Capture IT is Good Things Foundation’s in-house developed reporting tool that can be used by our network to record any learning that takes place outside of our flagship learning platform, Learn My Way. It allows our partners to keep all of their learner records in one place and monitor their learners’ progress. All of the information is collated in our Management Information tool, which is available to centres within the network, who can then use that data to show the impact of their digital skills delivery.
Tina says: “Our Good Things Foundation funded project was a mixture of using Learn My Way and Capture IT to make sure we were delivering what the learners wanted to learn rather than what we wanted them to learn.”
With Good Things Foundation’s funding, Livewire used their recently installed WiFi to deliver ‘Do IT Online’, a digital inclusion pilot focussed on the health and wellbeing of library users affected by poverty. They provided supported sessions using mobile devices across five libraries, initially in partnership with Social Housing Providers and local Credit Unions that led to a wider volunteering project with Barclays and using Collegiate students as IT buddies.
In order to fully utilise Capture IT, Livewire researched best practice to find a process that would work for them; that would enable them to populate their learners’ information through the tool. They found a very useful ‘four-line action plan’ which really helped them to engage their learners.
Tina says: “The four-line action plan enabled us to capture both the output and outcome of the person we were working with. For example, the first question we asked was ‘I am…’ which is where the learner would write their name and a contact details. This was followed by ‘I am from…’ so they could input their address, allowing us to know where they were coming from and record our output areas.
“This was followed by ‘I want to…’ and ‘In order to…’ so we could find out what they wanted to learn and the outcome they would get from this learning. It was a very easy way for us to populate Capture IT and provide the learners with the training they required.”
When the team at Livewire first started using Capture IT, it started out like any new venture - it took a while to adjust. Tina says: “It wasn’t particularly difficult. In fact it was fairly intuitive but every system has it’s little quirks that we had to get used to. Once we had, it was an easy tool to use.
“The other tools that we had access to were really good as well. As a Centre Partner, access to quality Management Information was essential. I used the UK online data for board reports and for Good Things Foundation too, to show the difference the funding was making.”
One essential part of the Capture IT and Learn My Way tools, for Warrington, was the flexibility that it offered them in terms of learning. Tina says: “We took some of the Learn My Way modules offline, delivered the training to small groups, then took our learners back online to test their knowledge via the online quizzes.
“Capture IT was really handy here because the learners hadn’t completed the courses within Learn My Way, even though we’d used the same materials, but we were able to go into Capture IT and record that that session had happened.
“I guess you could say we used Learn My Way but not in the way that it’s designed. Capture IT gives you the versatility to exploit Learn My Way however you want, in a genuinely blended learning way.”
Tina and her team have found Capture IT to be especially helpful in delivering digital inclusion activities, unlike anything they’ve had access to before, and would gladly recommend it to others. Tina says: “Capture IT is a really quick and easy way of engaging learners. It allows us to capture what we already do and helps us to demonstrate the value of our library through performance reporting to our local authority commissioners or our board.
“Because we’re constantly helping people get online or helping people fill out forms or helping people to send emails, having Capture IT gave us a tool to record the work we’re already doing and to generate income from funders through that, which is win for everyone.
“From my perspective, helping people to get online is all about the ease and relevance of the engagement process. Capture IT is so versatile it accommodates a bespoke approach to engagement whilst still advocating a core list of (basic) IT skills requisites that the learner has to meet - it’s a really brilliant way to work.”