ELTeCS initiatives

Report

Executive Summary

The ELTeCS members’ survey was carried out in August-September 2007.  The purpose of the survey was to ask a random yet representative number of members for their thoughts on the usefulness and user-friendliness – or otherwise – of the ELTeCS newslists in order to gauge levels of satisfaction with the service, and the need for improvements, overall. Members’ responses to the survey are helping in the development of ideas for improvements to the lists as well as ideas for entirely new services.

A very brief interim report was sent in November to all those who had been invited to take part in the survey originally.  This document is a short version of the full report which was shared with the respondents and contained all their individual feedback.  This short version contains the same Executive summary, About the survey sections, and the Conclusions and key recommendations as in the full version.

This report (both short and full versions) is not definitive; rather, it should be seen as a tool to stimulate further discussion about, and planning for, the development of the ELTeCS newslists and other services.

The key recommendations of this report are summarised as follows:

•Ensure the ELTeCS newslists are reaching, and meeting the information needs of, EL practitioners in each educational sector and stream worldwide.

•Maintain the convenience and inclusiveness of access of the ELTeCS newlists.

•Improve the readability and layout of ELTeCS digests so these are easier and quicker to scan and read.

•Investigate the possibility of establishing dual newslists, one in plain text and the other in html, to run in parallel for each region, to suit different levels of IT access and requests for a more attractive, dynamic layout.

•Ensure the British Council’s Teaching English news goes out regularly to members, as this is popular.

•Encourage members to send their own messages to the lists, whether by running themed digests; engaging ‘champions’ to stimulate news sharing; or having regular slots on key topics, for example.

•Encourage members to share information whereby they can learn from their peers’ personal experience about professional issues.

•Include a two-liner with each digest advising members as to how to send their own messages direct to the Editors for publication.

•Develop the content relationship between the ELTeCS newslists and the British Council Teaching English website, so that brief alerts and ‘taster’ items can be run on the ELTeCS lists with links to the fuller stories, reports, resources, etc. on the Teaching English website.

•Investigate further the categories of content and types of networking activity that ELTeCS members find most useful in the Teaching English website, and involve ELTeCS members in piloting and testing new content and activities.

•Review the process of selection of items of global interest for dissemination on all lists.

•Promote other British Council-run and -supported ELT forums, both online and face-to-face, via the ELTeCS newslists, encouraging ELTeCS members to get actively involved in these.

•Ensure there are regular opportunities for ELTeCS members to voice their opinions about the newslists and other British Council ELT forums.

•Help members to access and make use of the ELTeCS newslist archives.

•Find a solution to the code problems that have returned during December 2007 to three of the six ELTeCS lists (Africa and the Middle East; East Asia; India and Sri Lanka) as a result of technical upgrading by the host company, L-Soft.

(Page uploaded 31 January 2008)