Latest Blog posts from SmartAssessor.com

e-portfolio software update - one year anniversary

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During the last 12 months we have seen the implementation of Minimum Contract Values which has led to a delivery model of prime contract holders sub contracting the delivery to independent training providers. Currently over 70% of delivery is sub contracted to the independent sector. Regardless of who has delivered the learning the prime contractor is legally responsible for the quality of sub contractor delivery.

Like many of you I watched the Panorama programme unravel highlighting some of the dangers for prime contract holders sub contracting out their work based learning delivery without effective monitoring and controls in place. Whilst systems may be in place to monitor recruitment and initial advice and guidance you are also responsible for the quality of learning that is being delivered.

As an e-portfolio software Smart Assessor encourages their prime and sub contractors to work together in the e-portfolio so that both have the same visibility to the learners portfolio.

Prime Contractors can make the e-portfolio available for their sub contractors to use for their learners, and often include the cost of providing this service within their management fee. The benefit for prime contract holders of doing this is that they can instantly see accurate learner progress, assessor performance and whether the sub contractor is on track. Using the Smart Rooms the prime contractor can observe assessors interacting with learners, contact employers directly for feedback and see instantly IQA sampling and feedback.

What's in it for the sub contractor?

Most sub contractors do a great job and would embrace the opportunity to reduce the amount of time they spend preparing paperwork and management reports for their prime contract holders. Instead of analysing data and number crunching in excel to provide management reports that are out of date before they are even submitted the prime contractor can extract the information they need directly from the Smart Assessor system leaving the sub contractor to focus their time and energy on delivering excellent training and learning to keep the learner engaged and on track..

A win-win formula you would think but the relationship involves trust and transparency that both parties must desire. As long as we have prime contractors abdicating responsibilities to sub contractors and sub contractors not being transparent with the prime contractors then the current delivery model will be unsustainable. More trust and co-operation is needed between colleges and independent providers but this can only be achieved if there is a genuine willingness from both parties to work more closely together.

To celebrate our first anniversary we would like to offer 50 prime contractors 20 Smart Assessor licenses to share with their sub contractors to encourage collaboration and transparency to be used before end September 2012.

If you are a prime contractor or a sub contractor and would like to apply for your 20 complimentary licenses please e-mail offer@smartassessor.co.uk telling us why you think sharing an e-portfolio with your sub contractor would be helpful for both of you.

All entries will be entered into a draw and will be randomly selected. Requests must be received by 13th May 2012 and the 20 winners will be announced on Tuesday 15th May 2012.

Click here to view a list of prime and sub contractors

Marketing the Apprentice Grant to smaller Employers AGE - Smart Assessor e-portfolio update

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As with all successful marketing you need to step inside the shoes of the person you are targeting with your marketing, Companies don't buy goods and services, it's the people within those companies that take decisions and these are the people you need to connect with.

Small business owners often set their company up because they feel passionate about doing something better or different from the way it's currently being done. Smart Assessor was set up because the founders felt that the other e-portfolio technologies were clunky and stuck in the past, we wanted to do something different with Smart Assessor to support the innovation of work based learning delivery.

When most small companies start their founder works very long hours because they have minimal resources from which to build up the business. Often they have no aspiration of selling it on or letting it go because they are doing what they enjoy so much, it’s a labour of love!

As the business grows, and more employees come on board, the founder often struggles to 'let go' of doing the day to day work within the business and make the transition to leading and growing the business.

The problem with that is that if the person leading the business isn’t working strategically on the business it stagnates and won't evolve with market trends. The challenge for you, as a training provider, is that often company founders enjoy doing the day to day tasks, it's comfortable for them and they feel useful, making the leap to working more strategically can feel uncomfortable and unfamiliar with many business owners not skilled in the strategic management of business.

This is an opportunity for you to help small business owners make this change by placing an apprentice, or two, in their company to take on more of the basic day to day tasks a busy business needs to do such as marketing, administration, finance and technology. A young apprentice will bring to the business some fresh enthusiasm and ideas, they will be comfortable with using technology, they are of a generation who don’t remember a time before the internet, and as the apprentice grows in confidence and knowledge they will become effective team members the business owner can trust and develop.

This will give the business founder more time to spend thinking about ideas of how they can grow and evolve their business. You may need to support the small business owner by training and developing their strategic management skills and knowledge developing your relationship with that company as it grows.

The founder of Smart Assessor is a serial entrepreneur experienced at both setting up small companies and working with venture capitalists to grow those businesses. She is also a chartered marketer specialising in small business marketing.

Below are a few of her ideas on how training providers can start to connect with smaller business owners in their locality and use the Apprentice Grant to encourage them to invest in a young apprentice, or two.

1. Think like a small business owner! If you haven’t worked in a small business yourself go and shadow someone for a day or two and see exactly what goes on. You will probably be shocked at some of the low value decisions they get involved with, such as stationery ordering, whilst at the same time they don’t have a business plan for their company.

2. Be prepared to share your knowledge and expertise on how small businesses owners can grow their business once they make the leap from working in their business to working on it. Why not arrange an event and invite local business founders along to discuss how they can work more strategically on their business? You could invite some of your apprentices, along with the owner of the company they work for, to talk about their experiences and how this extra resource has helped the business to be more effective.

3. In addition to hosting your own event find out which local networks are active locally for company directors and contact them to present your ideas to their members on how an apprentice can help grow their business with the great incentive of the £1,500 Apprentice Grant.

4. Small Business owners are often sceptical about training providers and colleges because they tend to respect people who are successfully running their own company rather than those who 'teach' how it should be run! With this in mind use local case studies of other small company founders you have successfully worked with and tell their story of how they achieved this and what challenges they had to overcome.

5. Reflect their issues and concerns back to them in your marketing materials. When looking recently at a leading awarding body web site, they were advertising themselves as being the awarding body for small training providers but their web site was full of case studies on household brands and the images reflected these well known companies too. People have less than 2 seconds from visiting a web site to deciding whether they are going to stay there and browse or click away, if they dont see something that instantly connects them to your images and headlines they just won’t stay.

6. Work the large company supply chains. Review your existing client list, you have probably already engaged with large local employers, maybe even helped them with their apprenticeships. Talk to your contacts and find out which local smaller companies they work with in their supply chain and see if they will invite you to speak with their suppliers or send out some information to them through their supply chain.

7. People buy from people, send a simple introductory letter out to local business owners, empathising with the challenges the current environment brings and the impact this has had on their resources and time. Suggest your ideas of how an apprentice or two could help them overcome some of these challenges and how the £1,500 grant could help towards the extra salary costs. Always follow up your letter with a personal phone call to the company founder even if they aren’t able to take on an apprentice immediately there may be other things you can help them with.

8. Get active online, there are many small business forums you can join and become active in without being a member. Linked In, the professional social network site, will have local business groups where you can start discussions and conversations about how the AGE scheme can help small companies.

9. Be proactive, get your message out there, don’t expect them to come knocking on your door. Which companies are your assessors already working with? As those companies are happy with the apprentices you have placed with them ask them to give you recommendations and referrals, word of mouth is very powerful but underestimated. Think about it. When you are looking for a good builder or plumber the first thing you do is ask your friends who they use rather than search for someone randomly online.

10. Use your existing resources. When your assessors are out visiting their apprentices ask them to see what other companies are in the building or business park and give them some promotional information to drop in whilst they are passing by.

For more information on the £1,500 Apprentice Grant for Small Employers (AGE) click here

If you would like Fiona's small business marketing guide e-mail her fiona@smartassessor.com and she will send you a PDF copy by return.

Innovative WorkBased Delivery from Smart Assessor

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Our staff use Skype instead of landline telephones which means that they can be in touch with customers from wherever they have access to the internet, this also enables Smart Assessor to scale up their workforce quickly and easily without any extra cost and hassle. Skype retains your contact information and for a small monthly subscription you can make calls to unlimited UK Landlines.

Much of our time at Smart Assessor is showcasing the Smart Assessor e-portfolio to potential customers who want to see how the software works before deciding whether they are going to switch from paper based portfolio's to an electronic portfolio and then choose which e-portfolio supplier to work with.

Smart Assessor customers are across the country with clients spread from Cornwall to Darlington. When we are asked to showcase our software we use our innovative 'Smart' web conferencing rooms which means that we don’t need to invest in travel time and costs to our customers premises as we can share whatever is on our p.c. screen to our customers screen wherever they are based and this can project onto a smart board if there are a number of people watching the demonstration. Customers prefer this method of seeing Smart Assessor because it lets them experience the Smart Rooms first hand.

The Smart Rooms do not require any software to be installed by the customer, there is audio in the room so that we can hear your questions and you can hear us talk back to you as well as a chat room where you can type questions. You see everything we are doing on our p.c. and you can also record the demonstration if you would like to share it with other colleagues later.

If you have assessors and verifiers who are unable to travel to the meeting, they can join the Smart session remotely from anywhere they can access the internet.

Not only does this innovative technology reduce the cost and time of our staff delivering demonstrations you can also use the Smart Rooms from our e-portfolio within your own training business, your assessors can interact with their learners, IV's can sample real-time with learners and employers and your EV can interact with your centre before they come to visit.

Smart Assessor uses the Smart Rooms for customer training and support, enabling us to provide professional 'live' training sessions at no cost to our customers whom we receive lots of positive feedback and compliments on. When you need support you can drop into a Smart Room and we can see exactly what you are doing with your e-portfolio to give you specific guidance.

Without embracing this innovative technology to make our business more efficient and cost effective we couldn't have grown as quickly as we have done with over 70 colleges and training providers using Smart Assessor in just 9 months.

In addition to using innovative technology to run our business we have also weaved in technology to our marketing strategy to great effect. From being an unknown 9 months ago we are now very well known with many colleges and training providers contacting us to request demonstrations of our new e-portfolio software. It gives me great pleasure when we attend AELP and AOC conferences and events to find that most delegates have heard of Smart Assessor.

An important part of this marketing success has been our social media marketing. We have a very active LinkedIn Group called innovative work based learning (click the Linked In symbol in the top right hand corner of our web site to come into this open group) with just under 400 members having joined in the last few weeks. LinkedIn is a great way of chatting to other training professionals and keeping abreast of the latest industry news and conversations.

Twitter is another great way of keeping in touch with customers and the voice of industry experts such as SFA, Ofsted, AELP, Aoc and FE week have published a great step by step guide to using Twitter in Further Education www.feweek.co.uk/twitterguide

Smart Assessor e-portfolio - qtr 1 update 2012

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In many ways it's been much easier for us to create a successful Start up because we have had the experience of creating a successful technology start up previously in the education market and attracting venture capital investment to grow and exit that business. Even so there have been many highlights in our first year and many frustrations too and this made me think about how I could help inspire our young generation of apprentices to think about starting their own business.

I'm going to be offering my services out for National Apprenticeship Week to colleges and training providers who would like me to visit and talk to their apprentices about why I decided to start my first business over 20 years ago and how I went about creating a remarkable company only to lose it when our key. Client Rover Group collapsed and rebuild a second company which attracted £2 million investment before stepping down as CEO to create Smart Assessor.

What inspired me at the age of 26 to go it alone when I didn't know anyone who had their own business? What drove me to pick myself up again after losing my award winning business when Rover Group collapsed and as a single mum I had to move my 4 young children into a rented house to use the equity from our home to start again? Why was I successful at winning the £1 million midlands investment challenge for my second company and then exit as CEO to create another start up?

How do you start a business from scratch if you don't have a university education and family finance? Can it be done and how do you go about it?

If you think my story could inspire your young apprentices then please get in touch with me, I would be delighted to share the highs and lows of my journey in the hope that I can make a difference!

Fiona Hudson-Kelly - Founder of Smart Assessor

Tel: 0845 460 4440

Smart Assessor eportfolio update on Apprenticeship Week

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National Apprenticeship Week is the time when all eyes are on Apprenticeships and it’s all about raising the profile amongst employers, individuals, teachers, parents and the media.
How are you planning to showcase what you are doing with apprentices during this week?

Smart Assessor's founder Fiona Hudson-Kelly is passionate about inspiring young apprentices to increase their own aspirations for what they expect to get out of their working lives and having a role model was one of the most motivating factors in driving her own achievements.
Fiona left school herself at the age of 16 to take up a commercial apprenticeship with Rolls-Royce where she spent two years learning the business whilst increasing her qualifications by attending day release at her local college in Coventry.

30 years later and qualified to post graduate level she has created her second successful technology start up in Smart Assessor after winning the £1million investment challenge for her previous company Silver Lining Solutions which she started in 1999.

If you would like Fiona to speak at your event during Apprenticeship Week and inspire your young apprentices on what can be achieved without wealth and connections then please contact her on 01788 834669 or e-mail info@smartassessor.com

Smart Assessor Blog - Apprentice incentive for Small Businesses

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An initial payment will be made two months after the individual has started their apprenticeship; the balance will be paid after the apprenticeship has been completed and the trainee has progressed into sustainable employment.

Small businesses account for >80% employees in the private sector, most of whom employ less than 9 people. There are over 4 million small businesses in the UK and the majority have not taken on an apprentice thus far and therefore could be eligible for this grant.

The challenge for training providers is that dealing with many smaller businesses, instead of a few larger ones, can be more time consuming because it means more locations for assessors to visit.

However they are often more entrepreneurial and flexible than larger employers too which means that you can be more innovative in your learning delivery, Smart Assessor's e-portfolio comes with web conference rooms installed which means that you could deliver more of your teaching and training to learners from more than one employer at the same time - without having to leave their desk.

Small Businesses are easy to market to because they often belong to networks such as Chambers of Commerce, Federation of Small Businesses and the Institute of Directors and are often active in their local community.

If you have a number of large employers you are already engaging with why not consider targeting their supply chain? Often the companies supplying them are smaller local businesses who would be interested in finding out more about how an apprentice could make a difference to their business performance and with this new incentive it could be good timing for them too .

Smart Assessor e-portfolio software - updates from Ofsted

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independent learning providers and two employer providers were judged outstanding for the quality of teaching. No colleges, adult and community learning providers or prisons received an overall outstanding judgement for the quality of teaching"

Along with the new focus on Ofsted to concentrate on outstanding teaching, training and learning as one of their 3 key inspection themes has got me thinking about how work based learning providers can share their innovative ideas of what they are doing to create outstanding training, teaching and learning.

I have created a new Linked In group called innovative work based learning which is an open group that anyone willing to share their ideas of what is working for them to create outstanding teaching, training and learning are welcome to join.

Simply go to your Linked In page and search groups for innovative work based learning then chose join group.

I think this outstanding learning, training and teaching is going to be really topical in 2012 and feel that all work based learning providers can benefit from sharing their ideas and resources, especially if you are working within a consortia.

e-portfolio software Smart Assessor update from Ofsted

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• Making sure certain types of learners are not under performing, the example he gave was ‘are a greater proportion of young men in hairdressing leaving early or not performing in a female majority environment?'

• Value for money – not just value for money for the Government but are you delivering value for money for your organisation too? The example he gave was doing an assessment at the same time as doing a review

• Targets should reflect the existing skills of the learner and not be generic

• Linking to existing resources available on the web, the example he gave was You Tube where there are some really good free resources on areas such as bullying

• Feedback to employers on learners progress and involving the employer

• Good constructive written feedback encouraging improvement

• Whilst PLTS (personal learning and thinking skills) are often embedded if you have trained your staff on PLTS and where it is embedded make this CPD available

o Finally he concluded that reviews were rarely a strength, he said that he personally would be looking for very clear actions for the learner on what they need to do to get this unit completed rather than worrying about making targets smart!

Smart Assessor’s e-portfolio software has many unique features that are not available in other e-portfolio’s that can help training providers perform better in these area’s Philip highlighted including:-

• Integrated Smart (web conference) Rooms to reduce the number of face to face visits to learners and sharing learning which helps you reduce your costs whilst improving the quality of your delivery – Value for Money

• A skill scan to help with identifying existing learner skills and helping you to set relevant individual targets

• Smart Assessor embeds hyperlinks to allow learners to click through to other resources such as You Tube and VLE’s

• Employers can log into Smart Assessor to review learner progress and contact the learners assessor

• When a learner submits evidence there is an assessor feedback area where assessors can give constructive feedback on how the learner can improve and tracks the improvement

• Assessor’s have their own CPD area where they can upload training certificates for audit reviews

o Finally Smart Assessor is review driven and when you arrange a session with your learner you can allocate clear actions and the software will manage and track these actions for yo u

Smart Assessor e-portfolio software - now 6 months old

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Internet Marketing

Most of our enquiries have come through the web site. We made sure that we had optimised the web site for all of the major search engines and have been successful in only having to run small PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns, the majority of our web site visitors have found our site 'organically' through effective search engine optimisation.
Having an interactive (web 2.0) web site helps with keeping visitors on the web site with many areas of the web site for them to visit, including resources for existing clients such as downloading brochures and booking their training online.
One of the most successful pages on our web site is our online demonstration of Smart Assessor, this page attracts more than 75% of our web visitors and results in a 35% conversion rate, which is the number of people who visit this page and then get in touch with us.

PR
We have also found that press releases, both online and off line, have worked well in our marketing campaigns, releasing interesting facts about you and your clients that you are working with are often picked up by the local press and published free of charge.

Direct Mail
We commissioned some brochures earlier this year and sent them out to key decision makers within our target market, we found that by following them up with a call a couple of days after posting them resulted in a 20% conversion rate which is significantly higher than it would have been without the follow up conversations.

Events
Last year, prior to our launch, we exhibited at the AoC (Association Of Colleges) event which was very successful in generating initial interest and helping us shape the final phase of development for Smart Assessor.

Newsletters
Having a form on our web site where people can subscribe to our newsletters has been really helpful to Smart Assessor expanding the distribution of our monthly newsletters. Whilst the conversion rate for our newsletters is quite low at less than 10% they have been a great way of keeping in touch with people who aren’t quite ready to purchase an e-portfolio software but will be looking in the near future.

Social Media
We have used both Twitter and LinkedIn very successfully, with our LinkedIn page having more than 400 connections with interested training providers. We use Twitter to send out information about what we are doing and what is happening in our market place to keep training providers and colleges up to date and interested in the Smart Assessor brand.
Today it is vital to embrace the internet within your marketing plan, it is a cost effective marketing tool and reaches vast numbers of relevant people very quickly which means that you can adapt to market changes quickly with your marketing.

If you would like to know more about how we use internet marketing at Smart Assessor to attract interest in our new and fresh e-portfolio software please get in touch with our team on 0845 460 4440.

New updates to Smart Assessor's e-portfolio software this weekend 8th October

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1. Learner mapping evidence
From Monday we have changed the colour of ticks in the map evidence area to differentiate whether a learner mapped the evidence or the assessor. If the assessor has done the mapping the ticks stay the same colour as they are currently : orange. If the learner has done the mapping then the ticks will be grey. Assessors can re-tick grey ticks to show they approve and the ticks will change to orange.

Assessors can take off the learners mappings by removing the grey ticks. Learners cannot change any orange ticks which is the assessors mappings.

2. Editing the Timesheet
From Monday you will be able to make corrections to the timesheet to edit the information.

The other new features are outlined in the attached workbook, we have now an employer log in, to summarise the updates include:-

3. Emails and Email Alerts
We have now reduced the emails Assessors receive from Smart Assessor to one summary email a day, some of you used to receive up to 8 an hour if your learners were uploading lots of evidence! You will now only receive a daily email with a summary of all your learners activity for that day in it, if there is no activity you will not receive an email.

4. Learner Home Page
The initial screen the learners see when they login for the first time has now changed; they will either be taken straight to their Learner Dashboard if they are only doing one course or to the Overall Progress Screen if they are doing the framework or more than one course.

5. Formal Review Sessions
When you book a session for your learner you can now chose general review, induction or Formal Review. We’ve also introduced a flag on your assessor dashboard to let you know if you are not complying with the 12 week Formal Review guidance and you have any learners who haven’t had a formal review in the last 8 weeks and don’t have one schedule for the next 4 weeks.

6. Training & Assessment Plan
You can now upload documents to the learner’s training and assessment plan, it could be that you want to upload your formal review feedback – either scanned in with the learner’s signature or a PDF and you leave them an action to confirm its authentic and that they accept it which will save you scanning them in. SFA guidance 74 does state that they do accept electronic signatures.

We’ve also increased the size of the formative and summative session notes boxes and you can now use any characters in here, I know that some of you were having problems using comma’s and apostrophe’s.

7. Assessor dashboard
We’ve made a few minor changes to the assessor dashboard, if your learner has a learning difficulty identified in their details you will now see their name in bold on the dashboard, in the session column you will see the total number of sessions booked and which session this is (i.e. session 3 of 10) and the last one is if you are missing a formal review you will get a red box around the session box. Have a look at the notes attached for screen images of what these will look like.

8. Employer log in
You can now give your employer clients a log into Smart Assessor and they will be able to see the progress of their learners. They can’t make any changes to see the detail of the portfolio but they can see who their assessor is and their employee’s progress through the framework.

9. Session History Data
You can now export all session data to excel, useful for auditing purposes.