The Education and Training Foundation (ETF) is committed to supporting the Further Education (FE) and Skills workforce to gain the skills needed given the growing importance of digital skills. We have developed initiatives and services to help change the sector’s perception of new technologies and promote the use of EdTech and digital to enhance teaching, learning and assessment.
Learning Platform courses
With the closure of our Enhance platform at the end of September 2023, the EdTech and Essential Digital Skills modules have moved to our new Learning Platform. You can visit the new Learning Platform and register your details now in order to access these modules.
Digital strategy and framework to support the FE sector
Our initial EdTech Strategy, released in Spring 2018, looked at how best the ETF can support the Further Education and Skills sector in harnessing new technologies to maximise learning outcomes – it was a three-year road map for digital technology to ensure excellence in teaching, learning and assessment.
The ETF’s Digital Teaching Professional Framework (DTPF), produced in November 2018 and updated in 2023, is underpinned by the strategy to support the transformation of our country’s technical and vocational education system; with EdTech and Digital performing a crucial role in delivering this step change. The DTPF helps to define what good pedagogy looks like and what digital skills progression means in three stages of personal development.
For more information about our EdTech / Digital Skills offer, please contact enquiries@etfoundation.co.uk.
The ETF’s focus has been on how technology can help teachers and trainers in their current professional practice, develop their understanding of how to redefine their pedagogic approaches with learning technologies.
To affirm and support teachers, trainers and assessors in using technology, our Learning Management System offers a number of certified, online, self-learning EdTech training modules mapped to the Digital Teaching Professional Framework (DTPF).
Access the Learning Management System – EdTech courses
The Department for Education (DfE) introduced an essential digital skills (EDS) framework and associated national standards. Adults aged 19+ with no or low digital skills were entitled to take EDS qualifications free of charge under the Adult Education Budget from September 2020, in line with existing entitlements for English and maths. DfE commissioned the ETF to deliver a blended EDS CPD programme to prepare teachers, trainers and leaders to deliver the new qualifications based on the standards. You can find courses relating to this on our Learning Management System.
Access the Learning Management System – Essential Digital Skills (EDS) courses
Links to EdTech and Essential Digital Skills training which can contribute to developing the knowledge, skills and understanding required for teaching and learning online.
Webinars to Support Remote Working
- Making the most of online learning
- Delivering through a virtual classroom
- Adapting content quickly to deliver online
- Supporting learners in VLEs
- Engaging learners in VLEs
- Supporting learners with online reading skills
- Making webinars more inclusive
- Introducing the Guide to Support Remote Working
- Supporting learners with writing skills
- Enhance your powers of critical reflection
- Supporting learners with low-level literacy skills remotely
- Collaborative approaches to professional development: learning the lessons of lockdown
- Releasing the genie – helping teachers and learners tap into the potential of students’ personal devices
- Meeting the online accessibility needs of all our learners
- Exploring, Adopting and Leading digital practices for hybrid teaching and learning
Spring 2021 EdTech Webinar Series
- Using learners own devices and selecting appropriate tools
- Learning from others and fostering practitioner networks
- Digital Accessibility
- Engaging learners and maintaining good mental health when delivering remotely
- Connected and Effective: Good pedagogy – great Edtech
- Digital differentiation in delivery and assessment
- Connected and Effective: Preparation for remote learning
- Creating a culture of critical reflection to improve digital practices
- Accessibility maturity – an organisational approach to legal compliance/cultural change
- Connected and Effective: Maintaining engagement and ensuring progress
- Digital wellbeing and supporting your staff to manage theirs
- Digital strategies and digital savviness for managers
- Extending your digital skills
- Connected and Effective : Achieving your goals with remote learning – quality and performance in practice
Spring 2022 Digital Accessibility Series
Note: This section is still under development to reflect content being moved to the new learning management system (LMS). Please check back later for more information and links to the EdTech Progression Pathways.
Early in 2018, the ETF commissioned a series of Outstanding Teaching Learning and Assessment (OTLA) Digital projects. The projects, now complete, used action research to evidence ways to spread and embed effective practice in the use of technology to achieve measurable improvements in teaching, learning and/or assessment to improve learner outcomes.