HBL delivers a range of courses on topics including: – Literacy – Creative writing – Computing – Arts & Crafts (eg silk painting, jewellery making) – Photography – Local history Depending on the topic, courses can be delivered in three ways: a) One-to-one. In this delivery model volunteers attend weekly classroom courses with a professional tutor. They are then paired-up with home-based students whom they meet in-between classes to pass-on the learning on a one-to-one basis. Depending on the topic a group visit may be organised (eg visit to the National Archives at Kew as for a course about the suffragettes) b) Community venues.
In this model, students are taken to a classroom in day centres, care
homes or community centres, where they are taught directly by a
professional tutor. We are currently piloting a scheme where the venue
is a school, the courses are delivered by local teachers and the
students are paired-up with local pupils that help with the transfer of
knowledge. c) Teleclasses. We are piloting a scheme to deliver courses by audio conferences. While this is suitable for a more limited range of subjects, it provides a low-cost mechanism to deliver knowledge directly from the tutor to the student with no travel or venue costs involved. Volunteers can also participate and follow-up with their student partner in-between teleclasses. Depending on success, this may be expanded to internet-based video conferencing for those students that have access to the suitable IT equipment. |