Oxford and Cherwell Valley College, is the largest provider of FE training in Oxfordshire, UK. Sally Dicketts, Principal and CEO, tells The PIE News about “flip teaching” techniques and its plans to market vocational education overseas.
The PIE: Your vocational colleges are starting to use “flip teaching”, as noted at Going Global. Can you explain the concept?
SD: At the moment in the UK education system, students explore content in a lesson with questions and answers and then are set an essay to do at home, which can be a struggle. Flip changes that dynamic. The teachers video fairly straightforwardly the content a student needs, and the student can learn and watch that content at home not just in class.
And if they don’t understand it the first time they can repeat it over and over again without anybody knowing how often they repeat it. If they’re particularly bright, they can do extra sessions that they can watch so they can stretch themselves.
The PIE: So the student learns at home?
SD: When you come into the lesson, you can then organise that content and that’s when you do the essay. So instead of doing it at home by yourself, you now are in groups and can actually discuss it in groups. For me, it relates to the changing nature of young people’s brains because of technology. They’re constantly on social networking sites, therefore the way they interact with the world is hugely different. So what we were looking at is how to engage them meaningfully.
The PIE: Can you give an example?
SD: So for instance, our catering students may do exceptionally well when they’re in the kitchen or the restaurant, but struggle in the classroom. So there’s something about classroom learning that doesn’t meet their needs. However you can’t ignore the classroom because caterers need to be able to write just as well as the rest of us. So that’s when flip classrooms come in handy.
The other thing Oxford and Cherwell Valley Colleges are increasingly doing is actually getting young people to work. Our Sports Science students have a unit on security for example. So we get them to do security checks on the campus, and now we’re getting them to run our car park on the weekend which they’re paid for. So they’re actually experiencing the world of work in a meaningful sense.
“In America, schools where they have been using flip have definitely shown improvements”
The PIE: Has student achievement noticeably changed since you changed teaching style?
SD: We’ve experimented this year for the first time but only in a few areas. We’re expanding it into six areas next year because in order to do this you’ve got to prepare your teachers. But already we’ve seen retention is better in some areas. I think until we’ve done it for about three years it’s still fairly anecdotal. In America, where they’ve done it for longer, the schools where they have been using flip have definitely shown improvements.
The PIE: What is the typical student demographic at your colleges? You have three don’t you?
SD: Yes, but I don’t think there is a typical student. We are truly comprehensive so we have some of the most deprived young people, young people who have either flirted with or been in prison, to young people who are from pretty privileged backgrounds. In total across the whole group of colleges we have 5,500 16 to 19 year-olds, as well as 10,000 adults. I would say we literally represent all socioeconomic and black and ethnic minority groups. [More>>]
The PIE: In terms of their onward transition through academia, do most of them go on to do a degree?
SD: No they don’t. About 40% go on to study a degree. A further 20% go on to further education.
The PIE: Regarding your overseas footprint, do you have an international office actively recruiting?
SD: We have an international programme and in Reading we’ve just developed a relationship with Saudi Arabia and Korea. But overall this year is the first year that we’ve looked to having an international strategy, and we are now considering appointing a full time international member of staff.
The PIE: What do your programmes offer international students?
SD: We have a variety of academic and employer-type pathways. Students who want to do nursing can do that pathway, which could lead to a variety of degrees. Some do a travel and tourism pathway, others a business studies pathway, both of which lead on to relevant degrees. The pathways offer English language tuition as well. Some students use the pathways to go back to jobs in their own countries. All the pathways are ultimately aimed at preparing students for a career.
The PIE: Do you liaise with other vocational and FE colleges about the international sector, and do you see very much change within that whole strata in terms of international positioning?
SD: Yes. I think colleges used to have a scattergun approach, where you go to everything and just hope some students fall out of it. I think people are now focusing on their niches. They are looking at their uniqueness and selling that internationally rather than selling everything.
“Colleges are looking at their uniqueness and selling that internationally rather than selling everything”
The other thing we and lots of other colleges are doing is looking at the employers in the area and where they do business. So if you’ve got a local employer that does a lot of business in Mumbai, it may be worth building a relationship with them. We could then end up training their employees, suppliers or whomever from Mumbai. So we’re tapping into employer-based communities abroad much more.
The PIE: I don’t know if there’s a membership body which does cohesive marketing on behalf of the whole sector but I think that would be a great idea.
SD: The association of colleges, which we all belong to, has an international office and they’re definitely entering certain markets – one of which is India – and you can join and be part of that drive in India. And the other area they’re looking at is Brazil.
“We’re tapping into employer-based communities abroad much more”
The PIE: Do you have a view on how the impact of the visa reforms will affect your potential for international recruitment?
SD: Clearly visa reforms impact on international recruitment in our sector because it is far harder for students to come to the UK to take vocational courses at levels two and three (equivalent of a GCSE/ A-level). However, such courses are a ladder to better courses, getting students’ maths and English up so they can progress, but now it is much more difficult for international students to do these.
They can only really come here to do a degree, but for many of them, they’re not ready to undertake degree-level provision.
