The Apprenticeship Service Engagement team has just launched a new webinar programme for autumn 2019. Helen Gorner, ESFA’s Head of Service Engagement, talks about the programme and how you can get involved.
Our team supports the delivery of the apprenticeship service by engaging with our service users through a variety of channels, one of these being webinars. We work across the ESFA and with other government departments and stakeholders to help service users understand more about the service and any new developments taking place.
Webinars are aimed at employers, training providers, end-point assessment organisations, membership/representative organisations and any organisations or individuals with an interest in the apprenticeship service.
Our new autumn webinar programme for October to December includes topics on service development updates, apprenticeship eligibility, end-point assessment guidance for employers and training providers, recording end-point assessment activity in the Individualised Learner Record (ILR) and a guide to the Apprenticeship assessment service.
All our webinars are led by subject matter experts and attendees have an opportunity to ask questions during the live Q&A and take part in interactive polls.
We first launched the webinar programme in November 2018, and it’s been very successful, with more than 30 webinars being delivered to over 2000 attendees. All our webinar recordings are hosted on the apprentice service playlist on esfagovuk.
We’ve also developed and delivered a series of support videos based on user needs for any significant new releases.
We’re now using a new platform, GoToWebinar, to deliver our webinars, providing an improved, more intuitive experience for attendees. It has additional features such as extra capacity, allowing more people to sign up whereas previously our webinars tended to get fully booked up.
Our webinars have been well received and we’ve had very positive feedback from attendees. Satisfaction rates are high with the vast majority rating the webinars either good or excellent.
Feedback we’ve had includes: “[it was a] really useful update on what training providers and employers need to do”, “clear information, accurate visuals and good knowledge”, and “just the right amount of information”.
One of our subject matter experts, Hayley Walker, senior manager in the Apprenticeship Funding Policy team, recently presented a webinar on user-centred funding rules, she says:
“Users of the funding rules had been asking for a more interactive roll-out session for a while. We got to engage with a huge amount of people in a short period of time, give background and context that we wouldn’t ordinarily be able to give, and quickly test understanding.
“I’m already planning more webinars with the Service Engagement team as I, and the attendees, found them so useful.”
We’re always looking for new ideas for webinar topics relating to the apprenticeship service - if there’s something you’d like us to consider please direct message us on Twitter @ESFADigital