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» Learners' Forum

Outline of Learners' Forum Research

The Learners’ Forum project aimed to contribute to widening participation in learning in Hull.  There were two stages to this, firstly finding out what residents of the city think about learning generally, as well as their experiences of the courses available.  Secondly, taking that information and coming up with actionable recommendations for those involved with providing learning, and influencing them so that learning fits more closely with what people want and need. 

People’s views were gathered about specific topics related to learning, through whatever methods were appropriate, such as questionnaires, interviews and focus groups.  The idea was to get an overview of the topics from a representative group of learners, rather then duplicating the work of student unions and other bodies who focus on a particular provider or course, and come out with recommendations that could potentially be of use to all providers.  Two examples of what we have done are below:

The first task for the Learners’ Forum was to contribute to a baseline survey of attitudes to learning in Hull.  We interviewed a representative sample of 148 Hull residents aged 16 or over, discussing their views about learning, their experiences, and what issues encouraged them to participate in learning, or acted as barriers to learning.  The report Learning to Listen, Listening to Learn describes what we found, and also takes account of the quantitative data from the Hull Learning Attitude Survey, carried out at the same time by another company.  The report gave an insight into people's experiences of learning, the reasons they were or were not involved in learning, and therefore ideas about how courses could be improved from their perspective.  Ideas about a learning culture in Hull that followed from this report were developed further in Too much to do in the real world:  A discussion of views on learning in Hull.

One issue that emerged from our initial report related to entry-level IT courses.  People saw the importance of such courses and were keen to be involved in them, but there were indications that their experiences of such courses were not altogether positive. There were several potential reasons, including too low a ratio of tutors to students, different courses being taught alongside each other in the same room, issues about tutor competence, and the mixed ability nature of many classes.  These indications were drawn together in Basic IT Courses in Hull: A Briefing Paper.  Following this, we explored the issues further with a larger sample using a questionnaire, and found that although these issues did affect a significant minority of learners, the majority of experiences were positive.  The findings are discussed in Getting IT Right: Views on IT courses in Hull.

There have been lots of other pieces of work carried out by the Learners’ Forum including,

• Looking at what people think of technology use in learning
• Finding out the aspirations regarding learning and work of those on Incapacity Benefit, and how they could be encouraged to be involved in learning.
• Looking at the effects of incentives in encouraging people onto numeracy and literacy courses.

All these reports and more can be found in Publications.