North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire College (NWSLC)
Phoenix Software delivers a ground-breaking AI course for North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire College (NWSLC).
North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire College (NWSLC) supports around 8,000 students in full and part time study in apprenticeships, T Levels, higher education, adult education, and professional development (CPD).
With strong ties to local employers and a strong emphasis on practical skills, NWSLC offers a diverse range of courses, including digital, health and social care, vocational and practical courses, motorsport, and engineering. The college serves its students from seven campuses in Nuneaton, Hinckley, and Wigston, in addition to offering distance learning.
Key facts
Users:
8,000 learners
Seven campuses
across the West and East Midlands
Solutions:
PowerPoint presentations, voiceovers and supporting materials for use within Moodle LMS, the college’s SCORM-compliant E-Learning platform
Sector:
Further education
Inspired by a government agenda to enhance digital education, NWSLC was successful in an application for funding to develop a new AI course. However, due to the significant time-constraints placed on the funding, combined with the college’s desire for the course to reflect the latest, real-life use cases for AI, the college sought to partner with an IT services company with direct experience of AI implementations to help develop the course.
Phoenix has been supporting NWSLC in its IT and software needs since 2013, specifically around its Microsoft and Adobe software solutions. Due to this longstanding and trusted relationship, Phoenix was invited to pitch for the development of the AI course.
In 2019, the university began its transition to be a cloud-first organisation, beginning with the migration of its data centre workloads to the Microsoft Azure cloud and switching to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions whenever feasible. As part of its cloud-first journey, the university moved its Azure estate onto the OCRE framework in 2021, for which Phoenix is the sole supplier.
The OCRE framework not only provided the university with a 40.5% monthly discount on its Azure services, but the onboarding process also provided an opportunity to experience how Phoenix works with its customers. As a result of this positive experience, the university invited Phoenix to participate in the tender for its IT support contract.
In October 2023, the university transitioned to a Phoenix support contract consisting of:
- Reactive 3rd line support with 10 support calls per month and 18 Microsoft escalation hours per year
- 24/ 7/ 365 coverage with a 1-hour urgent incident response
- 26 days of proactive consultancy time for workshops, migration services, and health checks with Phoenix specialists
- ‘Hyper Care’ for the first three months, featuring more frequent support reviews
Benefits and outcomes:
The course was designed to cover both practical applications and theoretical aspects of AI, ensuring learners gain a well-rounded understanding of the subject. The course was delivered on time and has been well received by the college and its students. Additional benefits for the college include:
Module materials were created in PowerPoint format, with extensive slide notes for staff to ensure they had everything they needed to deliver the course in-person, remotely, or via the Moodle platform
Phoenix recorded voiceovers for presentation materials to offer an additional learning option, and to help those with additional learning needs access the course
Additional handouts were created for academic staff to enhance learning and provide extra support
Phoenix ensured all materials were accessibility checked, including alt-text for images and dyslexic-friendly text
Given how fast the field of AI is evolving, Phoenix provided the raw files to NWSLC to enable its staff to make amendments to the course themselves
Phoenix conducted training sessions for the staff that would be delivering the course, in addition to a separate training session on responsible and ethical AI
While the course was initially designed for businesses, it can also be offered to the college’s full and part-time students
Despite the tight timeline for delivery, the course was rolled out in September, meeting the timeline set by the government funding
NWSLC is continuing to work with Phoenix on other projects, including the deployment of a dedicated AI server for students to develop their own AI applications
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