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Notes of Tutor Seminars:
 Tutor Seminar - 09.07.02:
Minutes of Meeting of the Tutor Seminar held on
the 9th July 2002 at Porchester Terrace
Those who attended:
Anthony Wigram, Sally Wigram, Avril Hanning, Tracy Pernice, Cliff Docherty,
Chris Fredericks, Michelle Delgado, Shofi Ahmed, Patricia Webb, Tracey
Fawthrop, Keith Penrose, John Adepoju, Shahab Reza, Simon Smith, Ademola
Olayinka, Shangara Singh.
1. Apologies for
Absence
Boyko Grigorov, John
Howlett, Daniel Gilson, David Somerset, Gabriella Gatward, Gianbattista
Montagna, Mary Sullivan, Mohammed Khan, Paul Oamen, Richard Burton, Debbie
Brixey.
2.
Minutes of last meeting
(a)
The buddy system / volunteers
It was noted that the buddy system is not yet
in place and that the volunteer group will need more supervision and support
from the office before it can develop its full potential. This is something
which will have to be deferred at present. Doreen Nicholas will encourage
volunteers to play a more individual approach.
(b)
The bulletin board/ message board
Various ideas were discussed including a
separated bulletin board for student matters. Cliff said that this would not
be a problem. It was agreed that an email would be sent to tutors to remind
them to use the message board.
( c)
A positive meeting had been held with Learndirect which was reported on the
website. Further discussions would be held with local organisations. It was
agreed that some on going learning provision would be extremely helpful. It
was a necessary part of obtaining funding from organisations like the LSC.
(d) The question of
homework was raised at this point and is discussed later in the meeting.
3.
Administration –Avril Hanning
(i)
Lesson Reporting
Avril spoke
about lesson reporting and we discussed the new lesson report format. She also
asked all tutor to double check all their lesson reports before sending it in
to the office, as there were still many mistakes. The charity has really grown
over the last year and the lesson reporting has doubled. Avril said that it
would save a lot of time if tutors could check their reports before sending
it.
(ii) Assessment
and Lesson Report 1
The question of
whether the assessment and first lesson should be done in one session was
discussed.
keith said that
he preferred to do the assessment and lesson report together. Tracy P said
that this would depend on the student’s disability and whether they could take
both sessions together. Anthony said that he did not want the student to feel
to pressured by a 3 to 4 hour session. Avril said that she would prefer the
Assessment to be separate from the lesson report and that in this way the
student’s did not lose out on another visit from the tutor. Anthony said in
order to be fair to all tutors that if the assessment and lesson report 1 was
done together tutors would be paid a fixed fee of £50. Keith stated that
students were very eager to start and that they liked to start with lessons
immediately. Patricia says that what she does is inform the student’s
beforehand that she will only be doing the assessment and that the lessons
will be done on another day. Avril said that this was a good idea.
It was agreed
that we needed more time to do some more research into this and that we need
to think about it first. Anthony also stated that tutors should use their own
initiative about this.
(iii)
Cancellations
Simon Smith
raised the subject of cancellations. He said that there were many
cancellations which disrupted tutors diaries and he felt that some fee for
cancellations could be paid.
Patricia stated
that we should consider paying tutors something if there were more than 3
cancellations a week by students. Chris suggested that we should fine students
£5 for any cancellations. Tracey F suggested that that we should state in the
student’s terms and conditions that they would have to pay a fine for the
cancellation of a lesson. Cliff said that we have to be careful to regard the
fact that many disabled people cannot get to college and this was the reason
for them applying to U Can Do I.T. where there was more flexibility.
Anthony summed
up. He said that this was a serious problem which would have to be addressed
by the office. Further research was needed. A cancellation charge might be
appropriate. This could vary depending on how long before the lesson the
cancellation was made. It was agreed that further ideas would be circulated to
the tutors.
(iv) Invoicing
Avril reminded
the tutors of double-checking all their invoices and reports before sending it
in to the office. She said that if all tutors played their part it would be
much easier for us to get things done speedily.
4. Structure of
Course
Anthony invited
the tutors to discuss the idea that students should make notes and keep a
diary of their work while the course was in progress. It was important for
students to be able to work on their own once the course was finished.
Shangara said that notes do help the student’s retain more information.
Patricia said that she encourages her students to use a diary and her visually
impaired students also have diaries via voice recognition and that they always
have a reference point when she is not there.
Shahab said
that he felt that if his students make notes that they do retain more
information. John agreed with him in this regard. John also said that he sets
homework every week and communicates with his students via phone or email to
see how they doing with their homework and this is working out fine. His
students are doing very well and have concentrated on doing their homework.
Keith said that he thought notes were a good idea but said that if they did
this during the lesson it would really slow things down. Patricia said that
tutors should set different tasks of homework every week. She said that if
they have their set tasks to do it would keep the momentum going and motivate
the students. Keith also said that he found that students lie about doing
their homework and that some students are not very bothered about it. Anthony
said that he was now checking all lesson reports and would like to emails to
students who had done maticularly well or those who had failed to do their
homework. Keith said that Anthony’s confrontational approach works for him but
not for the tutors and they need to encourage students in a different way.
Patricia said that there are some student’s that are chuffed when they
receive an email even if it says that they have not done the homework.
5.
Student Recruitment
Cliff Docherty went through what he has been
doing in the last few months. He said that recruitment has been a bit slow the
last few months while he was working on the Annual Report.
He stated that
the key recruitment successes were Motability Magazine, he stated that we have
had steady referrals from Action for Blind People. He said that tutors are
also referring students to us regularly. He mentioned that the Dial a Ride
magazine circulation is impending with our article also appearing in it. He
also mentioned that we would also be featuring in the Hearing Concern Magazine
and various local papers.
He mentioned
that all the promotional material is ready and that tutors should feel free to
send out as much as possible. Cliff said that his next target group is
doctor’s surgeries. He also mentioned that we needed more publicity and that
if anybody knew someone famous that would promote the charity to let us know.
Tracey F said that she knows of a parents group in which we could be able to
contact children with disabilities and how we could help them. Cliff said that
he would look into that.
6.
Funding Update- Chris Frederick
Chris spoke about his fundraising for the
charity and how challenging he was finding it. Chris mentioned how difficult
it is to obtain government funding and that the Learning and Skills Council
and the London Development Agency has not funded us this year. He said
however, that this would not deter us and that we will have to rethink our
next application. He mentioned that we are currently working on an application
to the Lottery Bid. He also mentioned that we got a cheque this morning by the
Richard Vere Foundation for £2,000.
Student
Fees
Chris suggested
that there is another way of raising money and that this would be by
increasing student fees and having a sliding scale of costs for students on
certain incomes. He mentioned that some students could pay more towards their
course than others and that those students who could afford to pay more should
pay more for the course. Chris mentioned that there are many charities that
are only willing to help students who are on income support and that those
students who can afford to pay for the course will pay something towards it.
He suggested that we should ask a third person such as a social worker to
verify the amount of income each student gets per week. He said that we could
ask for photocopies of a benefit book or copy of a bank statement. Anthony
said that the sliding scale should be thought of very carefully.
Chris said that
some students could use the Lion’s Club who would sponsor them to do the
course. Simon said that this would put students off and that getting further
documents would mean extra work for students and should be reconsidered. He
also said that a lot of students would feel stigmatised in joining a club and
that the club may use the student for their own benefit and said that he did
not find this encouraging.
Anthony said
that fundraising is extremely difficult and that we have to look at other
avenues of raising money. Patricia said that there are quite a few of her
students who would be able to pay more. Keith stated that some of his
student’s are running their own business and are making a good living out of
it.
Anthony asked
the tutors if they would feel comfortable in asking for evidence of benefits
student’s are on. Shangara said that he would not be happy doing this.
Patricia mentioned that if they did have to prove their income that they would
be more honest about it and Anthony said that this was a good point. Shahab
asked whether we could not obtain this information from their national
insurance number but Simon said that this information would not be given to
outsiders. Keith said that student’s do need to pay to feel satisfaction.
Anthony said that a fees increase would make a big difference. The tutors
agreed that they would feel reasonably comfortable in asking for proof on
benefits. John Adepoju mentioned that a student of his would like to make a
contribution to the charity and Anthony told him to give her the offices
number.
7.
Development- Cliff Docherty
(i) Annual Report
Cliff
mentioned that the Annual Report was ready for distribution and that he would
be sending copies to tutors and if they needed anymore to contact him in the
office.
(ii)
Photographs
Cliff mentioned
that we do need new pictures constantly and that tutors should send in as many
pictures as they can. He mentioned that the pictures can be scanned and that
tutors should feel free to send him the negatives of film photographs as these
produce higher quality results. He also asked that digital photos be 1024x768
or larger. He thanked everyone for all their efforts in helping him with the
Annual Report.
8.
Tutor Training- Patricia Webb
Patricia Webb spoke about the Jaws training
which she does on a one to one basis with the tutors at her home. She
encouraged all tutors to do the training and Shahab said that he would like to
learn, Patricia suggested that he trains in Jawbone. John Adepoju and Shangara
Singh also mentioned that they would like to learn Jaws
Simon Smith
mentioned that he would like to learn the Dragon Dictate.
Patricia also
handed out Supernova packages to tutors Simon mentioned that he had done the
Action for Blind training course and that it was really good. Shofi said that
he also went for this training and enjoyed it. Patricia also mentioned that
there is a new service, which reads your emails to you, namely MSN Messenger
and Smart Butler.
9.
Simon Smith – User Friendly Lesson Report System
Simon Smith
suggested that a much simpler form of lesson reporting could be created if a
data base was set up on the website. He said that this would not be a
difficult thing to do and would be most effective.
Shangara
suggested that we have the lesson report system on the website and that we
would only then need to log on to it and the reports would be filed and
processed all in one. In this way tutors can fill in the form online and this
would be updated straight to the database. Once this is set up it will
automatically send and email to the student and tutor and office.
Patricia said
that she found using a disk very useful and that it is a way of keeping track
of all lesson reports done. She said that it was so much easier on a disk.
Ademola said that he also found disks to be extremely useful and convenient.
Avril also asked
tutors to keep a copy on disk and some emails do get lost along the way and it
would be a good back up system for all tutors to have.
Simon said that
we could make it part of our web page and Shangara said that it could be
received as email. Shangara said that there would be an automatic filing
system on the database.
Anthony said
that a problem could be that it would be somewhat impersonal. Simon said that
it should cost between £500- £1000. Simon said that scripting could be hard
and that we needed to get a professional in to do it.
It was agreed
that this suggestion would be further considered.
10. Distance/ Long – Term Learning
Anthony mentioned that we will have to focus
on this in the future and that it was important for fundraising.
11. Date of AGM – 16th of October
Anthony invited all tutors to come to the
next AGM, which will be held at the Abbey Community Centre and 12pm. All
tutors said that they would let us know beforehand.
12. Website- Cliff Docherty
Cliff mentioned that the Annual Report is
ready and that it is also available on the website in plain text.
13. Any other business
(i)
Provision of Computers
Shahab said that
he had many deaf students who want to learn how to use the internet but that
they do not have a computer and asked whether there was any way to help them.
Anthony said that unfortunately we could not help in this way as it is a job
in itself and that we have tried it before but there is an enormous amount of
work which needs to be done. Programmes also need to be added to the computer
and these are very expensive and we also found that some students might sell
the computers and not use it at all. There was also the problem of storage of
the computers, the delivery of the computers and then we also have the problem
of the maintenance of the computer. Anthony said that the bigger charities
such as the RNID and RNIB do not do this because they realise that it is too
big of a project to take on as well.
(ii)
Extention of U Can Do I.T.
Course
Shahab also
asked whether we could teach students more such as Word, Excel and
Spreadsheets and Anthony said that at the moment it would be quite difficult
for us because we do not have the funding at the moment. Anthony mentioned
however, that we would have follow up sessions in the future.
The meeting then closed and refreshments were served.
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