Seb Schmoller

Current Doncaster AFCLS family learning programmes are mainly delivered in schools and community settings. The provision ranges from two hour ‘taster’ workshops to longer accredited programmes.  Programmes are aimed at engaging adults in their child’s education, whilst providing them with the skills to support their child and address their own ‘skills for life’ learning needs.

The service has, since June 2005, had the opportunity to carry this family learning ethos forward through a family e-learning project. This family e-learning project is resourced via the European Regional Development (Objective 1) fund to develop e-learning opportunities for families. The project has initiated a range of activities to achieve this aim, including a family e-learning course that includes a tutor supported ‘blended’ mode of delivery, incorporating high levels of activity based learning. The family learning elements target the age group of the intergenerational activities for the child(ren) of between aged 7 and 11,  to support the school learning transition phase from key stage 2 to key stage 3 of the national curriculum.

To help inform the direction of the family e-learning project and communicate the final project outcomes to funders and associates. 

The evaluation includes a two stage process:

Part 1: A mid-term evaluation, to review the success of the project plan and products to date (June 2007)

Part 2: An end of project evaluation including an overall analysis of the project outcomes, and any recommendations (July 2008)

Support across all areas of the project.

Our overall approach is based on three key features:

• Design the detailed methodologies on the basis of a detailed understanding of the project, differentiating between the purposes of the formative and summative evaluations.
• Apply quantitative as well as qualitative measures.

It is too early to report on results.