We’ve quite a lot to say on the subject so you may prefer to sit back and watch one of our customers explain. Faced with likely budget cuts caused by C19 Middlesbrough College resubscribed in March 2020 to tie in the price for a further three years. 

If you buy HOW2s as another-thing-to-do or as an add-on to what you are already doing it will NOT save you money. It will cost you money and will not work. 

On the other hand, you may be aware that your professional learning activities do not have the impact you want? Or you may be facing budget cuts and asking yourself the question ​“how can we, in the face of these cuts, continue to support our teachers?”. If this is the case, then we should talk. HOW2s do increase effectiveness and efficiencies and will save you money — When compared to what you are spending at the moment.

To find the savings, you’ll need to consider how much you currently spend on a variety of ways to support improvements in learning through better teaching. We’ve put a few things in order — the most significant potential saving first.

The most significant savings have been made by organisations that compare what they are spending on creating their materials to the cost of HOW2s. Once they realise it’s a closed social learning environment and that they can organise the content and their people in whatever way they want to, we get the buy-in. And savings can add up to 00s of 000s. We know that because that is what it costs us to build and maintain and add to the HOW2 app.

Of course, some organisations may prefer to keep creating their online support resources. Or have already committed to a decision to invest the 00s of 000s in their web-based resources continually. 

You need to consider the fact that the app can be used by FT, PT and Sessional Staff in all support all subject areas across multiple campuses and settings… 

Equal second on the savings list is the investment in coaching/mentoring and monies spent on buying in externals.

Some organisations employ a full-time coach(s), others allocate ​‘x’ hours of the week to subject specialists or advanced practitioners from different faculties or curriculum areas. Coaching is expensive. Maybe 40 – 60K with on costs per annum per FT equivalent instructional coach.

With HOW2s you can expect to either support around 40% more teachers with the same allocation or support the same number of teachers with a 40% saving on staffing costs.

It’s also worth mentioning that you can expect a massive reduction in travel expenses and time spent preparing materials and records. And here’s the double whammy, there is no limit to the number of teachers who can access the app and engage in self or peer to peer coaching.

We used to do it — a lot. So we know the advantages (and disadvantages) very well.

Last year we were in conversation with a large organisation regarding a subscription.

It didn’t go ahead. The 25K investment required to support teachers for a year had been swallowed up by an 80K spend on live training. Meanwhile, elsewhere, our subscribing colleges were running their training days with HOW2s. It’s a regular thing now, but we remember the first time one of our (smaller) colleges used HOW2s to run workshops for all teachers over two days saving 20K that they’d spent the previous year. 

Carole Kane was was i/c CPD in a two-campus college. Carole recalls spending 15K on externals in the period just before a colleague in another college recommended HOW2s to her. In terms of content HOW2s quickly covered everything the externals had done and now, instead of spending loads of time chasing up teachers to see what impact the training had made she had a dashboard that she could use to monitor the impression from her desk. 

How many job roles in your organisation have a responsibility for supporting improvements in learning? Heads of Faculty, Quality managers, Head of Department, Coaches, Mentors, Advanced Practitioners? Any more?

Write them down

How much time do these people spend setting up, running, capturing (chasing) and evidencing the impact of professional learning activities?

How much time do people running and attending professional learning, spend travelling to or from professional learning activities?

Write down, next to each job role, an estimate of how much time each position spends on professional learning?

How much time is lost chasing or considering or evidencing the impact of each of these persons’ efforts to improve learning through better teaching?

Write it down next to each job role.

How long is your improvement cycle? How long does it currently take to identify a learning need, find solutions, learn them and then evidence impact?

Write it down.

With HOW2s all of the professional learning activities, in so far as they are concerned with improving learning through improvements in teaching, can be run and evidenced very directly on the app.

The first video below shows how quickly and easily a busy teacher can access solutions to help her address identified learning needs.

The second ​“Say hello to HOW2s” takes a full (12 minutes!) look at how the app supports all professional learning activities. Not least because they all have three common characteristics. — an identified learning need, a solution and a process.