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REAL Learning, Glasgow
A number of partners in Glasgow, led by Scottish Enterprise Glasgow, have been running a very successful open learning project for a number of years. The 'REAL learning project' was based originally in community libraries and has spread to workplaces and now has over 85,000 members. Delivery is mostly through the web, backed up by specific physical courses and mentoring. The programme has been very successful in attracting the disaffected back into learning, principally by offering them courses in things that interest them - music, DJing, web radio etc. The project's success is leading to challenges of scale, and of replication - are there lessons here for other projects and partners? IFF have been asked to assist with this next phase of development. Specifically we will help first to evaluate the present success from a science of qualities perspective. The project has been very successful and very intuitive - so a first step is to learn what the project leaders and participants already know but have not articulated. A second element is to consider the governance issues involved in scaling the project. It has an emergent property and is primarily online: how might the human management system navigate the scaling issues as easily as the technical infrastructure can?
REAL learning partnership, Scottish Enterprise Glasgow, Centre for Creative Communities.
Last updated: 3 Dec 2011
Jennifer Williams and the Centre for Creative Communities are key partners with IFF in pursuing this project. IFF Member Jennifer Williams of the Centre for Creative Communities and Andrew Lyon have produced a report based on a series of interviews with people involved in the project in all roles. This qualitative evaluation explores the lessons that can be learned from the early success of the project, and the spirit that needs to be transmitted and maintained as the project grows. IFF are also writing up the methodology developed in order to conduct this particular piece of research - a methodology for evaluation from the science of qualities perspective. We hope this will have wider application.
