Computer training for blind deaf and disabled people in their own home

Tutor Seminar - 01/07/2003

Tutor Seminar held on 01/07/2003 12:34:01 at 16 Porchester Terrace

Present:
Anthony Wigram (AW), Sally Wigram (SW), Avril Hanning (AH), Lisa Oram (LO), Faye Sherry (FS), Chris Garbett (Chris), Chris Frederick (CF), Cliff Docherty (CD), Tracey Fawthrop (TF), Shahab Reza (Shahab), Gabriella Gatward (GG), Debbie Brixey (DB), Evelyn

Apologies:
Tracy Pernice, Sally Fonseca, Patricia Webb, Fitwi Kebede, Judith Bartholomew, Simon Smith, Gianbattista Montagna, Helen Dashwood, Amjad Rehman, Lorraine Manning, Michelle Delgado, David Somerset, Arlene Munir, Adefemi Adedapo

Minutes:
1 Minutes of last meeting

The minutes of the last meeting were read. No comments were made.

2 Administration

AH introduced Lisa and Faye to the meeting. Faye is our newly appointed administrative assistant and will start work on 7 July.

AH welcomed the new tutors.

Criminal Records Bureau – AH said that all those tutors who had not yet obtained clearance from the CRB must do so as soon as possible. If there are any queries, please contact the office.

The tutors were asked their thoughts on the subject of cancellations. AH explained that we currently have 120 students and we are only giving approximately 40-50 lessons a week.

AW outlined the pilot scheme of asking students for a £15 deposit cheque. If the student cancels without good reason, then an administrative charge will be taken. If the student doesn’t cancel, then the cheque will be returned at the end of the course.

DN was concerned that the charity may get a bad reputation for charging disabled people when they are ill.

DG said that he didn’t want to make judgements on whether he felt a student was really sick or not and therefore had a good reason to cancel.

KF suggested that a clause be added to the terms and conditions stating that a fee will be taken if a cancellation is made.

KP wondered if the charge for the course was too small and invited people to take advantage. It is easy to cancel if you only paid £1.

Shahab suggested including an admin fee in the course price.

CF suggested giving students an incentive to complete course. Or a “three strikes and your out” rule.

TF said that most of her students did not realise that they would receive a certificate at the end of the course. Maybe a clause should be added to the terms and conditions stating that a certificate will be awarded only if course is completed to satisfaction of tutor.

KP asked if an analysis had been done of students who cancelled. Maybe there is a common link – eg students who have lessons in the evenings etc.

AW asked KP and TF, as they have the least number of cancellations, the secret of their success. TF said that she tries to schedule all ten lessons at the start of the course. This then gives students the ability to book other appointments around the lessons or to give plenty of warning if they have to cancel/re-arrange a lesson.

DB made the point of having a set time to complete the course. Maybe 12-15 weeks. If they do not complete all lessons in this time frame, they lose remainder of lessons.

AW asked tutors to consider planning lessons ahead and to try to achieve one lesson per student a week.

3 Job Search for Students – Gabriella Gatward

GG talked about teaching students how to look for work on the internet. She has found a few sites who offer various services and handed out some literature on the following organisations.
www.cv-library.co.uk who create CV’s free of charge.
www.opportunities.org.uk - Employment Opportunities are a charity helping people with disabilities find and retain work.
www.startbusiness.co.uk - A site for people who may be contemplating starting their own business.

She said that maybe tutors could help create a business plan as part of the students lesson.

CF said that this was a good incentive as he is continually asked by funders what happens to students when course is finished?

Shahab thought this was a fantastic idea and said that the Royal Association for Deaf People do job searches. Their web site also gives a lot of other information on employment (www.royaldeaf.org.uk)

AW asked if anyone would be interested in gathering more information on this subject.

PG, TD, Shahab, JP, NU, RB, PP, AO and Ramesh volunteered.

4 Development Notes for Students

CD said that basic notes on how to use Outlook Express were on the website. More notes need to be developed on other search engines.

PG had found a good web site (www.bbc.co.uk/webwise) which uses lots of graphics and is very interactive and interesting for students.

NU said that she uses screen shots which she finds very useful.

CD said that he wanted to make it more interesting but needed help/suggestions and asked if tutors could think about this and put something together for next seminar.

NM suggested a bound book, enclosing notes and other info and also blank pages for students to make notes.

RB thought a notebook was a good idea. Maybe if this included exercises/notes for the student to complete, and only if this is completed, then they would receive their certificate. Perhaps a formal UCDIT work book.

The issue of cost was made and DN suggested asking students to provide their own note book specifically for UCDIT lessons which both the student and tutor both used.

Carl thought this was a good idea, but made the point that some students are not able to use a pen and paper and perhaps an electronic notepad would be a better idea. This could be produced in pdf format which can easily be downloaded.

DG said this would be a huge task as most students have different needs and different levels of learning. BG agreed and said that he writes different notes for different students and finds that this works better than using standard notes.

Shahab said that written notes were a bit of a problem for BSL users as the use of grammar is different.

TF said that the great thing about the U Can Do I T course is it’s flexibility and every tutor has a different style and every student different needs. She said that the notes on the web site were great as a back up.

5 Student Recruitment & Development – Chris Garbett

Chris introduced himself and outlined his role and responsibilitie

1 Increasing the number of students.
2 Providing information to funders.

He will do this in two different ways:

Tactically – by sending leaflets, making presentations and advertising. (we have placed an advertisement which is going out in 10 days and will hopefully reach 110,000 people).

Strategically – thinking of the long term and making contacts/partnerships to establish a firm base of referrals.

Shahab asked if we had advertised in magazines published by the RNID? Chris said not yet, but they are on the list and will be targeted in future.

All tutors were given a bag containing literature and info.

AW asked if anybody wanted to elaborate on referrals.

TF said she downloaded the form from the web site and inserted the potential students name and also her name in section 13. She also splits the referral fee with any student who puts her in touch with anyone.

KP said that you have to remind students about referrals in every lesson, not just mention it once, as sometimes they do forget.

AW said that perhaps students could be taught how to download a form in one of their lessons. He also said that the 5th lesson could be dedicated to finding out/helping UCDIT where the student could make a list of people eg friends, family, clergymen, doctors, Local councillor etc and email info about UCDIT.

BF said that this could add to the students cost of running their computer. Perhaps UCDIT could approach BT or similar, to see if they would be interested in offering special terms to our students.

6 Funding Update – Chris Frederick

CF said that we were ahead of budget targets so far this year. This was due to receiving donations from most of our anticipated “big hitters” in a short period of time. This meant that raising funds for the next 6-8 months would prove difficult.

At the moment approximately 50% of our funding is from charitable trusts and it can be difficult to get further funding after they have already made an initial donation. We now need to target Government and Local Authorities.

CF asked for help from the tutors in this respect. He explained that each local authority has a voluntary sector grants unit who have money to spend. Each course costs £1,200, therefore, if each student (we currently have 120) is given say £1,000, this would mean a significant amount of money to the charity. It would be very helpful if tutors could ask their students if they would be willing to approach their local councils. CF has contact details of all relevant people from each council.

KP asked if CF had a standard letter to send. CF said that a phone call or visit was more effective and that he would be more than happy to accompany a student who was able to make an appointment. KP said that a lot of students are not able to travel and if they inserted a picture of themselves onto a standard letter, would this work. CF said yes, this would be an alternative.

NM noted that not many students would be up to this task and it would need a person with a lot of confidence.

DN said that perhaps both routes should be taken - housebound students could send a letter and more able/willing students could make visits.

7 Web Site

CD has made a lot of improvements to the website which is now working more smoothly. We can now tell how many people visit the site and which pages are being visited. CD mentioned that not many people are leaving messages on the message board and asked tutors to encourage their students to leave a message.

He was also looking for ideas that would make students go back to the site more often. He had one idea of a monthly column which would be written by different tutors on different subjects. Any more ideas would be welcome.

8 Tutor Training

AH explained that AbilityNet were holding a half day training seminar on 13th September. This would cover the same subjects as the last AbilityNet seminar, so would only apply to tutors who had not attended before. Tutors will learn different methods of using different types of equipment, eg sticky keys, adjusting computers to suit etc. Tutors will be paid for attendance. Please let AH know if you are interested.

9 Any Other Business

BG enquired about providing computers to students. AW said that this is something UCDIT does not get involved in, although we do give students the details of other organisations who may be able to help them.

RB asked if UCDIT had contacted hardware suppliers to see if they would offer any deals/discounts to our students. AW said it had been tried but had not been successful.

End of minutes.

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