The Skills Development Hub is a package of free interactive digital resources designed to support FE college educators and independent training providers who teach young people to acquire the high-quality skills aligned with international best-practice. These skills are essential to UK businesses to allow them to compete successfully in domestic and overseas markets and to attract foreign investment.
Since its roll-out in December 2020, 400 FE colleges and independent training providers have accessed the Hub, benefitting more than 1,500 young people across the UK. In response to users’ feedback, we’ve made several changes to improve the Hub experience.
Registration
We’ve introduced a new two-step registration process to allow quick and immediate access to the Hub’s resources. You simply complete the new, shorter registration form and then receive the welcome email inviting you to login and create a password. Then you’re free to explore the resources, work through them and share with learners within minutes.
Create bespoke learning groups
You now have the have the option to create learner groups allowing you to easily allocate specific learning modules to a group of learners or specific students, set deadlines, reminders for completion of the modules and run reports to check individual progress and assessment results. The way the content is structured means that you can also send messages, organise events and issue email notifications to your learners. Each of these tasks can be done in under a minute.
All modules can be delivered in face to face or online environments, and by familiarising themselves with the resources, educators can decide which modules can be used for a whole-class session, as homework, or in one-to-one sessions or tutorials. Modules can also be used on a standalone basis, giving you the flexibility to analyse and respond to individual learners’ needs.
New resources
We’ve added more lessons, guides, case studies, scenarios, videos, downloadable lesson plans, test projects, assessments, and evaluation sheets to all our educators’ CPD resources: Develop students’ skills with our resource library Coaching High Performance CPD educator resources.
The ‘Embedding competition excellence module’ provides educators and training providers with useful information, downloadable guides, templates and checklists to support you to embed competition activities in the classroom and to run competition activities at your institution before signing learners up for WorldSkills UK Competitions.
These competitions attract over 3,000 competitors to the National Qualifiers each year. They are designed to stetch and challenge participants getting them to demonstrate a wide range of technical and transferable skills, including time management, reliability, resilience, and performing under pressure. Which employers are increasingly looking for as essential characteristics of high-performing employees.
Evidence shows that embedding competitions in the classroom benefits both learners and educators. A more dynamic curriculum develops coaching skills and improves levels of engagement for everyone, while educators can meet and work closely with colleagues in their field, enhancing their own personal and professional development.
Improved look and feel
The Hub is now more intuitive, accessible and easier to navigate. A keyboard-accessible navigation guide is also available for users who do not use a computer mouse.
We’ve revised the design of the main dashboard, to aid recognition and speed navigation with colour-coded categories (red for educators’ and blue for learners’ resources) and new icons. We have also added descriptors to all dashboards, so users know exactly where they are on every step of their journey.
This programme of continuous improvement is ongoing to ensure that this inclusive free to access service remains at the leading edge of teaching practice and supports educators to enable learners to fulfil their potential.
