Lessons Learned

What are the lessons learned from the project?

Despite the scale and complexity of the tasks the Learning Matrix has, in large part, achieved much of what it set out to do. A conclusion that could be drawn from this is that the problems inherent in supporting lifelong learning are at least approachable, and that there is a value in such attempts to bring together parts separately developed into a coherent, purposeful whole.

The idea of a Higher Education Taster service has been able to fire the enthusiasm of many people working from different perspectives. Higher Education and Further Education managers can see how this could fit into recruitment and promotional strategies, as well as taking forward agendas in widening participation. Organisations such as Connexions can see how such a service might benefit their clients. This suggests that ways should be sought to establish and embed a service into the region's educational landscape. However, a viable regional service in the longer term will need nurturing through several stages.

The potential of the systems put in place is not restricted to a Higher Education taster service important though that is. The systems could be used to support Lifelong Learning in other ways including credit accumulation across different institutions.

It is clear from the project experience that the difficult task of further development of PDP activities is needed, and this development should be informed by the extensive practitioner expertise that exists, for example in the LUSID team. The feeling from the project experience is:

• PDP activities need to be more interactive to engage the learner, adding value to the data that learners input to the system
• Intelligent, personalised signposting to resources would be another area of development
• Description of learning modules normally includes an indication of the skills developed by undertaking the learning. There needs to be a mechanism for formalising these and linking them through to a learner's PDP activities.

To build on the widening participation role of the service more investigation needs to be carried out to establish how the Learning Matrix can work with other agencies such as Connexions. There is a great deal of potential in using the Learning Matrix to work with the specialist client groups that these and other agencies are engaged with.