Channel has enjoyed working with the University College of Falmouth for several years so were excited to support them in their latest venture in conjunction with the Trade Union Congress (TUC).
Recently launched the website 'Union Learn - It's never too late to learn' is an initiative by the TUC and is aimed at helping people back into education that may not have considered it in the past.
About the site:
The idea behind the site is not only to list all the opportunities for adult education in Cornwall, but also to make them accessible to normal people, people who may not have previous experience in higher education, perhaps even people that have never even considered attending a university.
Clearly in difficult financial times this could be a great help to people who may have lost their jobs, and who could find their way back into the jobs market with the boost that additional education and qualifications can bring.
Site features:
- A comprehensive searchable directory of every higher education location and courses in Cornwall.
- Integration with Google Maps so that viewers can see the location of each course.
- Video case studies filmed by UCF students to show the experiences of people who have returned to education.
- A wide variety of photos and illustrations that have been prepared by talented students or ex students of UCF.
- Pictures of each campus and real students, in order to make the courses more real and accessible.
- A wealth of information about how to return to education, and the support that can be available for those doing so.
- A self evaluation questionnaire for those thinking about returning to education.
- A Forum for people wanting to communicate with others about returning to education.
- Information for Union Learning Reps (ULRs) on how to help others to return to education.
- Information for employers.
And now for the tecchie bit!
The site has been designed using the impressive Opensource “Drupal” content management system. Drupal itself uses the PHP / MySQL programming framework running usually on Linux servers. It is a highly respected coding project and has been used for major sites including the Whitehouse's own site. Drupal is particularly strong for features including Taxonomy (which could be described as a flexible manner of indexing and accessing the web site's content), and fine user access control to each part of the web site. Part of Drupal's power is in the use of a large number of contributed modules which extend what it can do, and for this we have made particular use of the Views Module, CCK (Content construciton kit), and of course Google Maps integration. As ever we would like to thank the creaters of these excellent opensource code libraries.
Tecchie bit over:
While on the "thankyous" however it is important to mention the work of the UCF project team with whom we have been partnering, including:
Christina Bunce, Fiona Egglestone, Chris Ward and Charlie Hey, with my apologies if I have ommitted any other contributors - please let me know!
Here at Channel Andy has been the main "engine" behind the site and I'd like to acknowledge his great contribution as well.
