Newham College improves 24,000 students' learning experience with innovative audio-visual technologies

Customer challenge

Newham College needs to offer a modern and inspiring learning experience to meet the diverse needs of the community it serves. As a result, it is continuously investing in new technologies that enrich the classroom environment. The college has over 200 classrooms and in order to provide teachers with consistent access to technology, it needed to bring all of its classrooms up to the same standard because only about half had the desired learning technology solutions.

Computacenter solution

Newham College partnered with Computacenter through the Crescent Further Education Purchasing Consortium to procure, deploy and implement collaborative learning solutions in 100 classrooms, which included interactive whiteboards and learner response systems, as well as managing the installation of the whiteboards.

Results

By equipping its classrooms with the latest interactive education technologies, Newham College is able to provide both students and teachers with an inspiring learning environment. This will help the college to attract and retain more students while maximising their probability of success.

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Customer profile

Meeting the learning needs of the community
Newham College is one the largest further education colleges in the Greater London area, with up to 24,000 students passing through its doors each year.
The college has two main campuses, one in Stratford and one in East Ham, and offers a diverse range of courses including hairdressing and beauty therapy, sports and leisure and performance arts.

Newham College was originally established in 1985 from a merger between East Ham and West Ham technical colleges with the aim of better serving the needs of the borough's residents.

The college has an international reputation for developing innovative training and aims to spur local economic and social regeneration throughout the East End. The college's core mission is to expand and improve lifelong learning to meet the diverse needs of the community.

Business challenge

Providing an inspiring learning environment
As with any further education establishment, the college needs to attract and retain as many students as possible and maximise the students' probability of success. The creation of a modern learning environment is crucial to achieving these goals.

As a result, Newham College is continually investing in its IT infrastructure to optimise the use of technology for teaching. Tony Jack, IT Manager at Newham College, comments: "We need to inspire our students to keep their interest. Using new and innovative technologies can help us to provide an engaging platform for learning."

Audio-visual technologies are particularly important to the college's vision for learning. Newham College has over 200 classrooms, but only half of these were fully equipped with audio-visual equipment. "We wanted to bring all our classrooms up the same standard so that teaching staff have consistent access to technology and can plan their lessons accordingly," comments Tony.

To ensure the project was a success, the college needed a partner that could deploy the new technology quickly and without impacting classes. As Tony explains: "The college must prevent disruption during term time, so we only had a three-week Christmas break in which to install any new equipment."

Computacenter solution

Implementing innovative interactive technology
To find a partner to help procure and install the latest audio-visual technologies for its classrooms, the college went to tender through the Crescent Further Education Purchasing Consortium.

Although five companies responded to the tender, Computacenter's experience and scale set it ahead of its competitors. "We selected Computacenter as it was not only the most cost-effective, but also had the resources to implement the solution in accordance with our deadlines," comments Tony.

As part of the engagement, Computacenter managed the procurement and installation of 100 Promethean ActivBoard +2 Interactive Whiteboards in Newham College's classrooms. This involved reinforcing classroom walls to ensure the implementation met health and safety requirements. "Computacenter ensured that the implementation ran smoothly," comments Tony. "The team conducted extensive testing to ensure all equipment was fully operational."

The interactive whiteboards are fully integrated units, each including a sound system and projector. This enables users to present information to the entire class information that can usually only be viewed via a computer monitor.

The interactive whiteboards have been supplemented with Promethean Activexpression Learner Response Systems as an initial trial deployment. Computacenter has sourced six kits for the college, each containing 32 handheld consoles that enable students to respond to questions set by the teacher with either multiple-choice or text-based answers. Tony explains: "The Activexpression systems encourage students to contribute to lessons and enable teachers to assess the progress of the class in a non-competitive environment."

Results

A rich and varied learning environment
By working with Computacenter to equip its classrooms with the latest audio-visual technology, Newham College was able to minimise the implementation costs and risks. As Tony confirms: "Computacenter demonstrated a good level of expertise and coped well with difficult installations. The team's commitment to ensuring the project was completed on time and to budget meant we were able to execute the implementation in a tight timeframe."

Thanks to Computacenter's capabilities, the college was able to source the equipment quickly and cost-effectively and ensure that the project did not cause any disruption to the college's classes.

By equipping its classrooms with the latest audio-visual technology, Newham College has been able to:

Create an inspiring learning environment: The new technology will enable the college to adopt a more interactive approach to stimulate students and improve learning.

Reduce lesson preparation time: Teachers can focus on planning their lessons rather than creating teaching materials. With each classroom equipped with the audio-visual technologies as standard, teachers have consistent access to the facilities they need.

Attract and retain students: By implementing new and innovative technology the college can appeal to technology-savvy students and provide a modern learning environment.

"The technology facilities provided by a college can influence a student's decision to sign up to a course," explains Tony. "By equipping our classrooms with the latest audio-visual technology, we can create an engaging educational environment that encourages learning success."