3. 3
Case Study
Key Drivers
■ Software licence costs.
■ Potential of collaboration.
■ Limitations on server capacity.
■ Constraints to learning
approaches.
■ Limitations of buildings,
Limitations of bandwidth and
room utilisation issues and
student software costs.
■ Need to integrate information
systems.
Intended Beneficiaries
■ Employers.
■ Learner.
■ Prospective learners.
■ Partners.
■ Staff.
Impact to date and anticipated
The impact of these projects includes increased accessibility to applications tools by learners and staff
within college, at home and on mobile devices, together with employers. This increased flexibility is
enabling efficiencies in learning and support. These projects have demonstrated this in the context of
employer responsiveness. Barking and Dagenham are achieving this with Enterprise Projects. Bolton is
applying this to work-based learning with strong impact on the work of assessors. Telford College are
providing a cloud based software service to employers.
Barking and Dagenham College: ” The benefits of using Google Apps for Education are now realised by
our Enterprise Zone and we are now using it to communicate and manage enterprise projects. Across the
college, Google Apps is proving to be an effective tool for teaching, learning and assessment, with many
staff and students using it to communicate, collaborate and share resources and activities. Managers
are now embedding the use of Google Apps into our working practices in cross college meetings and
document updates e.g. Area Position statements.”
Colleges and Projects
Barking and Dagenham Online Business Incubator
Bolton College Chromebook Pilot
Telford College of Arts Technology Open Source App Store Project
Summary
These 3 projects have a business focus. Barking and Dagenham College is using Google Apps to provide
benefits for learners across the whole college. It is using Google Apps in particular, in its award winning
Enterprise Zone. Bolton College also uses Google Apps across the whole college with the use of Chrome
books being piloted by Work Based Assessors. Telford College have developed a service for businesses
enabling downloaded and supported use of open source software.
4. 4
Case Study
Bolton College: “Google Apps for Education is now fully integrated within the college's Personal
Learning Environment (PLE) and all learners have access to Google Docs. Paperwork related to our
work based learners is currently being redeveloped so it can be googleified enabling better sharing and
collaboration with learners, employers and assessors. Fully integrated cloud based paperwork will be in
place by end of June, with all partner organisations from September 13 expected to use Google accounts
for tracking and authentication”.
Telford College of Arts Technology:” We have a website which allows the use of open source software
by local businesses, backed up by technical staff who could offer expertise in configuring and the use of.
The project is now complete but we continue to add software. This project was brought about due to our
observation of local companies not being fully aware of what open source software can offer for far less
money. The key beneficiaries are the local employers in our area and some educational establishments”.
Supplier engagement experiences
These 3 projects relied on open source software so there were no commercial supplier related issues.
Bolton College:” Google Apps for Education was the only cloud solution which offered the integrated,
collaborative system we wanted to implement. Integration was reasonably straight forward supported
online”.
Telford College of Arts Technology:” We found it hard to find technical staff with the skills to train
others in the use of the open source titles but eventually found a number of resources we could call upon
if our in house trainer did not gain the skills quick enough”.
Technical Challenges
Some specific technical challenges were encountered. Barking and Dagenham College: “We lost
connection to the internet due an issue with JANET – this made access to GApps not possible via our
internal network. This was for around 14 hours”
Bolton College: “Not so far as the integration of the system, however, the SSO (single sign on)
authentication to Google Chromebooks was initially problematic. Also Google Chrome OS doesn't run
Microsoft Silverlight so some web services (EBS agent) are unavailable on the Chromebooks”
Change Management experience
A main theme emerging here is the need to sell the benefits of the technology to gain buy in and the use
of pilot groups to share findings and inform training. Another is the need for staff to be familiar with the
specific IT systems of business clients.
Bolton College: “The change management strategy used was to sell the benefits of the cloud technology
and what the result would be for all stakeholders and avoid talking about the technology. Culturally the
organisation is resistant to change, however, selling the benefits rather than the changes seemed to help
gain the buy in from staff”.
5. 5
Case Study
Telford College of Arts and Technology: “Change management has been tightly controlled within the
project. However we did find that once we started to inform companies of our facility it quickly turned
to how our technical staff could support their current technical facilities, which often did not need the
use of open source software. This was managed accordingly and where we felt the community would
benefit we took on the technical support for those establishments”.
Return on Investment
Barking and Dagenham are able to show specific savings by demonstrating the costs they would have
incurred to replicate what they have with Google.
Barking and Dagenham College: “To match what we have with Google we would need to purchase the
following at these estimated costs:
■ Video streaming and management (£5K)
■ Image bank (£1K)
■ Video Conferencing (£2K)
■ Document Storage (£10K)
■ Websites (ePortfolios) (£5K)
■ Mail with Calendars with SMS notifications (£5K)
■ Project management tools (£1K)
■ Admin control and portal (£500)
■ Blogging (£500)
■ Financials (£1K)
Bolton College: “We expect to identify savings on printing, staff time and postal costs”.
Telford College of Arts and Technology: “We were able to demonstrate the savings to a local
establishment of approximately £3K for an instance of Moodle delivered and managed through us”.
Lessons Learned
Barking and Dagenham College: “To purchase a secondary connection so that we can still use the
internet should our main JANET connection go down”.
Bolton college: “I would have ensured that the college was 'clear' of any audit relating to the area the
project would impact on as this oversight has led to severe delays in moving the project forward”.
Telford College of Arts and Technology: “We would have been more realistic about the readiness of
employers to move to open source software”.
