Jo Harris, Education Manager from LOtC Quality Badge holder Field Studies Council shares 5 top tips for organisations delivering learning beyond the classroom experiences to help build a programme of quality educational outcomes.
1. Understand your own USP
It is really important to know what you are offering that draws people in. Your unique selling point consists of the qualities and characteristics that are unique to your organisation or offer that makes you stand out.
Whether it is a particular offer, or exhibition or location, think about what will make your target audience relish visiting you.
2. Know your audience
Ensure you identify who your customers or visitors are and, most importantly, what they want. If you are catering for school groups, are they looking for, for example, curriculum-based courses, activities to provoke imagination and encourage questions, for nature connection, to inspire confidence, to connect with their local area or heritage, or a mixture of all of these?
Often our schools need the Field Studies Council for the expertise that fills the teachers’ knowledge gaps. For example, with identification skills, or fieldwork expertise.
Other groups are utilising our equipment and access to ecosystems and locations conducive for high quality fieldwork. Others like the stress being taken out of planning fieldwork by handing it all over to an expert to ensure it runs smoothly.
Knowing what your customers need and want is vital to delivering quality outcomes.
So how do we know what our customers want?
Firstly, it is imperative that there is prompt and focussed discussion with groups, where as much information is collected as possible.
At Field Studies Council we do this through our sales team at the point of booking, this is then shared through our online system with central admin teams and tutors. All the emailed information, Q&As and discussion is accessible to all parties, so the needs of the customer are clear throughout the booking and planning stages. We also run teacher focus groups, using a voucher incentive; we attract teachers to ask questions and try out suggestions with. This data is collated and used by sales, marketing, and education departments for all our planning.
Lastly, we work in partnership with awarding organisations and strategic partners for the big questions such as curriculum change and response to Ofsted reports for example. Collaboration really is key to ensuring that as an industry we tackle the big questions in a joined-up approach.
3. Manage Expectations
Manage expectations, before, during and after the experience. Ideally the experience or course you are offering should be embedded in the long-term learning experience of your visitors. In order to achieve this, it is important to manage the expectations of the group before their trip, during the experience and after the trip.
The table below shows some examples of what this might look like.,
Before
Clear course outline and agreed objectives.
Clearly defined and guided pre-course work.
Collated pre-course info such as dietary, medical, SEND information.
During
Recapping objectives and expectations at start of course.
Ongoing discussion and monitoring of how it is going.
Clear outcomes set at the start and reviewed at the end.
Activity
Opportunity for feedback and evaluation.
Guided to suggested post-course work to embed the course in school syllabus.
Suggestions of further learning or related courses and resources.
All of the above are important to consider but, to focus on a particular area, consider what pre-course information you share with your groups to prepare them for the course or visit or activity. This might be a thorough kit list of what to bring or think about prior to the visit, to make sure they are prepared. Or sharing a task or activity to encourage groups to think about what they want to focus on during their stay will help them to feel reassured and manage their stay.
A good example is using a video or presentation to share with groups before their visit, to reassure and familiarise themselves with what to expect. For example, please see this short video that we share with primary schools so they know what to expect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhrOR8-OGaM
This can be shared with teachers, students and parents and be especially useful for learners with heightened anxiety to manage expectations. With older students on curriculum-based courses, pre-course learning can ensure that time is spent efficiently on outdoor learning, rather than topic-based learning.
4. Collect meaningful customer evaluations
However your customers or visitors experience your LOtC offer, it is vital that you collect their thoughts and impressions about the delivery and outcomes. This might be through online reviews, such as Microsoft forms, which produce handy graphs for you, and download into excel spreadsheets; or simple conversation to collect feedback, and everything in between.
Whichever route you take, making this easy to complete, straightforward and prompt is the key. We find the best time is at the end of the course, or as soon after as possible, the longer you wait the less useful the feedback will be. It is also vital that all your courses, groups and locations are subject to the same review questions in order to ensure comparability.
5. Instill an ethos and strategy for quality assurance
In order to consistently evaluate the quality of delivery, it is useful to have an assessment scheme in place. Whether this is based on a teaching style observation, such as below, or a more informal feedback system, such as self-assessment and spot observations, it is important to gather this information in a way that is transparent and comparable.
Adapt teaching to respond to the strengths and needs of all students
1. Outstanding
Differentiation and intervention is sharply focused and timely so students learn exceptionally well.
2. Good
Differentiation and intervention is appropriately targeted and matched well to most students’ individual needs, including those most and least able, so that students learn well.
3. Requires improvement
Teaching is not adapted to meet the strengths and needs of all students. This prevents effective students learning taking place.
4. Inadequate
Learning activities are not matched to the needs of students with no evidence of differentiation.
Evidence:
When you have implemented a system of evaluation of your courses or activities you need to then use the information in a way that progresses the quality of all, both by sharing best practice and identifying training needs. If you have morning team meetings, this best practice can be shared informally; weekly meetings could include longer discussion about quality delivery, or monthly CPD sessions to highlight new initiatives or run group training.
Overall, delivering quality outcomes must be customer focussed and evaluative, we must enrich our visitors experience whilst managing their expectations. Whether you are delivering LOtC at a farm, museum, castle, visitor centre, residential centre, the principles of high-quality delivery are the same. Identifying and managing the expectations of your customers, checking their understanding throughout and evaluating their experience will help you build a successful delivery model.
About the Field Studies Council
This blog post was written by:
Jo Harris, Education Manager at the Field Studies Council.
Jo has 20 years’ experience in the outdoor learning sector, working with students of all ages in environmental education. With a background in marine biology, Jo is passionate about nature connection and outdoor learning experiences along with sharing her expertise in ecological and geographical fieldwork.
