About Redbridge Institute of Adult Education
Maria Sotiriou is Assistant Principal for Curriculum, and is well supported by the principal, who is eager to explore technology that will enhance learning. The infrastructure is in place should they decide that new tech is worth exploring.
The challenge
Giving Part-Time Learners Practice They Could Retain
Redbridge's learners need practical skills for the workplace. Those enrolled in childcare or teaching assistant courses are already going into weekly placements while they study. Getting a job in those settings at the end of the course requires an interview — sometimes more than one. And interviews, like most things, get better with practice.
However, a part-time adult learning environment doesn't naturally lend itself to repetition. "A morning session may have one set of learners, and afternoon session will have another set of learners, the next day is a different set of learners," Maria explains. Keeping momentum going with any learning project — let alone one requiring consistent individual practice — is genuinely difficult.
Beyond the logistics, there are other barriers to consider. Most of Redbridge's learners have English as a second language. Practising interview conversations in front of a tutor or peers carries risk: the fear of being judged, the anxiety of making mistakes in public. For many adult learners, that anxiety is enough to stop them trying at all.
What Maria was looking for was something that could give people real, repeatable practice — in a way that felt private, low-stakes, and useful.
Finding Bodyswaps
Redbridge came to Bodyswaps through a combination of timing and opportunity. The Bodyswaps team offered the institute a pilot, giving Maria and her colleagues the chance to try the platform with learners before committing to anything.
For an institution whose learners are in and out on different days, the flexibility Bodyswaps offered mattered. Learners could pick up where they left off, on their own time, at their own pace, without needing a session booked or a member of staff in the room.
Getting It Off the Ground
From the beginning, the deployment at Redbridge was set up to last. The Bodyswaps team ran training directly with tutors, managers, and the institute's digital learning technician. A project coordinator managed licence allocation across courses. Internal champions were identified from the teaching team — people who could test the product with learners and keep the energy going.
The platform was embedded primarily within childcare, teaching assistant, and employability courses — where learners would be putting communication skills to use almost immediately, through weekly placements and eventual job interviews.
What Happened in the Classroom
Once learners got in front of Bodyswaps the response was clear.
For adult learners who use Chromebooks and touchboards every day, a VR headset was something else entirely. Staff were excited too. "That was something really key to our award as well," Maria says — the fact that Redbridge, as an adult learning provider, was giving its learners access to technology they often couldn't find anywhere else.
Learners were practising interview scenarios they'd genuinely face — how to speak confidently in a childcare setting, how to hold a conversation in a school, how to present themselves to an employer. And they could go back and try again without anyone watching.
For learners with English as a second language, that mattered especially. The platform gave them a private space to practise spoken English in the exact context they'd be using it — not as a language exercise, but as a real work scenario.
And because the practice happened within vocational courses rather than language classes, learners were improving without it being the explicit point.
The numbers back it up. By the time childcare and teaching assistant learners reach Level 3, Maria estimates around 50% are already in paid employment in the settings where they've been placed. "Bodyswaps helped them to gain that," she says, "because of course they would have had to have had an interview along the way while they were on the course."
Winning the Award
When Maria decided to submit for the Get the Nation Learning Award, she wasn't expecting to win. "We didn't realise there was going to be an award to apply for at the time," she says.
The year before, she had named it the institute's year of CPD. She held the budget. She had leadership behind her. And throughout the year, she and her team had documented what was happening: the impact on teachers, the impact on learners, the use of multiple technologies across courses. Bodyswaps was part of that picture — not the whole of it, but a meaningful piece.
"It wasn't just one part that won the award," Maria is careful to say. "It was the whole Redbridge Institute drive to improve the use of technology in the classroom."
What made it possible, she says, was the partnership. The access. The training.
Advice for Other Institutions
Get buy-in from the top first. Find your internal champions and keep checking in with them, because momentum in a part-time environment is fragile. Celebrate everything, publicly and often. "Every little moment can be captured on a camera and shared on a social media feed," Maria says. "Keep celebrating."
And collaborate. Part of what made Redbridge's submission strong was work done alongside neighbouring services — sharing what they'd learned and demonstrating reach beyond their own walls. "Collaborate and tell everybody what you're doing," Maria says.
The small gestures count too. "It doesn't hurt to say well done and thank you."
