Will learners soon dictate their learning qualifications?

That option could soon be coming our way if universities follow the research of Philip Duchastel, Nova Southeastern University. He says that university education needs to adapt to the new eLearning technology in a number of ways.

Instead of the traditional approach, he proposes a new learning model that includes:

1. Students who define and pursue specific learning goals as opposed to learning explicit content such as from a textbook
2. University course creators who accept diversity of outcomes as opposed to demanding common learning results
3. Students who produce their own researched knowledge rather than the regurgitation of course content
4. Evaluation tasks that demonstrate knowledge application as opposed to knowledge assimilation based on routine course tests
5. Students who can demonstrate they can build learning teams (collaborative learning) as opposed to exclusive individual learning
6. Universities actively encouraging global communities (virtual scientific communities) made possible by internet technology

“This new interactive model of learning is most suitable to online education. The explosion in information makes ‘creating knowledge’ by learners themselves more important than the traditional imparting of knowledge by instructors, whether in the classroom or elsewhere,” he says.

An online model of learning based around discovery learning removes the onus on course leaders or tutors to define what are legitimate knowledge and approved sources. The students working in collaborative teams would have to provide the evidence that their arguments (presentations of information) come from legitimate sources. And, that the conclusions drawn from their research are logical given the evidence they have gathered.

Checks and balances
There are several checks and balances inherent in this model of learning.

1. First, there is the learning team. The online environment allows some quite rigorous debate to take place because there is no body language involved to skew the frankness, unless it’s taking place in a video format (like Skype groups). Team members will understand that allowing someone to come up with poor research will not aid their case. They will want to challenge and analyze the research themselves, and will follow-up anything that could be suspect.

2. Second, the students’ evidence of success is not so much on the amount of content or evidence they have gathered, but the conclusions they have drawn from the evidence or research. Any tutor worth their degree will be able to sit through a presentation and discern whether the evidence is sufficient and whether the conclusions drawn are valid. Very little marking involved.

Tutors would become brainstorm leaders and guides when groups were stuck. They would teach critical thinking skills rather than facts that students could find out anyway. Their weekly (online or face-to-face) tutorials could be model presentations of their own research, and their teaching goals would be to show how they applied scientific method to ascertaining the credibility of the evidence.

The issue of credibility of research and information is a valid one. We just have to look at the victims of online hoaxes to know that if everything looks legitimate we are likely to accept that it is. We have only to read about ‘rogue investors’ to realise that while everything looks like we would expect, we will overlook indications of wrong doing or ‘tall stories’. We also have to quickly ascertain what is purely for entertainment and what is worth giving time to. Critical thinking is a skill most needed today, online or off.

Strange bedfellow as it is, I would propose that intuition is also a human quality that deserves more credit in the way we evaluate knowledge. It can let us down badly, because we rarely want to disbelieve old knowledge or be forced to take on new knowledge that lies contrary to what we ‘know to be true’. However, the greatest advances in science have come from the scientists, explorers and astronomers who trusted their intuition and refused to be bound by old knowledge. They took a very little new knowledge (observation) and allowed their intuition to move them forward into the unknown. Intuition is to be encouraged in our new learners.

I believe the vast knowledge library provided to us through the internet will encourage the world to take dynamic strides into a new way of living, if we are prepared to accept it. What needs to happen is that the old way of judging a student’s worth, through his/her accurate regurgitation of theory from old books, has to change. And it has to change whether the course of study is provided online or off.

Online Nation, a 2006 report by Elaine Allen and Jeff Seaman, looked at ‘Five Years of Growth in Online Learning’. The authors say that in the US about one-third of higher education institutions account for three-quarters of all online enrolments. “Future growth will come predominately from these and similar institutions as they add new programs and grow existing ones.”

These figures seem to imply that the early adopters of online (eLearning) have become the industry giants among universities. However, how are they taking hold of the opportunities that eLearning provides, rather than turning old books into online copy, is unclear. Online courses need to include strategies that hook students in. The learners must become active partners in the learning process rather than empty-vessels-that-must-be-filled.

Online Nation describes the barriers to universities taking on online courses as:
1. Cost (both cost to develop online courses and the costs to deliver them)
2. Lower retention rates for online
3. That students need more discipline to succeed in online courses
4. Whether online degrees will be acceptable in the job market
5. The level of acceptance of online instruction by faculty members

Allen and Seaman say: “it is not clear whether these are long-standing or more recent concerns, but survey responses suggest that these concerns are likely factors that have kept them (non-engaged universities) from introducing any online offerings.”

The first objection has largely been addressed by increasingly clever software. The second and third need a change of attitude about what learning is, as discussed in this article. The last two objections sound like pure reluctance to let go of what we currently ‘know to be true’.

H Sylvawood

Manufacturing moves into eLearning

We at Edutech KM have always said that manufacturers can do more than offer their employees manuals based on NZQA Unit Standards and tell them to get on with it. That focus is based on two assumptions:

1. Employees want to extend their skills so they are better at their job.
2. Skilled employees will naturally improve quality and this will pass on to the manufacturer in lowered costs of production.

Consequently NZQA Unit Standards have become prescriptive and absolute, and concentrate only on the skills and knowledge the trainee must have to operate at the level they are currently working at.

I would still agree that both the above assumptions are true. However, the research and articles I have been reading show that this is only half the story. Employees are not skill machines that can be easily replaced by more accurate automated equipment; employees are the brains that hold a vast amount of observational knowledge that could be keyed into the quality improvement cycle. By focusing only on how skilled they are we miss their world knowledge; we miss the feedback loop.

The other rich mine of improvement that manufacturers often miss is their resellers. Providing them with material/product specs does not mean they will:

• Sell the pertinent benefits to potential customers
• Ensure the final users actually understand how to use or apply the product
• Act as you mine of observational knowledge - why are there failures?

Even providing off-site training seminars is not enough because of reseller turn-over, limited training time and budget.

There is a big divide between the people in your company who convince the reseller buyers to add the product to their reseller range and the staff who resell your products. An ideal way to bridge that gap is to directly train the actual people who on-sell to the users. Most resellers, however, are unlikely to want to train their staff in how to sell the benefits of your product alone. They may have only a few staff and even fewer opportunities to send them on external training.

I would suggest that eLearning is the way to get over the gap. Well constructed learning on a CD or DVD or online can enthuse learners in a way that a pamphlet or instruction booklet cannot. Now my mind is racing with new possibilities after reading this article about how Madico, Inc., based in Woburn, Massachusetts got around the problem. Actually, they got further than 'around it', they elevated it into an opportunity that will make them stand out above the crowd.

I urge you to take a look at: Madico University: A Case Study of eLearning in a Manufacturer's Extended Enterprise.  Then if you're enthused or intrigued, let us know how we can help you create the same success. You do not have to be a large company like Madico to take advantage of good quality eLearning.

And about the benefits of a feedback loop: when employees and resellers are able to see themselves in the bigger picture they will come to understand their impact on everyone's success. It is often missed out of prescriptive training programs but can easily and cost-effectively become a fundamental part of your quality control/improvement plan. Just ask us.
Heather Sylvawood
Edutech KM Ltd

Bringing eLearning into your training

Cost has been a prohibiting factor when businesses consider the possibility of adding or shifting training into the realm of eLearning. Creating the content, images, written maaterial, videos, audios - it just seems all too much. Then, of course there is adding the cost of the Learning Management System (LMS) to record the student/learner results and the horrendous cost of the software to bring it all together.

However, the news is not all bad. There are many tools today that have been designed to be low cost, or existing tools that have been adapted by clever people to create eLearning design opportunities. Besides, the users and creators of eLearning have realised that the delivery has to change to meet the emerging needs of the new learner. No longer are learners happy with information delivered to them as if they were empty vessels ready to be filled with all they need to know. It doesn't matter how whizz-bang the delivery, they want the chance to contribute/participate in the learning. In other words they want to feed back information.

It's all this social media they've been involved with since teenage years!

That new socialisation is forcing some changes in the way eLearning is created. First: it needs to include some measure of social media (wikis, facebook pages for comments, forums or chatrooms) where the learning is critiqued; second: it needs to be cheap and adaptable for the changes that will inevitably happen in such a dynamic environment.

In the past the reaction has been for software to integrate refinements into a larger and larger and more expensive package. And many of the refinements were not required by most of the users. So it was refreshing when I uncovered the following blog site:

More Information


It's full of ideas and options for creating cost-effective eLearning and learning games - the software, how to adapt existing commonly-used software, where to get royalty-free images, how to create storyboards and access templates. As you are already reading a blog, you probably understand the power of social media, so your next step is to start thinking outside the box and making a plan to integrate it into your training.

I will certainly be sharing the Free-eLearning link above with the course creators on our community of eLearning site eBrainz.net.

A couple of interesting books I have been reading that might give you counter-arguments for detractors from online learning are:
1. Social Media for Trainers by Jane Bozarth - Techniques for Enhancing and Extending Learning. Jane focusses on training for soft-skills and business skills, but mentions many that could be transferred to more practical learning.
2. The New Social Learning by Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner - A Guide to Transforming Organisations Through Social Media. This book includes actual answers for the objections that might be raised to reject eLearning and including social media in online courses.

So now you have all the tools to make a change in your delivery of learning. I'd love to hear how you succeed!

Knee-jerk to elearning

When a (now-not-so) new technology enters the smorgasbord of training options, industry training organisations may be tempted to jump in with both feet on the accelerator. This has been especially so with the advent of elearning. Everybody’s doing it so why not us? Anyone from within the organisation who suggests a cautious approach may be seen to be dragging on the vehicle bumper for reasons of their own discomfort at the speed of change.

Elearning is not a good idea unless it fits with the organisation’s technical capability and workforce readiness. While most of my work has some component of elearning, and I do believe the method adds amazing capacity to move learners forward, I, too, would like organisations I work with to be a bit more cautious before writing their Expression of Interest documents.

Elearning developers love to create, but they also want what they create to meet the needs of the learners in the organisation. Unless the project succeeds, the risk for the developer is that the tools they create will be seen as having failed, and that in turn will damage the developer’s reputation. Often it is not the tools but the process that is flawed.

My observation is that organizations follow a pattern of:

idea > resistance > wearing down > agreement > write the EoI > start the project asap

The promoters of the project are so intent on getting on with it, (seeing that so much time has been ‘lost’ in convincing the organisation to move) they fail to do enough research to develop an effective, measurable EoI, which is the only document a developer can respond to when designing a proposal.

The EoI can be based on assumptions about the needs of the learner, as well as unrealistic budgets and time lines for development. Developers have these options:

• To warn that the project is unrealistic and can’t be done in the timeline – good-bye contract
• To build in a number of ‘provided that’ clauses to cover potential timeline blowouts
• To answer the EoI as it stands and limit the potential of what they can provide within the timeline or budget

And guess which developer will get the contract?

Before any elearning project starts the organisation should:

1. Get some reliable research done on the needs and capability of the learners they serve, and not just rely on gut-instinct. Managers see the world through the technological eyes of their own use of computers – ‘everybody knows how to use a computer’. Well they don’t! They may be more adept at using a mobile phone or the DVD remote.
2. Really understand learners’ access issues to technology. The parents may have a computer installed at home, but what happens to accessibility when the young person moves out to their first flat? Can they afford to link up to Broadband or will they install Sky Sports? If they are into social networking online, do they really want their tutor/trainer muscling in for all their friends to see? And can they afford the cost of mobile communication when for days on end they don’t reply to txts because their credit’s run out before payday?
3. Decide whether it would be wiser to contract an independent researcher to investigate these issues before engaging a developer; or make the developer responsible for developing a learner profile and recommending a best practice solution.

It is in the best interests of the organisation, the learners and the developer to design the most effective learning solution, and that solution may NOT be elearning.

Powering up training in a recession

Cost and access issues
A New Zealand industry training organisation working with mechanical engineering, manufacturing, baking and food processing industries, Competenz, urged the New Zealand government to reduce the costs of industry training in a recent press release.

CEO John Blakey said that while trade training in New Zealand has been under-funded for decades, the recession has highlighted this problem. "We're taking the message to the Government that cost is the major barrier to employers taking on apprentices and upskilling staff - and this needs to be fixed now.”

Blakey went on to say that Competenz is working with Business New Zealand and the Industry Training Federation on long-term solutions to take to the Government.

The problems
Cost is only one part of the problem, in my view. Other brakes on training include:

1. Fragmentation of the training delivery industry leading to challenges finding the right training/courses


2. Lack of clear career pathways, despite a hefty national framework of possible units to study


3. Challenges with acceptable assessment forcing training providers to produce prescribed documentary evidence of every PC and every minuscule part of the range


4. Lack of innovative (cheap and ‘safe’) solutions to accessing online training resources


5. Companies’ headaches around rostering employees off on courses for more than a day

Solutions could come from:

1. NZQA maintaining up-to-date lists of currently available face-to-face/e-learning/distance learning courses instead of just a list of registered providers


2. NZQA and/or ITOs having easily accessible recommended career pathways for industry careers


3. A review of the prescriptive model of assessment to allow integrated projects to act as evidence


4. Better access to online training, and not just in IT or computing. The Government is moving toward broadband solutions, so companies now have to get over their distrust of employee online intent and give them Internet access (even if only in a controlled IT environment)


5. Partnerships between deliverers and developers of off-site, on-site, and online training material – no one option is best but the best will come from combining them

Subtle brakes
Then there are more subtle brakes on performance improvement:

• The company culture sees training as a ‘perk for employees’ and not as a valuable tool to advance company performance


• Training ends with the employee’s attendance/qualification and no systems exist within the organisation to spread the gain


• Skills training is seen as a one-way process, like feeding hungry fledglings, instead of as a partnership of development


• Understanding business economics is a closely guarded secret that employees must not know about

Integrated improvements
There are many ways of improving performance and giving employees skills improvement training is only one way. Performance can also be enhanced by changing the culture so that every employee understands their vital part in the process of company evolution. That culture change rests mainly on management and, to a lesser extent, the partnership between management and unions.

By educating employees on the way of the market, managers gain 100s of sets of eyes to look for market opportunities and threats. After all, employees are:

• Consumers or customers and can feedback information on market demand


• Observers of the process and can identify bottlenecks and better ways


• Potential markets for competitor products because they know what they like


• Researchers/surfers of the Net so they keep up with trends

Trainers need to rebrand themselves as facilitators of learning and enlarge their own self-beliefs. They don’t have to know it all, they can use hundreds of existing learning resources, and even rely on their trainees to find the answers. Research should be seen as a legitimate and sanctioned use of their time. Let learners learn by experiencing the power of one … or one hundred.

Many of the above options can be accomplished without large amounts of money being thrown at them. They do, however, need a shift in thinking from micro-managing training in a silo to integrating training into a company-wide activity.