Building Collaborative Communities

[David Hughes]

Dear Forum Colleagues,

What a tremendous idea - it is very exciting coming in at such an early stage of development.

I'm currently doing work in the 14-19 curriculum in the UK.

The idea behind the 14-19 curriculum is to overcome the drop out rate of students at 16 due to an inapproproiate curriculum.

My research so far suggests a dire need for simple methods for schools and their potential curriculum contributors such as colleges, training providers and employers to communicate with each other, post curriculum materials which go beyond school based simulation and track student progress as part of learning improvement rather than as a simply administrative affair.

My own efforts are encapsulated in OPEUS (www.opeus.com) where we have use word processing skills as the basis of the design of a functioning system that all can access from the lowest level of IT competence.

Are there any other ways forward which users have experienced and in particular, what has been the effect on raising educational standards, motivation, learning outcomes and student retention?

On another tack, I am part of a group of educational professionals that run Educationalists (www.educationalists.co.uk) any education forum members are welcome to take a free lsting with the site to broadcast details of their work.

Best wishes for the sucess of the Forum,

David Hughes