Any one running the ECDL scheme?

[Kyle]

Is anyone running the ECDL at their school either for the students, 6th Form or Adult Education.

 

Our school are thinking of bringing this in for all students and possibly adult Ed.

 

I like to know any feedback you have, do you use the books for resource or the CD?

Do you do all the test online?

Are you an accredited test centre?

[apeo]

We run ECDL here for teachers, and we run all the courseware online and the tests are also done online. The test software we use is ATS.

[alan-d]

We run ECDL here for teachers, and we run all the courseware online and the tests are also done online. The test software we use is ATS.

 

And we are an accredited test center.

 

There were problems using the CDs hence the online version is now used. Easier to manage that way too

[tosca925]

This is something we have talked about in the past, does it take much looking after/administration.

 

 

What sort of take up do you have with it?

[Shiny_Guru]

The ATS software has been a bit flakey in our school, suffers from internal timing issues that 'only effect a very few systems' which included all of ours.

 

The interface for administration is so intuitive that the teacher administering the course has zero'd the database twice so far, and the install process is very automation unfriendly (a fact that they freely admit, we advised would be an issue given our automated build system and which was ignored by the above teacher - when challenged she just said 'I know, but I thought you'd cope' - and people wonder why I have no hair left)

 

If you go down this route then make sure to install the demo fully using whatever system you use to roll out software network wide. Like most of these shiny progs a manual install works flawlessly but automation can be problematic.

[alan-d]

This is something we have talked about in the past, does it take much looking after/administration.

 

 

What sort of take up do you have with it?

 

Initially with the CD Version it was a nightmare, wouldn't install correctly, wrong version of SQL, software crashing half way through a module or test. The Web version is less problamatic and seems to be working well.

 

The only users we have at the moment are school staff - we have not opened it up to the public yet. We have to buy a licence for each registered user so the administrative procedures etc are not in place to open it up to the public.

 

I'm not certain what the costs are as it's being run by a teacher, we just get involved with the technical side and setting up users and exams. (The teacher in question is too lazy to learn this bit - but I have a cunning plan :twisted: )

[apeo]

To add to what alan-d said, both the courseware and test software took sometime initially to install. I didnt do the initail install for the courseware or test software but i know it was a hastle to get it working. In fact the test software didnt work properly until early this year after talking to the developers on several occations. Although it was a pain to get working i did find the help provided for the ats software to be quite good. Our setup for deployment of the software is via gpo using an msi that the developers created for me and a gpo to register an ocx that installs the active x toolbar the software uses. For some reason after some time has passed the toolbar thinks its not installed and the software doesnt load so i have a this automatically register the ocx.

[Netman]

Yep - we use Electric Paper's ECDL setup, online or CD based training, online exams - we're a registered test centre. Take-up was about 50% of staff (offering to 6th form in Sep). One of my two techs deals with staff training and has spent a fair bit of time on the administration. The initial setup wasn't too bad though... costs worked out at about £90 per person all together which faculties paid for from their training budgets...

[MrDylan]

It's dreadful, we've had nothing but trouble with it.

 

It's aimed at more Test Centres I think, where security isn't as tight as in a school, so there's lots of problems.

 

We've had it installed for months, and never had a smooth test run, which wouldn't be too bad but there's an £8 charge and if it fails, well, tough.

 

After all the problems we wanted a refund but NCC (Litmus) said they'd charge £500 for a call out we had if we went ahead with it.

 

I believer we're ditching it when the current candidates have completed.

 

The KS3 stuff is much better from an Admin POV, though I'm not sure if any tests have being run with it yet.