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

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!

Can Passion Fit Into Training?

In my mind the word ‘training’ is firmly linked in meaning to bending of wills – the imposing of a set of rules of behaviour upon another, reluctant-or-otherwise human. It pre-supposes that the person who is doing the training is superior in knowledge to the person receiving the training.

In my opinion, ‘training’ sets up a dynamic that does nothing to further knowledge. It might improve consistency in some process where an identical end result must be created, but it doesn’t draw the trainee into ownership of the process and pride in outcome. To achieve that state, far more than mere transfer of information and repetition of process is required. I believe the missing ingredient is passion. And passion is an emotion born from within or ‘caught’ from another.

Passion implies a total absorption in the topic; the overriding desire to become better and learn more. It drives people to broaden the horizons of the topic so that everyone learns more and new possibilities are born. Ask your friends which class they enjoyed most as a child or adult; then ask them about the teacher or tutor of the class. I’d bet a penny to a pound that the explanation will have all the hallmarks of a person passionate about their subject. The tutor’s passion will have fired up the interest of many of those they taught.

It might seem strange to be encouraging tutors to bring passion into their delivery when they are trying to teach young men how to properly adjust a planer to produce quality joinery. What is there to get enthused about? But bring in a perfectly crafted chair and ask them to run their hands over the curves of the back, ask them to observe the perfect symmetry of the legs, and test the tightness of the joints. Ask them to identify for themselves what makes it a quality product. Then tell them none of that is possible without the precision of the planer and the jointer ... that’s when an understanding of context gives birth to passion. Passion give rise to a commitment to quality. It pushes people to think beyond the completion of the task. They start to wonder: ‘If we did this would that happen?’ And that’s when innovation happens.

If we are content to train so that the same knowledge is passed on, knowledge can’t expand. It’s only when people learn to be passionate about what they do that knowledge will expand. The challenge is to bring that feeling of passion into the training you undertake.

Best regards

Heather Sylvawood

Director

Edutech KM Ltd

(Nelson Office)

Ph: 64-3-525-7073

Mob: .021-251-2141

www.edutechkm.com

heather@edutechkm.com

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.

Jargon and acronyms can hinder learning

Have you ever struggled to read a document and found yourself lost in the jargon?

Every industry develops its own jargon and acronyms to speed up communication, but often jargon and uncommon words act as gatekeepers to new knowledge. They are used to prove the writer or speaker belongs to an elite group and to exclude others from that group. This is counter-productive to clear communication and cost-effective solutions.

At one course where I was part of the delivery team, the term: ROI came up. I immediately explained that ROI meant return on investment and basically was a calculation to find out if something was worth doing. The course was a pilot and aimed at floor staff who were not usually involved in calculating ROI but we felt that including it was really important because understanding ROI gave meaning to many of the decisions made by management.

An observer-participant from middle management commented that he’d wished someone had given him such an explanation years ago when he was first promoted to a position where he attended management meetings. He admitted that he had no idea what they were talking about but just nodded his head and agreed. He was too scared to ask because he didn’t want to face the shame of not knowing, or risk having other managers think he wasn’t able to cope with the promotion.

The course continued with both observer participants and regular participants working towards an investigation of a production issue. The aim was to carry out a team investigation and report on their findings. Solving the problem was NOT the goal, but most of them, with the help of their on-site teams, did come up with a cost-effective solution. ROI featured in their significant savings calculations that reached into millions of dollars each year.

Those participants would have paid back their course fees many times over! They will also share with others on the floor the importance of ROI.

Now's not the time to trim training

Invest Wisely
So often organisations facing tough financial times, as the world's markets appear to be creating at the moment, look to cut budgets in two areas - the advertising budget and the training budget.

This reaction is so short-sighted. In tough times the two vital things you have to make sure about are that:

1. People know about the value of what you have to offer so they choose your products or services
2. Your employees are committed to working their butts off to make the best product or service in the most efficient way

If a company has downtime, then use it to give your employees further training. Invest time in developing their so-called 'soft' skills:

• Communication
• Team work
• Report writing and presentations
• Problem-solving

Downtime means there is a better chance of taking employees off-line in a group, and group dynamics can improve through an enlightened choice of training activity. And surprise, surprise many of the training tools on the Net are 'problem-solving' activities. They're the activities that naturally include the other three skills.

But the big bonus for companies who see a lack of work as an opportunity to improve is that they build loyalty. Employees will start to utilise their problem-solving skills to do what the company desperately wants to do - survive. You'll find the 'bright sparks' in your organisation.

"Bright sparks are at every level of your organisation. Don’t overlook them, engage them in forward thinking. Bright sparks don’t know the limits so they push the boundaries and that's what moves the whole organisation forward. - Heather Sylvawood, EdutechKM Ltd"