If you think of a learning resource centre as a glorified library, you need to talk to Jo Richler, the new Learning Resource Centre Manager of the Year. She is a passionate advocate of learning and sets some tough challenges for the learning world. ‘My mission,’ she says, ‘is to change an 18th-century concept of the private library into a 21st-century inclusive resource centre.’ Originally from Montreal, Richler is in charge of the ten resource centres, 40 Learning Resources staff and an extensive e-learning portfolio at Wigan and Leigh College. ‘It’s a very interesting place with 24,000 students – all ages from 14 to 80 offering courses for HE and FE.’ She is clearly something of a visionary. ‘My byline is “resourcing the future” – trying to bring the best out of people and helping them to become totally independent learners,’ she explains.

So what is a 21st-century resource centre? Richler has strong views about its role. ‘You can have a room full of computers, but this doesn’t make it a learning environment. My core business is learning. We are part of the learning cycle; informal learning happens in our centres. The machines are only tools to deliver that.’ She believes strongly that people have to be at the heart of the learning process and she is a great innovator. ‘All my staff have, or are working towards, a teaching qualification,’ she says. ‘This may be quite unusual but if you are going to enable learning you have to understand what learners need.’

Richler is critical of the ‘sink or swim’ approach to many young learners. ‘Students leave or just survive secondary education, come into a college and within a week are somehow sprinkled with gold dust and told, “You are now independent learners”,’ she says. ‘But this doesn’t just happen. Without the systems, people and the environment to enable them, they are going to find it very tough. Our role is to support these students by giving them the skills, materials and access to quality information they need to become truly independent, lifelong learners.’

Another innovation is to throw out the old ‘guided tour of the library’ model of induction. The real induction starts, Richler says, with the first assignment, which should not be a baptism of fire for the learner. ‘When students come to an induction workshop, they arrive with their tutor and the module key terms or the first assignment. We talk about learning and that first assignment, not about opening times. Without the right independent learning skills, there is no way they can succeed with their first piece of work.’ She also insists that all her staff have universal learning skills. ‘While we do have subject specialists on site, students know they can get appropriate help from any member of staff at any time.’

People are important to learning, but so is the environment in which learners work. She has introduced Scrabble and chess to help emphasise that a resource centre is a learning environment. She has also called time on what she calls the Shush Days. ‘We create quiet areas but not Total Silent ones. A lot of the curriculum demands that our users work in groups. If you are used to working to music, and you come into a totally silent area, I am not playing to your learning preferences.’ This means that at some times of the day she even plays music, albeit not too loudly. She has also introduced water coolers into the centres, ‘because hydration is conducive to learning’. Additionally, there are occasions when childcare issues overwhelm the opportunities for independent learning so she has introduced the Children’s Corners. These bespoke facilities allow parents who are studying at the college a chance to bring in their children while they do a bit of research, browse the resources or do some photocopying.

Richler’s abounding energy to support independent learners has lessons for the corporate training world. There are, she says, universal principles whether people are learning in the classroom or a training centre. ‘I am responsible for information management, and isn’t that what training is? The learner brings in a lot to the environment. Informal learning works with a lot of people. The needs of the learner are the same no matter where they are.’ But wouldn’t most organisations be envious of the scale of learning resources held in colleges? ‘Some large corporations see access to outside information as a threat. Sending someone out to a training course is all they need to do, they think.’ There is a role, she says, for closer co-operation between learning resources enjoyed by FE colleges and the corporate sector. ‘Public libraries can’t do it and university libraries won’t do it. But when a company sends out its delegates for a training course, who is there to support them when they get back to work?’

Richler asks us to imagine a learning centre within a company that was like the one at her FE college. ‘You can come in whenever you want to learn – you can do it informally and in your own time and own way.’ She is, perhaps unsurprisingly, critical of any organisation that labels itself a Learning Organisation. ‘If you call yourself a “learning organisation”, are you embedding the skills of learning and saying that learning happens everywhere at every time? Training often means, “What do you need to know now, forget later?” The real learning organisation knows what needs to be learnt now and later. The true learning organisation should support its learners – train them to become knowledge managers.’ That sounds like a tough challenge, but maybe the training world needs more Jo Richlers.

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