Thanks to the excellent work of the Office of Teaching and Learning (OTL), I recently had the opportunity to train staff from two local sixth form colleges in the use of LEGO as a teaching delivery tool. Twelve staff members from Cadburys Sixth Form College and King Edward VI College visited the DMLL to explore the space, and learn more about how to use LEGO in Further Education teaching and learning.

Following a similar process to the LEGO Bento training which is used to develop LEGO activities within Higher Education, the staff members from the sixth from colleges learnt about the pedagogy behind LEGO, before some building activities, rounded off with the development of activities to deploy to students. With a little time to spare, we then took them to see the Harrier Jump Jet in the Engineering and Computing Building (ECB), before swapping some details to follow up conversations and saying goodbye.

The feedback from the day was overwhelmingly positive, with 100% satisfaction on the course. It was also extremely interesting to explore how a tool developed for HE could be re-deployed within FE. Within FE, the student curriculum is more rigid, meaning less room to deploy innovative teaching methods than in HE institutions. With that in mind, we spent a lot of time sharing best practice between the two colleges and working on ways to bring innovative teaching practices into a confined curriculum.

A special thanks has to go out to Maria Cooney from the Office of Teaching and Learning for arranging the sessions.

We look forward to much more work with the colleges to come.