Lifelong Learning Systems

Each learner has an e-portfolio, containing your Profile, Action Plans, Learning Diary, Record of Achievements, Photos, Documents and relevant web-links

You log in with your unique username and password. Your manager or mentor has access to your files in order to verify your learning claims and support you. He/She will make a comment in your diary from time to time.

You can download a Master Action Plan, that is, one set by your organisation.

For example, training courses, academic modules, induction, on-the-job learning, in-house courses and online learning. These will be assessed and verified by your tutor.

You might want to work on an Individual Action plan: These are ones you devise usually with the support of your manager or mentor, for example, a personal development plan for the next 12 months, a project plan, a set of specific targets for improved performance.

You will want to look at your Record of Achievements, which lists and dates all the completed and verified Action Plans. You can print this out if need be.

You will find the Blog or Learning Diary very useful for capturing what you did and how you felt as you went along, for reflecting on your experience and getting into dialogue with your Manager/ Mentor/Tutor. You can set up a Thread for each different topic.

About Me / My Profile is where you keep your photos, video-clips and other important documents like your latest CV. Your relevant web-links are here too, plus your own word portrait about yourself, your knowledge, skills and qualities.

Access: Because the system is online, you can access your log / portfolio from anywhere with a web connection at any time that suits you.

Recording specific enterprise skills, understanding and attributes in clear, coherent ways remains a real problem for Enterprise Education. The answer lies in an on-line system, which builds a picture of progress for the whole school and for individual students and staff.

The LLS tracking system enables you to build up verified evidence and audit trails, through action plans, a flexible learning diary, an e-portfolio profile page with attached photos, video-clips and files, an enterprise management tool, and an overview of progress for managers.

There are no cartoons or gimmicks: this is a system that means business. It encourages self-managed learning, motivates students, improves their IT skills, literacy and Initiative, encourages them to reflect on and manage their learning, The students love seeing their profiles on-line. Their e-portfolio provides evidence to show their future tutors and employers.

Enterprise Track 07 has other virtues. Within the same system, schools can also set up systems for Performance Management/ Staff CPD, for the Personalised Curriculum and for the emerging Vocational Diplomas, where students are between school, college and the workplace and more!

Enterprise Track 07 - 4 systems in one package

Don’t miss this bumper bargain, email enquiries@lls.co.uk or phone 01491 57 8672.

Enterprise Track is a very flexible, well- tested e-portfolio system for tracking enterprise education and development. It simplifies the task of capturing what the students have learnt in a meaningful way. Each school/college inputs the details in its own words and in its own way. Enterprise Track provides...

• A template for summarising Enterprise activities, knowledge, skills, attributes developed by each learner, plus final grades
• Evidence provided by detailed action plans and audit trails
• Structured Diary/Blog for ongoing student and staff comments, reflection/ analysis
• Profile page for photo, summary CV, test results, grades and self-portrait
• Record of Achievements for verified, dated logs of experience & skills developed
• An Enterprise Management Audit Tool
• Overview of progress for Managers

What are the advantages of Enterprise Track? It...

• Provides flexible online records, easy to store and to find and access anywhere
• Provides controlled access to Employers, to Parents & to Teachers, from wherever they are
• Encourages self-managed learning. Improves IT skills, literacy and initiative.
• Motivates pupils to do more: they like seeing their achievements online
• Encourages students to reflect on and evaluate their learning
• Includes Group marking facility at the touch of a button, accessible from school or home
• Verifies claims for skills, attributes, capabilities by a 3rd party, therefore can be used to support CV’s, job applications
• Provides access for Management Team to survey progress at any time

• Enterprise Track 07 PLUS, 4 for 1 offer!
• One free system for a pilot Vocational Diploma

Apply now by contacting enquiries@lls.co.uk.

When you sign up for Enterprise Track you get

• A customised copy of the online Enterprise Tracking System
• Registration of all the staff and students
• Advice and support on the setting up of the Master Action Plans
• A visit for training key staff
• Free training guides
• Remote support by phone, email & online for up to 3 days per year
• Free Hosting

In year 2 and onwards, there is a much reduced fee for the system, to include upgrades and updating as tutor groups move up through the school. This fee reduces further each year. There is also a small hosting charge per person registered p/a. There is usually a charge for additional training visits.

We aim to train local leaders to take over the setting up and the training and support in the longer term.

In testing out the system with the pilot schools, we discovered that teachers themselves became excited about the possibilities it offered.

So LLS is also already being used in schools in all sorts of ways, for example:

• Tracking work experience & keeping an online diary
• Tracking project work and the skills developed through it
• Tracking students following a Personalised Curriculum
• Tracking NEETS (Students Not in Education, Employment or Training)
• Supporting and motivating de-motivated and disruptive pupils
• Involving parents in online monitoring of student progress
• Maintaining IEPs and EBPs online
• Maintaining online staff e-portfolios including CPD & TLA credits
• Managing Perfomance online
• Keeping Educational Blogs!
• Hearing and seeing 'the pupil voice'

The new Vocational Diplomas , when students are sometimes in school, sometimes in college and sometimes in school will need all the partners and players to track online to arrive at a coherent programme. LLS is ideal for this.

A free system will be offered to the first School or College which would like to pilot this with LLS

Tools for Training Enterprise Teachers and Students

1. Understanding Enterprise: Are you a can-do person?

A light-hearted quiz and some serious thinking about what this means in practical terms. Why is it that some people CAN DO and some people just CAN'T?

This staff development tool is on the Resources 2 CD-ROM which has been distributed free to all Secondary Schools by S’EEN, the Schools Enterprise Education Network. Available also for free download on the web at www.enterpriseinschools.org.uk.

2. The Can-Do Quiz

A serious attempt to score and rate your own enterprise skills. Can be used by staff and pupils.

3. The Learning Preferences Quiz: theorist, pragmatist, reflector or activist?

This quick quiz prints you out a neat diagram to show which kinds of learning suit you best. Plus some deeper thinking about whether you’ve got the mix right.

LLS was first market tested with 250 small businesses as part of an ESF/ADAPT project at Brunel University. LLS has been active since 2001. So far, the system has been developed for Small Businesses in West London, for the Technology Colleges Trust, the Trident Trust, the Isle of Man, the University of Central England and its Partner Small Businesses, Surrey LEA and Secondary Schools, Oxford Brookes University MY World Project, the SE Berkshire Education Business Partnership, the Reading CMI Professional Bodies e-tracking Project. In addition, Enterprise Track, Performance Track and IEP Track are currently being piloted in Secondary Schools

With the University of Central England, LLS has developed tracking tools for small businesses. With Oxford Brookes University, LLS has helped to test and develop e-portfolio systems. Currently LLS is working with members of Professional Institutes to help candidates to assemble the evidence they need for professional accreditation.

LLS has worked with the Trident Trust for several years, to track pupils on work experience. The Surrey LEA Project, implemented in partnership with the Trident Trust, is called Learn Anyway and has been thoroughly tested in an extended pilot over 2 years.

LLS is now focussing on working with schools, starting with the enterprise curriculum. The founder of LLS, Anne Jones, has long experience of enterprise learning and development through her previous work (see 'about the Founder').

• LLS tracks any kind of learning, not just e-learning
• For example: lessons, work-based learning, experiential learning, community service, continuing professional development, workshop learning, formal, and informal learning can all be tracked on LLS as well, of course, as e-learning courses.
• Systems are designed to provide only and exactly what the customer wants, with the customer’s own logo and choice of materials and online courses.
• Learning achievements can be verified before they are entered on the learners’ records so that the records have greater currency and validity.
• The system can be used top-down for performance management or bottom-up for self-managed learning, or with elements of both.
• Any kind of software can be used within the system, so that customers can genuinely select the learning materials which are best for their purposes.
• Learning achievements can be verified before they are entered on the learners’ records so that the records have greater currency and validity.
• The system can be used top-down for performance management or bottom-up for self-managed learning, or with elements of both.
• Any kind of software can be used within the system, so that customers can genuinely select the learning materials which are best for their purposes.
• LLS is easy and inexpensive to install: there are no installation costs. The system works even with a simple modem internet connection. Expensive megabyte lines and networks are not necessary. As the costs of internet connections and calls go down and the quality improves, running costs get cheaper every day.
• The system is robust: the web online version of the system has already been tested with 6000 simultaneous users. The system can be scaled up as more learners are enrolled. A back-up system of servers ensures robustness.
• Access is possible anywhere, any time: the web version provides a system accessible anywhere in the world. The user can get access at work or at home, in a learning centre or ‘on the road’. This is especially useful for large/ geographically dispersed organizations/ professional bodies.
• Online e-learners need support, recognition and encouragement. LLS does this by training up the sponsoring organization and also providing virtual learner support by phone and email.
• LLS is secure. LLS works in very close partnership with 186k, a rapidly expanding and highly innovative Internet Services Provider, based in Leeds. They do all the programming for LLS, manage and maintain the servers, and provide technical support 7/24/365. To date, service has been impeccable. The servers are extremely secure and robust.

Anne Jones is the Founder and MD of Lifelong Learning Systems. She is also Emeritus Professor of Lifelong Learning, Brunel University. Formerly she was a teacher, School Counsellor, Head Teacher, Senior Civil Servant, Author, Broadcaster and Professor. Anne has long experience of leading organizations and people into the future.

As Head of innovative and pioneering secondary community schools for over 17 years, she was developing Lifelong Learning and ICT initiatives even before the words were current. Her books include ‘Leadership for Tomorrow’s School’s. She has broadcast on radio and TV, notably on the panel of ‘Question Time’.

As a Senior Civil Servant in the then Employment Department, she master-minded and led a whole series of initiatives, aimed at bridging the gap between Business and Education: Education Business Partnerships, Compacts, the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI), Enterprise in Higher Education (EHE) and the National Record of Achievement. She was also responsible for the Careers Service. All this experience of running national programmes to develop enterprising people in schools (TVEI) and Universities (EHE) is very relevant to today’s national priority of enterprise education at KS4.

All this experience of running national programmes to develop enterprising people in schools (TVEI) and Universities (EHE) is very relevant to today’s national priority of enterprise education at KS4.

In 1995, she set up at Brunel University, the Centre for Lifelong Learning which won an IBM European prize for its work on Social Exclusion, Technology and the Learning Society. The Centre’s work focused on employability, using Information Communication Technologies to reach those SMEs and people the education and training system doesn’t usually reach.

LLS was developed with over £6.2 million of funding from the ESF/ADAPT fund and major Employers. By the end of the project, there were some 260 participating SMEs and some 2400 participating employees. Anne was responsible for the origination, design and development of the Lifelong Learning System.

Anne left full time employment at Brunel University in order to set up LLS and roll out the technology developed to people and organizations. Since then she has been invited to speak about e-learning at a number of major international conferences, for example in London, in Amsterdam, and in Stockholm.

She has recently become an accredited member of ALT, the Association of Learning Technologists. She has been made a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute, the Institute of Continuing Professional Development, the College of Preceptors (honoris causae), the City and Guilds Institute, the Royal Society of Arts and Queen Mary, University of London

A key reason for setting up systems for tracking Lifelong Learning, CPD, HRM, is the need to monitor the inputs, outputs and impact overall, on consistent criteria. LLS has evolved a 'tight–loose' system which allows for central and local development and monitoring.

Within LLS, a national Director can monitor the whole organization, Regional Directors their region only, Local Managers, their patch only, trainers/teachers their students only.

The Database becomes a Management Information System, available on the CEOs ‘dashboard’ so that the human factors are reviewed regularly along with the other key business information. Having a holistic system for managing Human Resources effectively means that the next generation of skilled people can be ‘grown’ in good time, and that organisation’s core values and skills can be promulgated effectively. Involving all personnel/ learners helps to motivate them and to build corporate loyalty and spirit.

The main benefit is the ease of accessing records and analysing data. For example, Personnel records can be cumbersome, space-taking, easily lost or so well guarded that they are hardly ever used. Annual appraisals and personal development plans can languish in cupboards and sometimes are never seen again, let alone reviewed and built on for the next year’s plan.

Online Records, on the other hand, can be used in a more flexible way. They are easy to store and to find, because they can be accessed from anywhere with a web connection. They become interactive tools rather than passive files

Other benefits of the LLS tracking system are:

• Saving money: In most organisations, all resources – particularly people and time - are precious and need used in the most cost-effective and effective way possible. Ultimately, online tracking systems save a lot of time and paper, especially as they can be accessed from anywhere, so people can find and work on them while they are away from their desk. No need to carry them around.
• Developing live, usable records: Electronic records of who has learnt what and when have the advantage of being easily accessible both by management and by the learner. They are easy to store and to find.
• Comprehensive records: recording all kinds of learning, not just formal courses, but also induction, on-the-job learning, in-house training, academic modules, online learning, test and assessment results.
• Detailed meaningful records: recording the stages in the learning, to provide details of what the person can actually do as well as motivating them to do more.
• A Management Information System: enabling the manager to see at a glance which people are keeping up-to-date and where the potential talent lies.
• Verification of data: enabling the manager to verify that the claims made are actually true. Learning claims can also be checked by external third party verifiers from a distance.
• More effective Learner Support: through establishing a system of mentors or learning managers, who may be real or virtual.

They do if they are well constructed, safely stored and backed up all the time as LLS servers most certainly are under the efficient management of 186k.

However, effective online systems also need users who are competent to use them and not afraid of the technology. The situation is rapidly improving so that:

• Online systems do work now that so many people have become e-literate. At the same time, more organisations have realised the further advantage of including all personnel in their overall development strategy. This is very motivating.
• However, all users need training and support when they use a new system.
• In an article in IT Training, Anne Jones, the founder of LLS, spelt out six key factors for success in e-learning/online learning. She reckons that motivating the learner is just as important as setting up the system, if the innovation is to work well.

To learn successfully, the learner needs to

• Understand the vision
• Understand what’s in it for them
• Feel confident to begin
• Be motivated to continue
• Be supported and valued
• Have external recognition

Organisations taking up an online system need to be aware of these factors. In schools, students are usually very competent with online systems, whereas some staff are still cautious and not all that confident. It is important that the teaching staff let the students manage their own online learning as much as possible. They will be agreeably surprised by the results! Our experience is that the students love the online diaries and seeing their achievements on the web. It motivates them to do more and boosts their confidence.