Learner Development students from West College Scotland have had their hard work rewarded at the Common Knowledge UK Awards in Glasgow.

CKUK Awards 2016 - Paisley Team 2 Mirin McAuley and Josh Allison

Students were tasked with producing, filming, and starring in films to raise awareness of subjects important to them.

This has been organised by Common Knowledge UK (CKUK), a charity that offers innovative learning, peer education, drama and safe social networking for people with learning difficulties. They strive to provide those they work with with the best quality learning, information and experiences that can be offered.

CKUK Awards 2016 - Paisley Team 3

This year marked another successful awards for all three of the College’s Campuses.

Students from Clydebank came away with awards for Best Teamwork, Best Male Performance, Runner up – Best Production, and the coveted People’s Choice Award.

Students were delighted with the result, with Tracy saying “it was great”, and Wendy calling the experience “amazing”.

Other students, including Andrew, “felt proud” of their achievements, with John commenting it was “excellent, I felt I really achieved something” and Gary saying he “proud of what we achieved.”

Patrick was “happy to be behind the scenes” while declaring “a lot of respect for those in front of the camera”.

Greenock Students came away with two prizes for acting, with Caitlin Campbell winning Best female performance, and Scott Cuffe runner-up for best male performance.

Caitlin, who played a murderer in the film said “I enjoyed the project and thought it was really interesting, I especially liked (pretending) to kill people.”

Greenock Learner Development Lecturer Jonathan McCafferty worked with the students on the project.

“The project is a great opportunity for our students to learn new skills and it also gives them the opportunity to genuinely co-operate with each other to achieve a wonderful end result. On the whole, the students had a great time and learned about all the various steps involved in making a movie.”

Student Ryan was very positive about the project, saying ‘It was good to learn new skills and I got paid in skittles.”
Those brave enough can watch Greenock’s film about the ‘dangers’ of technology here:

Paisley won Best Social Media Safety Message, with Heather Morrison, Curriculum Enhancement Lecturer in Learner Development, happy that this reflected the great work of all the team.

“The Peer Educator Programme is a great experience for students. This is the second year that 2nd Year Step class have been involved and it is something we intend to continue within the new term. hem had travelled far before and now both have the confidence to travel down to Greenock and over to Bridgeton with ease. They have made some good friends and intend to keep working with the CKUK team, with a residential hopefully in the summer.”

Mirin McAuley agreed that project really helped her confidence.

“The CKUK experience has really helped my confidence and I would recommend it to anyone. I have made some great friends and built up my skills. It will be a good thing to have on my C.V.”