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Excalibur: Sharing best practice from inspection
Excalibur raises standards in the learning and skills sector by sharing proven methods and techniques found during inspection with training providers and partner organisations. Offering a range of resources, learning materials and networks, Excalibur helps learning providers prepare for inspection and improve the quality of teaching and learning.
Why Excalibur was developed
“How do we help failing training providers improve the quality of their provision? Some training providers lack experience, knowledge, and human and financial resources to do this. Quality information is not readily available; when it is it isn’t always easy to implement” (Inspector 2002).
Committed to improving the quality of training and learning provision, in 2003 the Adult Learning Inspectorate created the online quality improvement service, Excalibur. By using best practice found during inspection, repackaging it so that the information is easy to interpret and implement, and making it widely available, Excalibur provides access to an unprecedented range of quality improvement material.
Today, Excalibur is a well respected quality improvement tool, receiving on average 30,000 visits a month, helping training providers improve and develop learners.
Through a combination of web pages, video clips and downloadable resources, Excalibur delivers:
• methods and techniques used by successful providers to provide high quality training experiences for learners – and suggestions on how to adapt them for providers’ own use. Good practice database
• a step by step guide to the inspection process, helping providers prepare for their inspection. Inspection Toolkit
• guidance on how to overcome common weaknesses identified by inspection. Building better practice
• downloadable staff development materials. Actions for quality improvement, Learner-centred self assessment
• a forum for sharing and developing quality improvement ideas and experiences. Quality Champion Awards, delegates’ site.
Responding to needs
Delivering a useful and valuable experience is central to the design and development of all Excalibur’s services. By involving users at all stages of the process we have ensured that Excalibur is easy to navigate, addresses accessibility issues, and performs effectively on a range of platforms. The site was awarded the Plain English Campaign’s Internet crystal mark, ensuring that all material is easy to understand and free of jargon.
When an independent survey (ECOTEC 2005) discovered that providers wanted personalised information, we created My Excalibur. This web portal filters information according to a user’s needs, providing a simple route to relevant information from Excalibur, events, associated links and publications. See My Excalibur at http://MyExcalibur.gov.uk.
Proven benefits
Excalibur is reaching its audiences quickly and efficiently. In the short time Excalibur has been available, according to ECOTEC’s evaluation of its impact, three in five users already agree that Excalibur’s quality improvement materials are leading to clear improvements in teaching and learning.
‘I can’t praise Excalibur enough. In the past ten years of development in work-based learning this has got to be in the top three of the best things that have happened. One of the other two is the ALI inspection in general’
Work based learning provider, East Midlands
Arline Wilkins
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