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“We first started using AI-based platform CENTURY in September 2018. After just a few months, resit pass rates increased by 9 percent for English and 21 percent for maths, compared with the previous year.” Anthony Bravo, Principal and CEO of Basingstoke College of Technology
Project overview
Ensuring students gain a firm grip of maths and English is of fundamental importance to further education colleges. Yet colleges have historically struggled to ensure all learners manage to gain the minimum standard in these subjects, while also inspiring them to master their chosen vocation.
To help colleges to improve resits results, CENTURY worked with the Ufi VocTech Trust to adapt our content for the context of further education and assess the impact of our artificial intelligence-powered tool in practice. For the 2018/19 academic year, we implemented our intelligent intervention tool in three colleges, monitored their usage and tracked its impact on results.
Students used CENTURY to learn and revise maths and English at both GCSE and Functional Skills level. While students used it to learn, teachers accessed real time data dashboards showing each student’s progress and effort levels, allowing them to tailor their interventions and one-to-ones.
The unique aspect of CENTURY is its artificially intelligent recommendations, which suggest appropriate learning content, as well as the dashboards that provide teachers and students with valuable information about how students are learning. The dashboards are populated with real-time data, meaning it has considerable potential for helping further education colleges.
At the end of the year, we interviewed teachers, managers and students for their feedback, and analysed usage data alongside GCSE grade improvements to get a detailed picture of how using CENTURY affected outcomes.
CENTURY’s impact on GCSE Maths
The results showed that students using CENTURY to help revise for their GCSE maths resits for as little as 10 minutes a week improved their results twice as much as the national average.
Those who used CENTURY to revise for over one hour a week saw improvements in their maths GCSE results of over 10 times the national average.
“We went through an Ofsted inspection recently, and usually English and maths are the Achilles’ heels for every FE college. This time, we could show that we were doing something new and innovative to make a difference in these subjects. We got a very positive response from Ofsted on this initiative and our inspection went really well.” Mike Hopkins, Principal, South and City College Birmingham
This project showed that technology can empower students to take ownership of their learning. This enables those who may have been less engaged in a more traditional school classroom environment to be more involved in achieving their goals – ultimately improving outcomes.
“After implementing CENTURY into our framework, we’ve seen a massive increase with participation and attendance in FE maths. It’s become a fantastic support mechanism for our learners, and to assist our staff with providing EdTech.” Kev Bradshaw, Creative Learning Specialist, Havant & South Downs College
CENTURY’s impact on GCSE English
Students using CENTURY for GCSE English saw similarly impressive results. Those who used CENTURY to learn for more than two hours across the year had an average grade improvement of three times the national average.
“We first implemented CENTURY in September 2018, and the results have been transformative for our students resitting their English and Maths.”
“CENTURY automates marking and planning, allowing hours of time to be saved and for our teachers to focus on intervening, motivating and inspiring.” Charlie James, Learning Technologist at Basingstoke College of Technology
Project case study A: Bringing mid-year joiners up to speed
Student A relocated to the UK from abroad and joined one of my GCSE Maths groups in January 2019, which meant that he missed the whole of the first term’s work.
By adding him to the appropriate class on CENTURY, he was placed on an independent learning plan. The availability of CENTURY was instrumental in our support. I simply added his name to the appropriate class and he completed all the work that had been set for him from the beginning of the academic year starting with the diagnostic tests.
He totally embraced this strategy, effectively using the tutorial videos and slides to learn and then complete the assessment questions. He caught up with the work as is evident in his CENTURY dashboard and the consistent achievement of a secure grade 4 he achieved on all the mock exams he sat.
On my part all these would have been nearly insurmountable if not downright impossible were it not for those facilities of CENTURY, such as its capacity to mark the completed questions. I could then review strictly the tasks which he struggled on and had him repeat micro-lessons, where he needed improvement.
Project case study B: Engaging students with poor attendance
Student B was another student who benefitted a lot from the availability of CENTURY for learning maths. He had several health and family issues that adversely affected his attendance to lessons. However, he was a very determined student who wanted to learn maths.
So, I used the set assignment log on CENTURY to help him catch up on missed work. He worked hard at it, again, using the tutorial slides and videos. Again, my work was much lighter by the facilities of the platform to mark completed tasks and the teacher’s ability to review submitted tasks, especially the incorrect ones, as teaching points that helped him better understand the concepts learned. CENTURY, therefore, was very handy in aiding him to catch up.
“The work being done by CENTURY is so important in helping us achieve our mission of changing the way adults across the UK access and develop the skills they work through innovative uses of digital technology.” Rebecca Garrod-Waters, CEO, Ufi VocTech Trust
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