Case Study - Burnley College
02.02.02009
The Client
Burnley College is a highly successful general Further Education college located in the heart of Pennine Lancashire. The College is the largest provider for 16 to18 year olds in the borough with success rates in the top 10% of Colleges nationally. Students from A Level and advanced vocational programmes have achieved a 100% pass rate for the past four years. Currently situated on four sites across Burnley, the College employs 545 members of staff and operates a turnover of £15 million.
A new College for Burnley is currently under construction at a cost of some £81m. The new campus, located on a 10 acre site, will create the most up to date facilities for Burnley and incorporates a sixth form centre and a separate skills and adult centre. The development will also bring a university directly into Burnley, as a Centre of the University of Central Lancashire will be a key third element of the campus.
The College is at the leading edge in Information Communication Technologies and multi-media applications in the Further Education sector. The new college has been designed following extensive consultation with students and staff, with new technology for learning fully incorporated, based around wireless Internet access. Four years ago the college had been awarded Centre of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) status for its Care Division. As part of the CoVE initiative, the College needed to provide students with access to Information Learning Technologies (ILT) facilities in both dedicated IT suites and in theory rooms.
Using LapSafe®
Burnley College’s Network Services Manager Ian Foy found the perfect solution with LapSafe®’s Mentor™ Smartline™ range of storage and recharging trolleys. The LapSafe® trolleys proved so popular with the Division of Care that soon other teaching Divisions were asking for the same solution.
The College invested in another trolley for the Division of Construction Studies but this time with the added benefit of a printer. This quickly become the chosen methodology for using ILT to enhance learning and teaching across departments. The college now has a ‘fleet’ of 20 trolleys in Divisions used by both staff and students.
Teachers like the flexibility and ease of use they get from their trolleys, in fact Ian says teachers “think they are the best thing since sliced bread”. What Ian especially likes about LapSafe® trolleys is that they can be tailor made to match requirements and they do “exactly what they say on the tin”. He also likes the fact that they are future proof as it’s so easy to upgrade the modules as requirements change. When the new college opens in 2009 Ian says they will be taking all the current trolleys with them and more, as well as looking at further LapSafe® products such as the QCharger™, which manages battery charging externally.
The Future
It is good to know that the college can rely on LapSafe® Products to continue to support them with the best solutions, the best products to help manage their IT and to help them achieve their vision for 21st Century education.
