A case study : GLOW (Scotland)
| Context
Scotland has adopted a regional approach to providing a learning platform, called Glow, to all schools. Glow is an intranet for all Scottish schools. The project is managed by Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS), an organisation funded by the Scottish government that provides the educational community with advice, Glow was designed to provide a platform for secure web-based learning for all Scottish pupils aged 3-18, accessible via a web browser to anyone with an account. The platform is conceived as a common environment that the 32 administrative regions of Scotland can choose to use, within the framework of a tripartite agreement between these regions, the Scottish Government and the technology partner RM. It provides access to many Web services dedicated to the use of technologies in Scottish classrooms and is accessible anywhere at any time. Uses and Users Glow offers a secure environment, specifically dedicated to the school community. Funded by the Scottish Government, the platform is available anytime, anywhere through a simple Internet connection. This flexible access allows teachers, learners and other stakeholders to use Glow simply, fully and daily. • Pedagogic Uses The tools offered by GLOW encourage the sharing of teaching in various places, support inclusive education, and can help minimise interruptions to learning. Children and adolescents are very enthusiastic users of Glow. They are attracted by the interactiveness of the learning, which uses images, sound and video. The flexibility of Glow allows teachers to define tasks that pupils can complete individually or in groups, but also to communicate easily with other pupils and their teachers, giving pupils the opportunity to develop the four aspects of the Curriculum for Excellence. Glow allows teachers to cooperate with their colleagues, share ideas, courses and resources at school, in their region or nationwide. They can share their ideas on all sorts of topics, including useful educational resources, lesson ideas, student work, their views on teaching methods and their experience in the implementation of the Curriculum for Excellence. Teachers and learners can participate in major events organised through the Glow project, and thus find inspiration. Glow also has the advantage of providing a common protected environment in which teachers and learners can cooperate. Glow is mainly used for collaborative projects, and this is one of the first topics covered in the training given to teachers. At present these are most often put into practice in the classroom, within the school and within a specific age group. In the long term, greater interest will be paid to transnational projects and those related to the curriculum, organised between schools. Particular attention will be also given to using Glow to enable teachers and learners to engage with people and events outside their institution. • Communication Uses Glow is designed to improve communications between staff, students and parents within the school, across administrative regions, or across the whole of Scotland. Communication is enhanced by resource sharing, discussion forums, targeted news and web conferences. These tools bring school and home closer together. • Organisational Uses Glow helps users find, organise and manage various digital resources. Teachers have access to many educational resources through their Glow account, either directly or through cooperation with colleagues identifying similar interests. Various content can be searched, tagged and stored for simplified retrieval. Students’ work, including digital photographs, sound recordings and video clips can be stored in the Glow groups. All this creates a particularly rich pool of productions to stimulate thought and be shared among teachers, school managers, parents and the Scottish School Inspectorate (HMIE). Deployment Glow is a project originally conceived for a period of five years, supported by the Scottish Government. It began in September 2005, and although it could have come to an end in September 2010, the option of extension with the current provider (Research Machines) has been taken up. The current Glow project is scheduled to end in September 2012. The extension is accompanied by some major changes planned for 2010, in particular a streamlined version, Glow Light, which aims to provide users with a simpler and more flexible system. The platform is deployed in partnership with the administrative regions. Each of the 32 regions decides who can access Glow and the periods of access. Each region chooses its own deployment model, depending for example on : • the target groups: access provided to groups of associated secondary and primary schools • staff development: staff are first trained, then granted the necessary access • specific requests by institutions: access is granted as requested by schools. Glow is accessible to all Scottish school students, parents and staff through accounts provided by the administrative regions. The regions opt in to the service, and all 32 administrative regions of Scotland now deploy this service for their users. This equates to approximately 54,000 teachers and 750,000 pupils, with a potential user base of over 1.2 million people when parents of Scottish pupils are taken into account. At present, 31 of the 32 administrative regions count their users, and altogether 450,000 accounts have been established throughout the system: this is still far short of the 800,000 users (teaching staff and students) expected by the end of the contract period. Governance While allowing for the size and scale of Glow, different levels of governance can be identified. The highest level of governance is the Glow Board of Directors, which sets the policy direction for the management team and Glow stakeholders, according to milestones and expected outcomes of the development planning process. This body is composed of members of the Scottish Government and of Learning and Teaching Scotland, as well as representatives of the administrative regions of Scotland. At the next level is the Glow management team, which guides the programme teams of Learning and Teaching Scotland and RM. It comprises representatives of the Scottish Government, Learning and Teaching Scotland and RM. This body is responsible for reviewing various procedures, including implementation planning, business development, verification of customer agreements, deployment planning, raising revenue and optimising the impact of Glow. Various managerial bodies are then integrated into the Learning and Teaching Scotland and RM programme teams, and also within the administrative regions, to assist in the development and deployment of Glow locally and regionally. The implementation and development of Glow is carried through at local and regional levels. Each administrative region draws up an implementation plan, according to its own local educational priorities. Deployment planning is then contextualised in terms of these priorities and also the size, scale and staff present in the regions. Each administrative region has its own model, and they may be completely different from one another. Across Scotland, there is a tutor-style model for training, in which people who have a role to play in the regions are trained by the national Glow team and then pass on their new knowledge locally. It is put into practice in very different ways. Some administrative regions have followed this cascade training model, while others have opted for entirely online training. National events are organised regularly, to create and develop opportunities related to the curriculum, and also to nurture and grow online communities of interest. They may take place virtually or in a real-world venue and vary according to the model and the context.
Success Factors Access to equipment is essential to successful implementation. Factors such as student-computer ratio, initial equipment level (prior to launch), and connection speeds vary greatly from school to school. Some professionals in the education sector have yet to be convinced that in the twenty-first century, virtual communication and digitisation are part of everyday life. Some teachers remain attached to traditional pedagogy, and convincing them of the primordial importance of digital literacy in teaching and learning remains a challenge. In this particular field, one major advantage for Scotland is the implementation of a new Scottish curriculum (the Curriculum for Excellence). The scale of the exercise has also highlighted: • the importance of a method of stakeholder involvement : this consists in involving as wide and diverse a panel as possible, including teachers, head teachers and curriculum developers, because these users are particularly well placed to help define how ICTs can be used in class. Among the factors that have led to a significant increase in the use of Glow, three main elements or • the introduction of a new curriculum that has underpinned convergence between the use of new technologies and curriculum development. As regards synergies that proved particularly fruitful in terms of aligning uses and target groups, the following can be highlighted: • for teachers, the development within the platform of applications that match what they are trying to achieve in the classroom and for which ICTs are particularly effective In terms of the key governance factors contributing to extensive deployment, stakeholders mention : • a clear mandate for what is to be achieved Typically, the Scottish officials interviewed agreed that the key success factors in deployment of virtual learning platform are linked with : • defining an action plan |
