Jenna Tinkle: 
So welcome, we got some people who just arrived so I am going to Introduce the session and then will begin. So I'd like to introduce you to Diane Goff, Project Chair of Examiners and John Taylor, Project Chief Examiner. We're going to first take you through a short training session on the new Express approach to delivering our level one, two and three project qualification. We also have doctor Emma Thompson from the University of Southampton joining us today and at the end she will take you through some of her work supporting and researching the value of the EPQ. You should be able to answer some questions from higher education perspective and from her EPQ work in schools around the country. We also have Rachel Steele and Helen Turner on the call and they'll be able to answer any questions you have about artefacts and performance projects. We’ll have some time for Q&A in a bit of networking, so please use the chat functionality to add your questions and ideas to the chat box or just to say hello and we'll do our best to answer everything live. If not, we’ll follow up straight away after with some answers to your questions. We are recording the session but will respect your privacy. We won't be reading that your names when we respond to your questions. So on that note, I'd like to hand over to Diane to take us through the first part of the training- over to Diane. 
Diane Goff: 
Thank you very much Jenna, and a very warm welcome to this training session, which covers the delivery of the Pearson Edexcel Express Foundation, which is level one, higher level 2 and extended project level three in three months. Next slide, please. The purposes of this presentation are to provide a brief overview of an expressed project, to look at some tips on how to deliver a project in a focus period of time and also provide you with some details of where you can find further support. Next slide. We’ll start by looking at a brief overview of the Express Project. Next slide. They Express Project retains all the features of the normal foundation, higher and extended projects. The intention behind the Express Project is to provide learners with an opportunity to complete the project in a focus period of time, to take advantage of what would have been revision and study time during the summer term. The project can be carried out by learners in their own homes and support can be delivered and in fact needs to be delivered from a mentor or tutor assessor online. As with usual project delivery, content should be chosen by the learner with help where required from the Tutor Assessor. The project topic should be something that really interests and motivates the Learner. A full range of project outcomes are available for the fresh project as they are with the non Express Project outcomes. So learners have a variety of formats to choose from, not just a written report. They can also do an investigation, an artefact or a performance, next slide please. Let's just take a look now some tips as to how to deliver the Express Project in a focused period of time. Next slide, please. It is very important that learners have mentor support in order to finalize our project in this relatively short timeframe, mentors are invited to consider the point showing here on the slide. They should ensure that the research title or design brief or performance requirements are very focused and not too wide ranging. Next slide, please. Similarly, sorry, could you go back to slide 6? Sorry. ack to slide six, please thank you. Similarly, the product title should be divided into small objectives around about 3 project objectives, or PO is as we refer to them, is considered sufficient. Dated on specific but also very realistic timescales should be provided in Section 3 on the project proposal form. Learner should be encouraged to adhere to these and where they do not, they state these changes in the activity log, giving reasons for them. A wide range of help and support is available to learn, some of which will look at later. It is important that learners are made aware of this support and make full use of it. The support includes online support available on the future ready page of the Pearson website. I'm now going to hand over to John. Thank you, John. 

John Taylor:
Thank you Diane. Well, Good afternoon everybody and I'm hoping audio is fine. So as Jenna’s just emphasized on the chat box. Please do pop in questions as you go. Will be fairly brief in our opening remarks because we want to use this session as much as possible for networking, for discussion and for exploring, what is, I think, a very exciting new prospect. So what I'm going to do in my section of the presentation is just to talk you through some general principles of project mentoring. And as Diane’s already mentioned, we've been producing quite a bit of new free content which is available through the future ready microsite and one section of that is actually, an elaboration of what I'm going to say very briefly, now, so there's a series of about 9 or 10 five-minute videos in which each of the principles that I'm going to discuss is discussed in much more in much more detail. So, Just to go through then, if we could move to the next slide. Thank you. At basic principles of project mentoring, I imagine the most of this will be familiar to many of us, so these are principles that you might wish to consider if you're guiding learners yourself through and Express project, or if you're assisting colleagues who are beginning on the EPQ Express adjust to answer a question that Peters put in already. EPQ Express is the same qualification as EQ. But we've worked on a model which can be condensed into a shorter time frame. Specifically, we've done that with an awareness that there's a huge number of learners at the moment who've got a period of time which would have been devoted to examination. At the end of the examination courses and actually taking exams. Of course, that's all been taken away, and we felt that was a significant opportunity for them to use project work in a fairly short, intense three month period to provide a meaningful end to their academic courses, when the examination route has has closed down, so there is structurally in terms of assessment levels in terms of assessment organization, It's the same EPQ but in a more condensed time frame. So with that said, let's go through some of these principles. So the first is that if we're going to encourage learners to succeed with project work, then we need to teach them the skills that are required by successful project work. Project skills are not innate skills. They are skills which need to be taught just like skills in any other subject and not just skills. Learners at all levels will also need guidance and scaffolding for their project and the mentor’s role is to provide that to facilitate the learning journey. So although it's absolutely integral to project learning that it involves independence and discovery on the part of the learner, that doesn't mean at all that they're just left on their own and one of the reasons why we provided extensive support for the EPQ Express. Expect extensive online support for EPQ Express is to make sure that those frameworks that scaffolding and that supporting structure is in place even when learners are working remotely. So we return at the end of this session to discuss what support is available specifically. As well as general support for the learning process, mentors need to facilitate the specific process of choosing and refining a suitable title. And I think, uh, here, over the years I've thought about what the core if you like of core criteria, are for choice of a title. and I I think it comes down to four words: focused, accessible, challenging and engaging. A title needs to be quite specific in the form of a question or a practical challenge. If they're doing an artefact or performance, it needs to be accessible. Learners often struggle with project work because they go in at two higher level. And the job of the mentors to help bring them down to a level which is enables them to to learn and to make progress meaningfully. It also needs to be challenging. There needs to be room for argument, to counter argument, not just simply a process of gathering over other peoples opinions and summarizing them, and perhaps most important of all, it needs to be engaging the the whole point of an EPQ and FPQ and HPQ is to give learn as a significant freedom to go into a topic area to take it, take on a challenge which they have a personal interest in. And so encouraging learners to do that is part of the job of the mentor. OK, so third principle. As for so 4th principle, as I've mentioned already, research involves more than just searching. It involves analysis involves synthesis. It involves evaluation, so we're looking to take learners a step beyond just finding lots of information and transcribing it. Can they actually relate what they found to their project? Can they summarize it in a way that makes it meaningful personally to them, and meaningful to the, to the audience, who for whom there designing their project? So there's a challenge there that's a difficult task, and again that needs support. It needs scaffolding these resources, and if you look at our future ready micro-site, you'll see we've started already. And there's more resource to be added with some some guidance specifically for mentors, but also with webinars which are targeting learners in exactly this area, giving them the tools that they need to begin genuine research of their own. I think another point which is significant is that learners need to develop and defends their own ideas. It's quite common in project work for the learner to be a little hesitant and cautious and for them to, as it were, hide behind the research process so that they spend their time analysing other people's ideas but not actually engaging in putting forward their own point of view. and I think it's very important with EPQ or any of the other qualifications that we really challenged learners to enter into the debate, to put forward their own creative response to the challenge that they've set themselves. A lot of that is about courage and confidence. Again, it's the job of the mentor to help to provide that to start, start the learner really, from the outset, thinking yes, I've got something to say about this question. I can my ideas count too. It's not just about other people's thoughts. Another key principle is counter argument. We want to see learners engage in debate. We want to see some exploring alternative perspectives and it's really a hallmark as they're moving through the levels and to the higher mark bands are hallmark of success is where they can actually ask themselves a question. What would be the strongest argument against what I've just said? And if they're capable of analyzing and responding to that, then they really learned a valuable skill and their project will be richer. And this applies as much to the practical units as it does to the written station investigation units, it's about experimentation is about exploration of alternative ideas, is about creative development by critique and analysis of alternatives coming up to a new idea. So being prepared to ask the challenging question is is really important? Final couple of points final 2, 3 points here. Regular milestone checks- I usually tell my learners that the project, whether it's a foundation, higher or extended project, is almost certainly the single biggest piece of work that they will have engaged in up to that stage in their academic career. It’s very daunting to be told that you've got the lower levels of 1500 words, 2500 words or EPQ Stage 6 to 7000 words. If it's a written project or 3-4000 for practical purposes. Very daunting to most learners. And I find it's enormously valuable to break they the large scale process down into a series of chunks and planning phase, a research phase, a development in a review phase, and to set very concrete targets with deadlines or milestones and expectations about word count. I even even get the level of dividing up the number of words I'd expect to see by the number of weeks available and recommending students produced 250 words a week over the course of a year. Or if they're doing an expressive PQ. That would translate into about 1000 words a week. Challenging for them, but a manageable task. Once saved, once they've got that milestone in view, and I think it helps enormously to for them to know that the next step is on the horizon, and that the final goal isn't necessarily the only target. At final couple of points about reviewing the process for the student, sign in from the mental side, do encourage learners to engage in self review. If you go on the the future ready microsite, you'll see that we've put together a toolkit called EPQ online and this is designed with a bunch of resources is to facilitate the process of moving EQ into an online domain and obviously one aspect of that is encouraging learners to be more self reflective to be more independent to be more taking to be taking control of the process to a greater extent. So there are some checklists in there. Which really break the project down into its structural components and allow the learner themselves to evaluate. Have they actually done what's needed in a 1, 2, 3, or 4 each to meet the criteria. Final points, mentoring by questioning. Mentoring is a difficult task to get right. There's a balance to be struck. Between the desire to help in to facilitate into to move the student forward, but also at the same time to recognize that the learning journey is their journey and it's their ideas that should be taking taking precedence that they need to be the ones who are responsible for for driving the process. And one very simple way of doing this to get the balance right is to instead of office, Instead of offering advice in the form of statements or instructions, simply to question. I mean, this goes right back to Socrates with the Socratic method to teach by questioning to actually ask the questions that lead the learner to discover for themselves what the next step is. The great art of mentoring is about helping them take one more step, not necessarily completing and perfecting. Just take you one more step and questions are very powerful tool for that. K thank you. Next slide please. So we have a range of support available to help you in delivering the project and the next two or three slides were going to give you an overview of that. So for further training as we've already mentioned, the requirements of an Express project are the same as the requirements for foundation, higher or extended project. Our training to these projects has been provided. And this would be a useful resource if you're delivering had expressed project. So to find training resources, follow the directions on this slide look within the training from Pearson prerecorded training section and then under the tab project qualification. Next slide, please. So In addition to training, we have a wealth of resources available to help you support learners through the completion of foundation, higher or extended project. All of these can be found on the Pearson Project, Pearson Edexcel Project website in dedicated areas for each level of the project. Next slide, please. So you can also find support for on the new future ready microsite. And what we have there is a series of different elements that we built around this idea of giving you, giving learners more directed learner support, but also giving you a bunch of new resources as mentors. So following this link you will find information guides about what project Express looks like and how it relates to EQ or FPQ or HPQ. You'll also find a link to the future skills for employability EPQ. A very exciting initiative which we might want to come back to in Q&A. And a new initiative through partnership with Access Ed, we've launched webinars which are directed towards learners with guidance on all aspects of the research process and project skills. As I mentioned, as well as a series of Project Learning Guidance Videos which I've recorded. And there's also a new future ready podcast series which really explores the whole wide a set of questions around what we need to be doing to prepare our learners for the world of the future in both work and personal terms. And there's also the project online tool kit which contains templates, guidance and checklists, plus resource links to help you if you're delivering project learning remotely. Next slide, please. So access to further support is shown here. And you can find obviously on the Pearson Project website, copies of examiners reports across the levels, which as well as common tree on Excel exam performance, contain advice and guidance for candidates. Uh, in in terms of reaching a successful project qualification. So thank you for listening. I want to hand over now to doctor Emma Thompson from the University of Southampton. Emma has worked with students undertaking a number of different research based projects, including EPQ. And she provides support for the taught element of the EPQ and has carried out research into the value of EPQ from the perspective of a University. So over to you now Emma.

Emma Thompson:
Hi there, I hope you can all hear me ok. uhm so yeah hopefully I will be able to bring you some of the higher education perspective as to why EPQ is so useful and why you know the express EPQ the students have the opportunity to do here is probably quite a good use of their time. I'm thinking maybe for those who won't, considering doing an EPQ, I know there's often students who I meet who say that, you know they haven't got room for it within their curriculum. Well, you know they just might at the moment, So what you can see on the screen there is some of the some of the sort of research or the data that John alluded to in how we have looked at students are performing once they've done an EPQ. So once they come to University. So this is based on our own data across a period of 4 years. Uhm, so we we obviously see students coming to us with an EPQ and a host of other qualifications, and what we've looked at here is whether students have done an EPQ versus those who haven't done an EPQ and across each of our five different faculty. So you will see that the faculty of Arts and Humanities, Engineering, the physical Sciences, environmental life Sciences. Medicine and Social Sciences. So these are five different areas and across the board, those students who have done an EPQ before coming to us do seem to perform better. So the chart that you're seeing there is it shows that there are higher proportions of EPQ students, making the progression from first year to 2nd year according to faculty. So it's nice and positive there and that is Entirely an across the board and it's not just a first year phenomenon though. this is something that seems to kind of go with students and so perhaps if we could have another look at the next slide that would be really helpful um because that will show us the degree outcomes. so you will notice that the there is a column missing for medicine- that's not because I'm trying to hide something about Medical students in the EPQ file from it. It's just the of course. We don't grade all medics. Everybody would want to 1st class doctor rather than somebody who scrapes a pass. A path is a very high pass and that's why they you know they aren't graded in the usual way. So again, what you see there is that across the board where we do have different classes of degrees. Students who have done an EPQ- There were higher proportions of those students achieving first class and upper 2nd class Degrees, so it's certainly something that we are incredibly favorable towards. We have been for a number of years, and you know, funnily enough, we are seeing more universities coming with us on that. So you know, students are likely to hold offers. More than ever before, do include their EPQ, so some universities won't make an offer, but they still like to see it on a personal statement. It would make an offer that includes the EPQ, and then you have universities like ourselves, like Birmingham like Bath, who will make very clear offers that do include Andy. Usually on an alternative offer basis and then typically all the other universities are somewhere in between those perhaps more on an ad hoc basis depending on the student in their profile. But that's why I'm universities do make those offers- it's because students do so well through doing an EPQ. So we encourage it wherever we possibly can. It just prepares them for the rigors of academic study. so that’s kind of my perspective and I'm happy to hand back to the Pearson's team, but I'm more than happy to take any questions with within the networking session as well. 
