Council wins learning award

Janet Ainscow, Fiona Nuttall, Clare Gardner, Cllr Martin Burke, Usman Arif, Brendan Richards, Carlen Barton

Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council has been judged a winner in the Virtual Awards 2013.

The Council collected an award for ‘Most effective use of e-learning in the Council sector’ for their approach in using e-learning to meet the requirements set by the DfE and Improvement Board and for ensuring 2,000 of their staff completed the mandatory training.

Fiona Nuttall, Learning & Development Manager at Rochdale said: “We are thrilled to win this award.

"We needed to get a learning programme on Child Sexual Exploitation delivered to the entire staff team of over 2,000 people and e-learning was the most efficient way to do this. It took a lot of team work to set up the systems and infrastructure, both with Virtual College as partners and internally. The hard work paid off and the training was delivered effectively and efficiently and monitored via the Learning Management System that is embedded in the Virtual College system.

“Having got all staff on the system, we can now roll out other e-learning opportunities available, some of which are bespoke to Rochdale, whilst others are more generic.

“The costs of delivering a programme to the entire staff team would have been enormous without access to an e-learning system which allows for best use of staff time completing the course and easier monitoring of completion rates.

"Watching the announcement of the awards on-line was also a novel experience for most of us."

Peter Hilliard, Virtual College’s Marketing Manager, commented: “The format of the Virtual Awards ticks lots of boxes. Time and resource pressures mean people often struggle to justify attending remote events.

“We think there are huge benefits in sharing the best practice of customers such as Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council to a wide audience.”