First Wing eDofE Success

Report by Flt Lt Jeff Fusedale RAFVR(T), Wing DofE Officer.

The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award has gone online and Herts & Bucks Wing converted to eDofE on 1st April 2011. Since then most Squadrons have been getting to grips with the new system. eDofE is an internet-based system where participants (cadets and staff under 25 years old) log their progress with their DofE Award, adding their own evidence with their DofE Leaders agreement and approval. This has been a big change compared to the old system of paper Record Books where the emphasis was on staff logging and recording DofE programme activities; in some cases cadets didn’t know what programmes they had done until the activity was signed off.

Herts & Bucks Wing have proved the new system works at 1187 (Hemel Hempstead) Squadron with Cadet Phoebe Giles being the first cadet in the Wing to complete a DofE Award using the eDofE system. She said “At first I found the system a bit confusing, however with some help from my DofE Leader I soon got the hang of it and am very happy to have completed my Bronze Award. The best section was a two-day expedition we organized where we got to camp out at Phasel’s Wood. I also got to mentor Junior Cadets on the Squadron to complete my volunteering section.”

Cadet Warrant Officer Katie Cunningham in January 2011 attended the Introduction to DofE (IDofE) course and as the 1187 Squadron’s DofE Leader also then had to learn about eDofE in order that she could guide participants through the eDofE process. She said “There’s nothing new about how to complete the Awards, it’s just a different method of planning and recording activity, with much more emphasis on the participant planning their DofE activity rather than the Sqn staff directing what participants are going to do.”

Since April 2011 the Wing has enrolled over 200 participants using eDofE, the majority being at the Bronze level. It hasn’t been plain sailing and some difficulties have been experienced, e.g. each participant (not their parent) is required to provide their own personal e-mail address (and write it legibly) for their login details to be sent to them. Sadly over 100 of these participants have yet to log-on to eDofE. One of the benefits of the new system is that once DofE Leaders get used to the system it actually reduces their workload with the emphasis on recording activity switching to the DofE participant, within the ATC this is a shift in culture that ought to be embraced at Squadron level. The good news for Herts & Bucks Wing is that it’s well ahead of most other Wings in the transition to eDofE that is here to stay.

The accompanying photos show Cadet Giles on Volunteering and Expedition activities.