Cornwall College

Cornwall College is one of the largest further education colleges in the UK, with 45,000 students able to choose from over 3,000 different courses across seven main campus sites. Cornwall College is also the leading provider of training and education for business in the south west.
 
Working in partnership with client organisations to design customised training to improve business performance, Cornwall College Business provides professional qualifications through courses and workshops for individuals, departments or entire companies. Apprenticeships and 'Train to Gain' are two of the college’s main business programmes, with more than 4,000 students involved in these programmes at any one time.

Gaining access to funding to help subsidise the cost of skills development is an important part of the college’s service to employers. But in order to access this funding, the college faces the same challenge as every other provider of work-based learning: the task of completing records for each individual learner in an accurate, timely and controlled way so as to provide the evidence for full and auditable compliance.
 
With fewer contracts to go round, higher minimum contract values, outcome-based payments and the general demand to deliver more in a shorter timeframe, the pressure on all work-based learning providers has increased. Cornwall College needed a much less time-consuming and more efficient way of inputting their data to secure the funding that was critical for their clients.

Cornwall College discussed their predicament with Pearson Work Based Learning, who were already providing them with qualifications through Edexcel. Pearson Work Based Learning recommended Destiny’s E-pen to the college and, after the success of an initial pilot, rolled it out further across Cornwall College Business.

The new process using Destiny technology means that the college’s liaison officers write out the individual learning plans in the field as before, but now they use E-pens and forms. By simply ticking a 'send' box on the form, the electronic data from the pen is transmitted via Bluetooth mobile to Destiny’s secure servers, where it’s converted from handwriting into text. Less than a minute later it’s available on Destiny’s hosted online Manage service, where the college’s admin support team can review the converted text against a PDF of the original handwritten form.

If anything is missing or unclear, the admin team can call the advisor while they’re still with the client – quickly sorting out any problems and avoiding the need for a return trip. If for any reason the form still can’t be validated immediately, it sits in a 'work in progress' file. If all the data is verified and accurate, it transfers to the college’s own servers where it automatically creates a new learner record.

Sue Alvey, Head of Operational Support for Cornwall College Business, said, “It’s early days, but we’re very glad we made the decision to go with Destiny’s E-pen. The E-pen has reduced the time it takes to collect learner information and transfer it to our management information system from two or three weeks during peak periods down to just a few minutes – cutting out unnecessary administration and hugely accelerating the funding application process. Data quality and collation of management information are also both greatly improved.

“We have found it encourages our staff to use a more disciplined approach to planning which means we get all the information we need from employers in an efficient way, reducing travel costs. Employers and learners also like it as they see that we are using up-to-date technology in support of our work with them.

“One of the main technical advantages of digital pens is that the information they capture is completely safe. If an advisor happens to be in an area where there’s no network coverage, the data stays on the pen until it can be transmitted. And if all else fails, we’ve always got the original handwritten form.”

Based on the success of the pilot, the college is now rolling out the new system to thirty Liaison Officers supporting our Apprenticeship programmes, with the possibility of extending it further to other sites in the future.

Ron Champion, Director of Cornwall College Business, said: “I’m looking forward to realising the benefits in terms of efficiency and more timely management information, but I also have high expectations that this technology will help us give a better service to our most important customers, our employers and learners.”