Congratulations to the College of West Anglia’s Springboard TV project for recently winning a prestigious AoC Beacon Award for Leadership of Innovation in Curriculum Development. The project has developed an online TV channel which provides a creative environment for students and staff on the College’s media courses to share and showcase work.
The TV station forms part of a redesign of the curriculum to improve the student experience by increasing motivation and confidence and fostering a media work ethos. Student recruitment had been in decline with low satisfaction and poor levels of retention and progression. A large part of this was down to limited time for practical work and a poor technological resource base. To help address these challenges, the course team redefined the ‘learner journey’ and the core culture and values the curriculum needed to bring and explored they ways in which technology could enable and transform this process.
The development of the internet TV channel is at the heart of providing an innovative and exciting learning experience to support the development of contemporary media skills by providing a vehicle for sharing and showcasing work produced by the learners. “The facility has enabled development of a very learner centred, meaningful, realistic work environment which is challenging and engaging students leading to skills development and interactive assessment opportunities.” (College Principal, David Pomfret, p.12 project final report). Springboard TV has already been embedded within other curriculum areas at the College and is also being employed to improve communications, College links and support marketing initiatives. As a mark of its success the project has seen a marked increase in recruitment to the media course as well as student engagement in the curriculum resulting in higher retention and progression levels.
Further info:
www.springboardtv.com
www.thespringboardtvproject.co.uk