Downing Street Visit

It was great to visit Downing Street on Friday to discuss some of the college projects that we are working on including an innovative student welfare campaigns based on social norms.

demonstrated that young people, markedly overestimate rates of harmful behaviours and negative attitudes in their peers. Such misperceptions can create a culture where negative behaviour is seen as the norm and aspiration for improvement are viewed as unrealistic.

Challenging these misperceptions with use of the social norms approach through mass media campaigns and educational initiatives has been found to be an effective aprroach. It is based on praising the positive behaviour of the majority. It has been used extensively in schools and colleges in the USA to reduce rates of substance use and other risky health behaviours, as well as for social issues such as bullying.

FE College Commercial Services

There may not be a lot of good news on the high street at the moment but did you know that FE Colleges have almost 1,300 commercial services including hair & beauty salons, restaurants, sports centres, theatres, travel agents, nurseries and florists. Why not check out what your local college has to offer.

Business Development Ideas for Further Education

With income generation being a topical subject for Further Education at the moment the latest report in our series based on communications in Further Education focuses on Business Development Ideas for the sector.

This report takes a look at companies like Google, You Tube, Nike, Apple, Starbucks, Microsoft, Groupon, Amazon and others to explore some of the practices that they are employing to facilitate growth under the current tough economic conditions. We take a look at some of the underlying principles that enable such growth and suggest ways that FE might be able to adapt these methods for their own business development plans.

We are delighted to be collaborating with Hubspot on this report. Hubspot are one of fastest growing companies in the US, having grown 6,000% since 2007 with their marketing software system. Hubspot’s CEO, Brian Halligan, is also the author of “Inbound Marketing”.

http://www.tech-stories.co.uk/reports/businessdevelopment.pdf

Tech Story - What FE can learn from Pixar’s Toy Story

Using characters from Pixar's Toy Story, this article takes a light-hearted look at some of the organisational & cultural considerations that FE Colleges face when making decisions regarding new technology.

http://www.tech-stories.co.uk/reports/techstory.pdf

Twitter in Further Education Report

This is my first report in a series which will look at various aspects of communication, technology and social media in education.

This report was written in collaboration with Barry Libert, author of Social Nation and looks at some of the similarities and differences in how UK and US colleges and universities are using Twitter.

This report has been well received by the FE sector and can be found on the following link;

http://www.tech-stories.co.uk/reports/twitterreport.pdf