Regional Evaluation Report and Draft Final Report

As the Auto Share and Learn Project reaches its conclusion, the project team is completing the reports that represent the final deliverables. The framework of the AS&L portal is now in place and all key areas are populated with content. These have been evaluated in the Wales region and the outcomes used to draw conclusions about the effectiveness and value of the online resources for the supply chain companies. The evaluation report is available for viewing here.
The final project report is in preparation and a draft primarily covering the activities and outcomes in the Wales regional area has been circulated to the main project team. A collaborative Google Docs version is available for colleagues to edit online and will be the subject of discussion at the next project Board meeting.
The current schedule has all project activities concluding by the end of June 2015 and the final report to be submitted by August 2015. Apart from an input to the final reporting, all planned activities by Coleg Sir Gar have now been completed and all outcomes delivered.

June Update

The project is now in full reporting mode with the data being assembled and analysed for the evaluation report and the whole exercise being brought together in the project final report for Jisc and for general dissemination. The final report summarises the key messages from the evaluation report and outlines pathways towards sustainability with a user owned model and a realistic future funding model.
The key messages, particularly those relating to the evaluation of the training materials, have been consistently positive with comments about the content, structure and style. The effectiveness of the awareness raising modules produced by Coleg Sir Gâr was referred to by a number of responses by company employees (and trainers!) who were new to the topic. They reported that the modules provided a clear introduction to the topic and prepared well for more detailed underpinning knowledge.
Other responses made a range of different suggestions for improvement and additional content and this was very pleasing; the piloting exercise being exactly for that purpose. The final report will contain a future development plan that will draw from these user comments.

May Update

An action from the recent project meeting in Birmingham was to produce a briefing paper on project sustainability for consideration by the partners. This was completed, circulated, and is available for viewing as Briefing Paper 9 in the series. The paper outlines three different sustainability scenarios ranging from a continuation of the current project to the distribution of the portal as an income generating product. The paper includes a proposed sustainability action plan.

The project evaluation exercise in Wales is planned for completion by the end of May and invitations have been sent to senior managers in a range of supply companies, as well as regional business support organisations, and the responses are awaited. The results will be integrated with those already received from emloyees and trainers and a final report produced and made available on the project website and the regional project Wiki.

Project Evaluation

The AS&L project is now in its final phase and the main focus is on evaluation and planning for sustainability. In Wales, the evaluation exercise involves working with supply chain company managers and employers. It also involves evaluation with the work based trainers supporting skills development. The first two phases are now complete with 23 employees in 11 different companies completing the exercise. 7 trainers at Coleg Sir Gar also completed the evaluation templates and the results have been brought together for analysis in an Excel evaluation workbook. The third phase involving the company managers will be completed during May 2015 and at that stage the workbook will be fully populated, the results analysed and conclusions and recommendations documented.

April Update

A number of upgrades to the AS&L Portal for the Wales region were made over the last month. The first of these was the completion of the Wales Page in the portal Support area, which now provides a range of links to business support, finance and training resources for companies in the region.

All of the training modules produced by Coleg Sir Gâr for the project have been IPR reviewed to ensure that copyright issues related to the content had been fully covered. It was confirmed that all of the text was created by CSG as part of the module authoring, as were all the graphic images used (although some were contextualised versions of commonly used images in the literature and were acknowledged as such). All photographic images were either owned by CSG or were from copyright free sources, which were acknowledged in the text. The modules on both the live portal and the development portal have been updated with appropriate meta-data.

An IPR Management Statement for the materials contribution made by Coleg Sir Gâr was drafted summarising the process applied and the outcomes and is available on the project Wiki. Also produced were the next two in the series of Briefing Papers:

1. Briefing Paper 7: Portal Content and Presentation
2. Briefing Paper 8: Forum Organisation and Management

The Auto Share & Learn project timescale has been extended for a further three months beyond the original planned completion date of 31st April and will now conclude on 30th June 2015.

March Update

The major careers event at Parc Y Strade in Llanelli this month was a valuable opportunity to promote the project to a wide audience. A presentation was made at an Engineering Employers breakfast meeting to begin the event. The presentation gave the Jaguar Land Rover perspective of the project and was led by Rita Davey who outlined the crucial need for rapidly developing capacity and quality on the part of supply chain companies to meet the growth needs of major vehicle manufacturers.
The event included representatives from the Engineering Employers Federation, SEMTA and Industry Wales. This provided an opportunity to progress the objective of aligning the AS&L project outcomes with the services provided by those organisations. Arrangements were discussed for meetings to take this agenda forward.
A project steering group meeting this month planned the final phase up to June 2015, concentrating on the finalisation and launch of the online portal, the piloting and evaluation with supply chain companies, and the project evaluation and reporting requirements of Jisc.

January Update

Over the festive period all of the completed Coleg Sir Gar learning modules were re-branded as Auto Share and Learn modules and have been uploaded to the project portal. The user guide for accessing, evaluating and providing feedback on the modules has also been updated and is available in the portal support area.
It is planned that the piloting with the automotive supply chain companies will take place during February and the outcomes of the evaluation will be summarised here and reported in more detail on the regional project Wiki.
The current phase of project development will also include the population of the AS&L portal with regional business support resources. These will be presented through the portal support area and will be updated regularly to maintain the currency of information and to alert companies to new initiatives and opportunities for business support and funding.

Happy New Year!

With the festive season drawing to a close, planning is now under way for the final phase of the Auto Share and Learn project. A schedule is being finalised for the piloting of the learning resources developed in the Wales region, their evaluation and refinement. The outcomes will be summarised here as the exercise progresses and the formal reporting will be presented on the Deliverables page of the regional project Wiki.