There’s no denying that the landscape of further education has changed dramatically in the last decade. Since I started in my position at the Heart of Worcestershire College 12 years ago, further education has moved from a sector where technology was largely banished to the IT suites, to one where it is the foundation of most courses.

With this transition to new kind of classroom comes a number of pedagogical challenges, particularly given the FE sector’s commitment to providing students with the skills they need to succeed in the changing workplace once they leave college. Worcestershire, where my college is located, has traditionally been an area with a wide mix of jobs across a number of sectors, meaning digital skills have never been more important to success for our students.

The ability to provide these skills is dependent on a number of factors, including availability of technology in colleges, digital infrastructure like high-speed internet connections, and dedicated senior leadership teams. However, among the most important requirements is a knowledgeable teaching staff who are able to deliver digital skills to their students, and often this can be a stumbling block.

Strong staff, weak training

In my experience, having teachers who are not particularly digitally literate is not a result of an unwillingness to adapt to a changing environment - in fact I know that the vast majority of FE staff are happy to embrace new pedagogical techniques and skills. For many people this hesitancy is because of a history of bad experiences with new technology, often because they feel it has been forced on them without proper preparation or instruction. This legacy can leave teachers understandably reticent to embrace new technology, or worrying that they don’t have the ability to develop a proficiency with technology.

This lack of confidence on the part of FE staff is a concern, not least because we want educators to feel empowered to provide the best possible teaching and learning in their classrooms. We need to make sure that we are supporting our staff, and in order to do this there is a real need to provide quality digital training and effective CPD programmes.

At the moment many colleges rely on one or two enthusiastic individuals to provide ad-hoc training - but this isn’t sustainable. Not only does it add workload and pressure to the “tech evangelists” on the staff, but unless training is regulated and standardised it may not be consistent across the college. Technologically-savvy teachers and staff members play an important role in advocating for education technology in FE classrooms, but what colleges should really be striving for are CPD initiatives that are formally recognised and deployed in a strategic manner for the benefit of all staff.

Intervention - friend or foe?

Another route that is often discussed is intervention from government, particularly whether a central support system for digital training and CPD would be useful as a foundation for colleges. Although I believe there is more that the government could do to improve the landscape for digital training in further education, it’s important that any top-down intervention not be seen as imposing compulsory measures on colleges - staff want to be able access support but not be forced to do training that’s irrelevant to the needs of their students.

Ultimately, I believe the best route for colleges to take if they want to ensure their staff are confident in their digital skills is collaborative, reaching out and networking with other colleges and industry peers to discuss best practice for training and CPD, and this is why we participated in the Driving Digital Strategy in Further Education consultation with Canvas this year.

The Blended Learning Consortium was set up by Heart of Worcester College as a means to share our experiences with blended learning, and provide support for colleges who want to adopt this model. I believe that this method can also be used to share and develop training and CPD programmes, using the shared wisdom of colleges across the UK.

There’s no doubt that we in the FE sector need to prioritise training and development if we want to deliver the skills that our students will need in their working lives - and I think this is something that we can achieve. By pooling our collective knowledge, utilising the abilities of our staff and asking the government to provide better support and guidance, we can develop an FE sector that is primed for the 21st-century workplace.

Peter Kilcoyne is ILT director at Heart of Worcestershire College