4-page Case Study - Posted 4/18/2007
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Dutch College Empowers Disabled Students with Innovative Learning Portal
Situation
REA College Nederland is a vocational training institute for people with physical disabilities. Students can attend courses at five locations in different cities across the Netherlands where they can study a programme tailor-made to help them gain work and develop career paths. The college uses its specialist knowledge and experience to help students identify which jobs are practically suitable, what skills and competencies are needed, and what coaching is required to achieve those aims.
Students can specialise in several subject areas, including business and administration, information and communications technology (ICT), printing technology, floriculture, technology, healthcare, and social work. The college, however, is concerned that the nature of the students’ disabilities makes it hard for them to make the most of the facilities and support available to them.
Sjoerd Nijhuis, Project Manager, REA College, says: “Because our institution has only five sites across the Netherlands, some students have to travel considerable distances. By the time they have dressed and got ready to travel, it takes them so much time and energy that they are too tired to follow the classes. Because other students attending schools elsewhere may not receive adequate support, they also often have to miss classes. “Also, because the course requirements do not match the pattern of their lives, these young people often do not manage to complete their vocational training within the maximum period of two years. As a result, they miss the boat and remain unemployed for the rest of their lives.”
In 2004, REA College began to explore how it could better support its students. It needed a solution that matched its method of teaching and learning. “Traditional education is supply oriented,” says Nijhuis. “A teacher stands in front of the class, says his piece, and makes notes on the board. The students take in the material and prove their knowledge by means of assignments and written tests. This is not what we do.
“Education today is increasingly competency oriented. Each vocational training course has a competency profile. Because of their disabilities, our students can never achieve a complete profile. That is why we work with the student to decide on a suitable profile, based on what is feasible, the competencies a student has to date, and the skills sought by employers. Over two years, we train our students to gain these competencies and obtain qualifications that reflect their achievements. This is not just assessed by testing theoretical knowledge, but also by real-world skills such as giving presentations and working effectively in teams.”
This meant the college needed a solution that could be tailored to meet its precise requirements. “We were looking for more than just an ICT-based solution that was just an online chat environment,” says Nijhuis. “Contact teaching—that is, live teaching in the classroom—is simply the best way of teaching, and we wanted to get as close to that as possible with our virtual solution. We wanted a platform where students and teachers can meet, see, and show one another things—in short, a platform that can prepare students for a career they can pursue from home.”
Solution
The college decided to set up the Eminus project to address these issues under a single framework. It successfully obtained funding from the European Social Fund and a Dutch bank. However, it still needed to find the right technology to realise its aims. “We made some exploratory visits to various IT organisations, but we couldn’t find a suitable solution anywhere,” says Nijhuis. “We were not interested in winning plaudits with a quick fix. We wanted a good solution that would enable our students to follow classes from home in the best possible way.”
Then REA College heard about the Microsoft® Learning Gateway framework. “It turned out that their new technology perfectly matched what we had in mind,” says Nijhuis. Microsoft Netherlands put the college in contact with Winvision, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that specialises in the education sector, to help develop a bespoke solution.
Jeroen Vermeulen, Commercial Director, Winvision, says: “The outline of what Eminus needed to look like was clear. Once the project had cleared the ESF tendering process, we could start to fill in the detail. We then set about evaluating precisely what the solution should do and began to develop it.”
The core of a Learning Gateway solution contains Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 for communication and collaboration portal technology, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 for e-mail and diaries, Windows Server® 2003, and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005. Microsoft SharePoint Learning Kit helps teachers streamline online–test marking and learner-performance management and access standards-compliant curriculum content they can use alongside their existing materials.
Learning Gateway is a modular, scalable framework that seamlessly integrates software components to meet an institution’s exact requirements. For Eminus, Microsoft Live Communications Server 2005 offers presence information and real-time communications—including instant messaging and telephone—to support higher-quality contact online.
Winvision also added its Digital Portfolio solution—a SharePoint add-in that manages and tests student competencies online. “As soon as the student believes they have done enough work on the project to prove they have acquired a competency, they can ask a tutor to assess it with one click of a button,” says Vermeulen. “A list appears automatically—derived from Active Directory®—with the names of the teachers. The student selects a teacher and clicks on ‘assess me’, and the teacher instantly receives a message by e-mail and on their MySite, with a link to the project. The teacher can assess the project at a time that suits them.”
To certify the course, teachers must ensure no cheating can take place and that the student has received no improper assistance. Nijhuis says: “The Eminus solution gives us two tools. One is the webcam, the other is the remote desktop feature of Windows® XP. The assessor can use this to view the student’s screen, while the webcam helps see if anyone is with the student.”
Students access the system through their own personalised space on the SharePoint portal, known as a MySite. Each MySite is automatically generated on the basis of the student’s competencies and sets out the objectives for particular subjects and subject areas. Here, the student creates and gathers evidence that shows they have successfully acquired a competency, building a learning portfolio.
Vermeulen says: “You can compare it to a student at art school who goes to college every day with a folder full of drawings and designs, except that, on Eminus, the portfolio is completely digital.”
Benefits
The Eminus project has given REA College a learning portal solution that offers learners, teachers, and employers the ability to collaborate online in several highly innovative ways.
Taking Classroom Interaction to the Desktop
Students can now work online in ways that are closer to face-to-face teaching methods than ever before. Eminus runs virtual classes of up to four students and one teacher, using Microsoft Office LiveMeeting Server 2007 to connect the group in a video session.
Nijhuis says: “The first vocational courses to be offered using Eminus are taught in a way that is very close to classroom-based teaching. With the visual component, we are creating a form of blended learning—that is, where students work together using a combination of online and face-to-face methods.
“It’s as if students and teacher are sitting next to one another. They can talk to one another, interact, present to their group, and even use applications together.” For example, a student can show the rest of the class how they carried out a particular calculation using Microsoft Office Excel®, while the teacher and classmates watch on their own screens. The teacher can react immediately and even take over the activity to show and explain a particular section.
What is more, Eminus offers students an environment that makes learning independent of place and time. Nijhuis says: “Our platform is a schoolyard where the students can meet one another. They can look up information in the ‘library’ or discuss topics. This is precisely what we had in mind for our teaching system. The social aspect is at least as important as learning a trade. Usually, these young people hardly get out of the house, and now they have the opportunity to meet other people.”
Bringing Teachers and Employers Together More Easily
The Eminus solution also offers greater scope for teachers to benefit from easier collaboration across distances. Nijhuis says: “They now share one virtual staff room, even if one of them is in the north of the country and the other in the south. In cyberspace, they are one big club of colleagues who can consult one another and work together separate from their workplace.”
What is more, employers not yet set up for teleworking can use the Eminus solution to do so and gain access to a pool of potential employees. “We make space available on our servers so the company can provide a workplace through us,” says Nijhuis. “It is very easy to create workgroups and specify associated rights using the portal environment. In this way, you can create a one-on-one situation with colleagues within your infrastructure, as if the teleworker were simply present in the office. This is the ultimate form of contemporary working.”
Teachers and employers have found the solution simple and intuitive to use. Vermeulen says: “The ease with which people pick up the new way of working was shown recently during a training course involving nine teachers. They were introduced to Eminus and very quickly grasped how the system worked and what they had to do.”
Supporting New Educational Methods
Using the new solution, learners, teachers, and employers can benefit from ICT designed to support the Eminus approach. Vermeulen says: “SharePoint Learning Kit supports competency oriented education.” What is more, teachers find the assessment tools easy to use and believe they work very well in practice. Nijhuis says: “I suspect we can see more quickly than teachers at other schools when parents are helping with an assignment.”
Improving Quality of Life and Saving Taxpayers’ Money Students are also empowered with more opportunities than they would otherwise have. Nijhuis says: “We are dealing here with a group of students with a decent level of intelligence that they cannot apply in conventional education. With Eminus, we have created an opportunity for disabled students to prepare themselves for their own future, one in which they can provide for themselves, and can function well within society.”
Eminus also has major significance for society as a whole. A young person on benefit will cost society more than €1 million up to the age of 65. Empowering disabled students with the ability to telework reduces the burden on the welfare system. And other more tangible savings are realised in the short term. Nijhuis says: “Our students are currently transported to and from school by taxi, at a cost of €100 per day. This means, in one academic year—that is, 400 school days—we can save €40,000 per student in transport costs.”
Looking to the Future
Other parts of the education sector are set to benefit from the Eminus solution—in the Netherlands and possibly further afield. The college has a powerful, scalable framework capable of supporting other projects using a similar approach. The college is looking at developing virtual classrooms for higher education and a teacher training portal and creating specialist learning labs in schools for physically handicapped children—combining the Eminus method with face-to-face teaching.
Nijhuis says: “We would like to have the students get together regularly where possible. This means we could create open learning centres that can offer a full range of courses accessible to everyone.”
The college is also investigating how it can use its surplus capacity to help other European countries. “Seven countries have already expressed an interest,” says Nijhuis. “Our platform is easily scalable with the Microsoft solution. We are ready. All the countries need to do is ensure materials are available in their own language.”
© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
