Institution: St Paul's Catholic College

Context
St Paul’s Catholic College is a mixed 11-18 Roman Catholic comprehensive school based in Burgess Hill, West Sussex.

Over the last five years, St Paul’s has gone through a revolution in learning and teaching and this has led to Ofsted saying “St Paul’s is an outstanding school where all learn, thrive and succeed together.” (November 2007)

Principles of teaching
One of the main aims over the last few years has been to encourage the students to become more independent learners. We recognise that in order to do this they need the ability to access resources and activities digitally in school and at home. Therefore, all of our students have access to a Moodle course for each of their subjects.

• Using our virtual learning platform, Moodle, we set up a course for every year group and every language. Over the last couple of years, these courses have adapted to ensure optimum use by staff and students

• Each course is set up in chapters which normally correspond to key topics or to key areas of the course i.e. oral exam or grammar. In each chapter students can find student information sheets, essential resources that they have used in lessons, key vocabulary lists and learning activities which will help them to expand and enrich their knowledge

• Types of activities that are regularly used include online forums, glossaries (where students create their own dictionaries on a key topic), quizzes, and interactive worksheets

• On each course, there are also links to appropriate websites, some of which are live feeds. For example, on all of the KS5 courses, there are up to date feeds from main news websites, so that students can see what is happening in the foreign press

• Staff can also use the Moodle course to set up independent learning tasks and to ask students to submit assignments
• Students use the courses throughout the year as part of their learning and teaching and also as a revision tool. 

In a survey completed in April 2009: all those who were questioned strongly agreed that the VLE was useful and easy to access and navigate and all agreed that the VLE helped them with their learning.

Impact on learners
Students are now able to access a lot of their classroom resources online and regularly use the VLE to do so. They are motivated by the use of technology and are very enthusiastic to be part of activities such as online forums.

Impact on teachers
All our staff are now regularly and enthusiastically using our VLE courses and each member of staff is responsible for ensuring that their students have access to key information and motivating activities. Staff can also easily access student use of the VLE.

Impact on the school as a whole
The VLE courses have not only helped our students to access key resources but have also encouraged them to become more independent learners. The VLE has proved to be more than just a digital resource but a suite of learning tools for communication, collaboration and assessment.

Future developments
The college has recently incorporated our VLE into an online portal system which was developed to bring all of the administrative structures in College online. This portal based on SharePoint portal services has an interface for parents, students and teachers.  

We are currently working on bringing all of our Information and Learning Technologies online and to use Gateway to develop an e-portfolio for each student.

Author: Suzanne Homer, St Paul's Catholic College