The FENC Annual Conference and 15^th AGM took place this year at Woburn House Conference Centre, London, on Wednesday 27^th February 2008.

We would like to thank everybody who came to the event and helped to make it such as a great success. Delegates came from all across the UK, including Scotland and Northern Ireland. It was lovely to see so many familiar faces and to have the opportunity to meet with those new to FENC and wishing to find out more about how we are supporting e-learning and collaboration within Further Education.

Our wholehearted thanks go to our fantastic guest speakers who spoke with great enthusiasm about how their organisations are promoting e-learning and the sharing of best practice.

Our first guest speaker was Ian Chowcat, Project Director for the South Yorkshire e-Learning Programme. The aim of the programme was to help position South Yorkshire as a leader in the development of education strategy and delivery, and to encourage the creation and sharing of online resources between educational establishments in the region.

Using a number of learning platforms, including FENC, to encourage sharing and collaboration, the programme successfully engaged with all secondary schools and colleges across four local authorities, as well as many primary schools, community learning sites and 450 SMEs. The project achieved ICT infrastructure upgrades to match national levels, 2,500 teachers/trainers trained to support e-learners, and 18,000 learners gained a Level 2 qualification.

Next, we heard from Rebecca Barrington, CPD and Blended Learning Manager from South Devon College, winners of the FENC Beacon Award for the Creative Use, Adaptation and Delivery of Learning Resources.

Rebecca’s interactive and entertaining presentation showcased some of the highly stimulating and innovative resources and activities which had been created by many of the tutors at the college, and have been used with great success and enthusiasm by learners. Using readily available software, Rebecca demonstrated how dynamic learning resources can easily be produced to support blended learning. Many delegates felt enthused by her approach and stated they would use similar methods in their own colleges to create effective learning material.

Following lunch and our 15^th AGM, we heard from Albert de Vos, Project Manager for ROC Zeeland, and Frans Kamp, e-Learning Manager for ROC Westerschelde. They discussed how the FENC philosophy of ‘Take, Shape and Share’ has been extended to include sharing knowledge and learning across Europe and spoke of how FENC has developed the infrastructure to support this. The presentation included a demonstration on the creation of interactive online learning material using a learning software application, and how this content, as well as content across numerous educational databases, can be searched for using just one search tool.

The day closed with David Holland, Chief Executive, and Matt Reed, Business Development Manager, from FENC, who gave all attendees the opportunity to provide feedback on what they feel are the important issues relating to teaching and learning within colleges. This was done, using electronic voting pads, kindly supplied by Jon Chambers, Senior Consultant – Post 16 Learning, from Promethean, and his colleague, Julia Glass, Interactive Content Manager. FENC will be collating this information and using it for future business planning.

We would like to extend our gratitude to our Chair, John Widdowson, Principal and Chief Executive of New College Durham, who opened the conference and who was instrumental in the smooth running of the day.

Our thanks also to all the members of our Board of Trustees who leant their support to the conference.

Many of the delegates whom we spoke to said they felt the presentations has been interesting and had provided new ideas for supporting e-learning within their own organisations.