4th day in Oxford. Vocational studies and Virtual Learning Environment

In my fourth day, i have visited the City of Oxford College. These kind of institutions are focused to adult education, including in this concept early school leavers, with both vocational and university studies.

My main interest was the model they are using to introduce technology. I attended to a class by two of the the "early adopters" of the institution.The class was in a vocational course about videogames designing. Students were between 18 and 25 years old. I eventually discovered that they were very motivated and could observe some awesome project the made. The classroom was quite new and with top-notch computers, able to work with a 3D design heavily-oriented course.

They use Canvas Virtual Learning Environment. It is a very complete VLE, very agile and with full mobile support, to use as repository, communications, blog, task asignment... In my impression, it is like a vitaminated moodle: with a lot of options, but smoother and user friendly. With Canvas, everything is digital and no textbook is needed.

The course is heavily project-oriented, with no examinations. So, they have to follow a very detailed process to get evidence about the content and competences learned. It's a cumbersome task, made a little more easy thanks to the tool Promonitor, specifically designed with that in mind. Unfortunately, it's not user-friendly, but i know no other programs-apps more powerful for a complex evaluation system.