Case study: National College for School Leadership cuts carbon footprint via online meetings :: PublicTechnology.net :: e-Government & public sector IT news + job vacancies:

The National College for School Leadership (NCSL) is a government funded, non-departmental public body, which provides career-long learning and development opportunities, professional and practical support for England's existing and aspiring school leaders.

It was established in November 2000 and became the first national leadership centre in the world to be dedicated to the education sector. NCSL’s four key goals are: to transform children's achievement and well-being through excellent school leadership; to develop leadership within and beyond the school; to identify and grow tomorrow's leaders, and to ensure a fit for purpose national college that is more strategic and offers school leaders even more support.

NCSL runs a wide range of programmes designed to meet the professional development needs of school leaders at all stages of their career. These include the flagship National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) and a wide range of conferences and seminars encompassing all aspects of school life. A survey of 640 heads, deputies and other school leaders carried out by independent research agency, EdComs, in 2007 showed that 87 per cent of school leaders surveyed believe NCSL is helping raise standards in schools.

The Challenge
NCSL’s 260 permanent staff are based in a number of offices across the UK, with many also working from home. Collaboration between remote colleagues often relied on communication by phone or email and travel between offices. Completing projects using these methods was time-consuming and costly – both financially and environmentally – when travel was involved. With a desire to measure the extent of travel within the organisation and make plans for more sustainable policies, a survey of NCSL’s staff was taken in September 2007. It revealed that 54 per cent of employees were using their cars for work purposes (not including journeys into or home from work) at least once a week – a figure NCSL was keen to reduce.

“Too many working hours spent travelling by internal staff is not only an inefficient use of time, but costly and damaging to the environment,” says Matt James, E-learning specialist and Project Manager at NCSL. “We realised that we could take advantage of online technology to enable our staff to collaborate effectively from remote locations, and remove the need for so many journeys.”

In addition to internal use, NCSL was also keen to find a tool that would help in its work with school leaders. NCSL defines school leaders as anyone in a leadership position within a school – including individual heads of departments and school business managers as well as headteachers and deputy headteachers. Measuring the exact size of this group is a challenge, but it is estimated to be around 250,000 people spanning the length and breadth of England. NCSL runs professional development training programmes, conferences and seminars for this group, but attending in person can be difficult, especially given their wide geographical spread. “Travelling to our conference centre isn’t a practical option for everyone,” explains James. “We wanted to find an IT solution that would enable us to extend our reach and make it as easy as possible for all school leaders to make the most of what we offer.”

The Solution
In autumn 2006, NCSL looked at the various IT options available and concluded that online meetings could be the answer. Having evaluated several alternatives, it settled on collaborative software from Cisco WebEx. This software provides online meetings in which users can engage with each other and work over the web, with the ability to share and edit any document, presentation or application in real-time. It also allows users to host online events for presentations to a larger audience.

A six-month pilot project of WebEx Enterprise Edition followed, allowing NCSL to test what the system could offer and determine where it could be implemented within the organisation. WebEx Enterprise Edition is a comprehensive suite of real-time web collaboration services that provides functionality for web-based staff meetings, large-scale online seminars or events, remote support and online classrooms. “Initially we wanted to see a system that could offer internal benefits quickly, with the potential to then help in our direct work with school leaders,” explains James. The ease of use of WebEx, where the application is delivered as an on-demand service within a standard web browser, was a key factor as it allowed employees to start using it right away, without the need for lengthy installation or IT customisation processes. In addition to staff meetings, Cisco WebEx also offered a platform from which NCSL could deliver professional development to school leaders via online seminars, either performed live or recorded for viewing at anytime. “WebEx demonstrated quickly that it could give us the functionality and reliability we needed for both internal and external uses,” continues James. After the pilot programme, NCSL carried out a competitive tender process with several other vendors, but again WebEx was found to be the best solution for the task at hand and a full contract was signed.

The Benefits
Since choosing WebEx, NCSL has experienced many benefits. Firstly, use among home-based staff proved to be immediately successful and popular, replacing many face-to-face visits and conference calls. Collaborating online has enabled these staff to not only reduce the amount of travel they undertake, but also increase their productivity. “There are the obvious environmental benefits and time savings from using online meetings to replace travel,” says James, “but we’ve also found that people are more efficient. The same work gets done sooner when using WebEx.”

Publicising the possibilities of online meetings via the staff magazine, the College intranet and straightforward word-of-mouth, NCSL soon found that other employees were embracing WebEx for a variety of uses. “It was a very organic process,” explains James. “We found that once staff had attended one or two WebEx meetings it really became second-nature to use it again.” To that end, the HR team have been using online meetings as a secure and confidential way to manage parts of the staff appraisal process, one of the College’s senior directors uses them to work with his PA to manage his calendar and prepare PowerPoint slides when not in the office, and the e-learning team now holds weekly professional development sessions to share learnings from their current work and provide peer support.

Internal use of WebEx meetings to replace face-to-face appointments has enabled NCSL to make significant savings in both cost and time, and reduce its carbon footprint. To illustrate, between April and June 2008 the College held 378 meetings, which saved £54,000 in travel expenses and 408 days in time, as well as 57 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions – the equivalent of a trip from London to Singapore for 36 people.

In addition to the benefits of internal use, Cisco WebEx has also helped broaden NCSL’s reach to the school leadership community. The College frequently organises and runs conferences and events for the profession, but attendance can be restricted by venue size constraints or distance. Using WebEx has allowed presentations and seminars at such events to be broadcast over the web, either live or recorded for viewing at anytime. In live sessions, presented using the Event Center functions of WebEx Enterprise Edition, remote attendees can even interact with the speakers using the chat panel within the software to ask questions or raise discussion points. “Our conferences are often fully booked weeks in advance, and many schools can’t afford to send their staff, either for cost or time reasons,” continues James. “Now we can host sessions remotely, people can either attend online or watch recorded sessions at their own convenience, without having to take extended time out of school.”

NCSL has also used WebEx to reach school leaders in a range of other ways. The College runs a Virtual Learning Environment for school leaders, and some users require training in how to access and use the system. Previously these sessions would be held face-to-face, but there was a high proportion of dropouts due to the difficulties of finding time to take out of school. Now the training sessions can be held over WebEx, using the application sharing functions to demonstrate exactly what is required and allowing attendees to fit it in around other commitments. NCSL also runs a groundbreaking Leadership Network of over 10,000 school leaders to represent the profession in the drive for transformation. This group is regionally based and has representatives based all over the country. Meeting in person would previously involve extensive travel, but the group now uses online meetings to keep in touch and drive activities. In addition, NCSL uses WebEx to reach deputy and assistant heads in the initial stages of study for the NPQH qualification. “We’ve been able to make use of WebEx in ways that we never initially expected,” says James.

The Future
NCSL’s success with WebEx so far has left it keen to expand its use even further. “Now we have proved the benefits, our key focus is on providing more to school leaders,” says James. “The online seminars have been hugely successful and we’d like to offer more series-based sessions that school leaders can sign up to further in advance.”

Broader use of WebEx internally is also on the cards. “WebEx was an initiative of the e-learning team initially and has spread to a number of other teams,” explains James. “Now we want adoption to extend across the entire organisation, to help us continue increasing efficiency and generating the cost and carbon savings that we’ve already seen.”

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National College for School Leadership