills. All of which supports students to gain a competitive edge in preparation for working life.
Since the Stem Centre opened there has been a significant increase in the number of females enrolling on science-based courses. Ms McDaniel suggests that the Stem Centre’s close connection with many vocations has given students a wider overview of careers that they hadn’t previously considered but are now ambitious to pursue. She says: “It’s given them an idea that there are other options to think about.”
The Tes FE Awards 2019, sponsored by the Education and Training Foundation, takes place on Friday 22 March. This year the awards will also host the AoC Beacon Awards. The deadline for buying “early bird” tickets is Friday 8 February. For more information, visit tesfeawards.co.uk.
