Teachers guide (incorporating the Technical guide) for the Admin Toolbox 2. Warning! 92 pages long think before you print!
By Nancy Deviney and Christopher Von Koschembahr
"Imagine a pharmaceutical sales representative preparing to meet with a client. While he waits for his meeting to start, he uses his personal digital assistant for communications and e-learning. With the information accessible to him, not only does he stay up-to-date on the market issues essential to his position, but he also receives regular notification from message boards, news portals and his employer. "
By Peter-Paul Koch
published on February 18 2004
"At the moment we Web developers are learning the basics of accessibility, as once we mastered the basics of usability. However, in my last column I hinted at a potentially dangerous accessibility vs. usability question. The time has come to study this question in more detail.
First, let's repeat the principles:
Ideally, any site should be accessible. Any device should be able to access the content and navigation of any site.
Ideally, any site should be usable. Though basic usability is ascertained by clear texts, unambiguous forms and a simple navigation, adding some JavaScript and CSS can dramatically improve a site.
We see the outlines of a problem here. Does building a perfectly accessible site mean all usability extras should be perfectly accessible, too?"
the Guerra Scale. The scale outlines the range of online content that we can use. It describes an increasingly interactive user experience using a one-to-ten scale, in which “one” involves the common experience of simply reading text on a screen and “ten” represents a virtual reality scenario. In addition to a more interactive user experience, each step up on the scale represents an increase in
complexity
functionality
development time
demands for programming skill
demands for instructional design versatility and
demands for more patience and attention from subject matter experts.
John and Gary talked about the approach they have devised for their first year apprentices. This came about as a result of their LearnScope project in 2003, and a Reframing the Future project in 2002.
One problem the Electrical team has faced has been the poor retention of information by students as they progress through the course. The structure of the training package includes multiple 4 year long competencies which are broken up into modules. The course in previous years sometimes had up to 10 hours of assessment tasks for a 40 hour module.
This team wanted to change so they would keep pace, make things better, and improve their teaching practice.
The training has traditionally taken place in a very lock-step manner - which does not equate to the reality of the workplace. As the apprentices progress through their training, they record the types of tasks they perform at work. This is then fed into a profiling system, which reports on the variety of work the apprentice has been exposed to.
Profile of students: The WHY Gneration
a) they question things
b) multitasking is everyday
c) independent
d) need some structure, esp. in early days
e) Sim City Approach to learning - constructed, interrelated, projects, goals....
The aim of this new approach is "assisting students in developing their own learning practices within a learning guides and learning contracts framework". Explicit in this is the desire to foster self directed learning and employability skills also. Assessment is being re-engineered to be more project based and about application of competency, not reams of multiple choice. Students have the option of designing their own projects.
Resources - rather than developing new resource books, the team is developing a pool of resources which includes module books, equipment, library resources, teachers, manuals, etc. Teachers have found this has made it possible to have more students at the one time, as 'you no longer need 28 sets of all the equipment'. Knowledge sessions are still presented by teachers but they are minimised and more likely to be on request.
John & Gary are hoping that the project based approach answers the question of "why are we learning this?"
offer a 21 day trial - could be good one to try after mindGenius runs out.
"Creating, growing and sustaining learning environments"
Keynote paper from Prof John Hedberg, ODLAA Forum 2003
Educational Uses of Technology - augmented from an earlier version, Barab 1998)
| Information Resource | provide information to support learner inquiry (e.g., databases, hypermedia, www) |
| Content Contextualization | material to be learned situated within rich contexts (e.g., experiential simulations) |
| Communication Tool | facilitating collaborative and distributed learning |
| Construction Kit | providing concrete Tools for building phenomena/understandings (e.g., HTML editors, multimedia construction programs) |
| Visualization/Manipulation Tool | presenting phenomena for scrutiny and manipulation (e.g., Visualization tools, model-based simulations) |
| Cognitive Tool | supporting the manipulation of data and resources to construct learning artefacts (see Jonassen, 1999) |
| Database Tool | supporting the collection and management of learning resources |
Hedberg on page 8 proposes some questions to be answered about learning environments.
Q: How do learning activities
-support learner engagement?
-acknowledge the learning context?
-seek to challenge learners?
-provide practice?
There is more detail in this paper about including the learner in the design process.
"eBusiness and Education: an evolutionary journey"
By Louise Turnbull and Arlene Gofers, both from OTEN
The eBusiness appproaches that have been implemented at OTEN have been:
" provision of extensive online pre-enrolment information and assistance
online enrolment in an increasing number of courses
development of the OTEN Learning Support Site (OLS) to provide a gateway
to information and additional learning activities
inclusion of searchable Frequently Asked Questions on the support site (oneto-
many communication strategy)
access to selected information from the student administration system via the
OLS for example results, assignments required, personal details for updating
online
provision of options to students regarding what media their learning materials
are supplied to them (online, print, CD ROM)
establishment of email Helpdesk procedures and protocols to manage student
emails
provision of technical support for all students via email
electronic assignment submission and auto receipt acknowledgement
use of web-based group and communication tools to create classes of distance
education students and build a sense of community." (p4)
"Supporting distance students online: OTEN initiatives"
By Margot McNeill and Phillip Lantry, both of OTEN.
OTEN has found that 'amongst the highest priorities for students are: faster turnaround and more feedback on assessment, more contact with teachers and other students for motivation, and, more structure in their study programs' (p2-3)
In addition to providing a site for student support, a 'staffroom' has been set up - OTEN has more off-site than on-site staff, this staff room also has specific course areas where teachers can gather to share information about their specific course such as marking guides. (p6)
"Implications for COLIS for course development: The need for secondary usage metadata"
By Robyn Philip and Prof. James Dalziel, both from Macquarie Uni.
ODLAA Forum Paper 2003
The message for me out of this paper was the importance of the context in which a learning object [or digital asset or whatever] is to be used. It suggests that teachers will be hesitant about using an object developed by others, but encouraged if there is information available about how it was used:
"not only information about who used it and where, but information about its effectivenesss, the context of its use and ideas about how it might be used differently could be added to the searchable database. This user's log detailing usability and suitability would be expected to improve a Learning Object or learning activity's potential relevance to others, and therefore it's reuse" (p5)
LMS convened a panel of teachers and team leaders to speak about their experiences - this included Kevin Donovan, Vicki Cleaver, Rob Prior, Robin Petterd, Andrew Richardson and Eric Ortman.
Questions asked of the panel were:
A) as a program/team how do you go about choosing and sourcing resources?
B) are you aware of STP, Aesharenet, TAFE Frontiers, WestOne, OTEN, OLI?
C) have you been involved in national resource development projects?
D) if you cannot find the resources you need what are the next steps you take?
E) have you used any online, including toolboxes?
F) return on investment from resource development exercises?
Things that stood out for me:
You can earn a lot of money from selling workbooks, but they take a lot of time and effort to develop, and you need to keep them up to date.
Because we tend to adopt new/revised training packages earlier, we often are the first to develop resources.
Resources that are available from other organisations [see above in Q2] can be pulled apart and reused, but no-one on the panel had done this.
Two approaches to resources - a) develop a resource that addresses a unit or cluster of units or b) find and accumulate a library of much smaller resources that can be recombined in different ways. Each approach takes time, and different kinds of effort to achieve.
Online resources - most student response from using the communication aspects of WebCT and making resources available through that platform - not an online course as such but a support site.
Toolboxes - treat a toolbox like a textbook - pull bits out, facilitate your course, use what's needed. more investigation into chunks that can be used across training packages needed - and also examples of a chunk that has been treated in this way.
Rob Prior talked about the Transportable Learning Resources - the idea is that the learning resources are not locked into the classroom, but can be taken into a workplace, home or elsewhere.
We were given an in-depth explanation of the quiz approach that the Auto team has developed.
Here's some key points:
A) Questions within quizzes are selected in a semi-random way so that repeat takers of quizzes do not get the same questions over and over again.
B) A question's 'performance' is assessed - if everyone gets 100%, it's use as a learning activity is small unless it is mandatory information. If few people are getting the question correct, the wording or diagrams used may be changed.
C) Within a matching question, you can have pictures rather than words to match.
D) Students are not able to complete the summative quiz until they achieve the desired % across the other quizzes - this % is determined by a complex formula that weights quizzes differently.
E) Students are encouraged not to view their numerical result as a test score, but rather as an indication of their learning achievements and gaps.
All students for Auto are in the one course, with the aim of simplifying administration. They control access to quizzes etc through group names and releasing resources to groups.
Liz spoke about the transition the Clothing & Textiles team has been through over the past 5 years to implement the National Training Package. Through that implementation process, a major shift in the way teaching and learning is managed in their area has been made.
In planning for this change, there were 3 main questions they asked themselves:
A) how would we assess this unit in the workplace?
B) can we do this in a simulated environment?
C) what units can be combined?
The team developed assessment tools before the delivery strategies.
Staff now focus on the students' planning and organising skills rather than providing information - which was a huge mindshift for some teachers and very challenging.
Team work - at some qualification levels, team work is structured into the activities - eg at Cert 2 students are organised into workteams that have production quotas to meet and must self organise to achieve this. At Diploma level, there is much more independent work. The teachers recognise that malfunctioning teams are part of the reality of organising learning in this way, and will intervene in much the same way as a workplace supervisor. One of the hardest things for the teachers to do has been to 'hold back'. The result of these approaches has been students with much better planning skills at the end of their study.
Resource development is shared on a statewide basis, with teachers taking on areas of responsibility.
Each student now has an individual training plan - which the students and teachers negotiate. It was a response to needing a way to manage the great variety of what students where doing and when they were doing it. It has the added benefit of keeping the students on track with their timelines.
After Liz's presentation we were given a tour of the workshop - students told us that the approach was not what they expected when they enrolled - and that it really suited them. They talked about the pressures and interdependence within the workteams as being something they could manage and see benefit in - this from a Cert 2 student. Cert 4 students were working on their workplan - they were now onto their second collection as a team and explained that their workplan for this collection was a lot more detailed and included more info about documentation they would need - this need was identified by them as an outcome from their first collection.
Students can request skills sessions, which teachers then organise - training on demand. Liz and Gaye also talked about the trust and honesty that students display to each other - hundreds of resources in form of magazines, pattern blocks, toiles, cds with files are freely available, and the team no longer has trouble with theft.
Key competencies and business/workplace skills are embedded within most activities - some workbooks are used, but the emphasis is on the application of these skills to achieve the primary work - design and production of clothing and textile products.
"LINKup offers a proven, practical way to assess and improve your Key Competencies - otherwise known as Employability Skills or Generic Skills."
developed by Torrens Valley TAFE
link to website
Clicking the bookmarklet when a book page is current......looks up the book in your local library.
If your local public (or college) library is one of these Innovative, Voyager, iPac, DRA, or Talis Web-enabled libraries, find your library on the list and drag its link to your browser's link toolbar.
After you've "installed" your bookmarklet in this way, you can look up books at your local library. Let's say you're on a book-related site (Amazon, BN, isbn.nu, All Consuming, possibly others), and a book's info page is your current page. (Specifically: its URL contains an ISBN. Choose a hardcover edition for best results -- see tips below.) You can click your bookmarklet to check if the book is available in your local library. The bookmarklet will invoke your library's lookup service, feed it the ISBN, and pop up a new window with the result.
This report details an investigation into the role and significance of vocational, sub-degree higher education in meeting the needs of the economy and employers. [link to previous entry]
As the qualification types are different in the UK, some of the data in this report is not directly transferable to the Australian situation, however information about employer and student perceptions is useful.
The study found that:
- in engineering people with a HND {Higher National Diploma - a diploma given for vocational training that prepares the student for a career in a particular area; good students may progress to a course leading to a degree} are employed at the interface between design and manufacturing, or manufacturing and customer support, where their combination of high level engineering knowledge and practical skills is required.
- in areas such as computing and business vocational HE qualifications seem to be less valued by employers as a direct route into employment.
- small businesses in particular perceive a gap between qualifications and practical application in a business settig, and it is the latter they seek on recruitment.
- small businesses do not necessairly understand what set of practical skills and knowledge, academic knowledge, and general skills any specific qualification signifies.
- employer preferences between degree and sub-degree qualifications tend to be based more on knowledge of particular departments, programmes, and previous track records within the company of recruits from particular universities.
- this study found SMEs (small to medium enterprises) that were highly critical of external training for high-level technical skills: employers spoke of insufficient hands-on experience, inappropriate content and insufficient assessment of learner's progress.
- the (student) respondents who were currently employed were often not on formal staff training programs but studying to further their own career within or outside an organisation, rather than responding to its immediate business needs.
- students on specialised or more vocational courses appeared to receive less ambiguous support from their employers.
Dan Bashaw and Mike Gifford have put together a terrific list of Open Source tools that can be used by activists to spread the message and promote interaction by enewsletters, forums, blogs, wikis and epetitions.
by George Siemens
"For learners, a negative experience is catalogued as a "I can't do that" statement...and if not questioned, it is perceived as a fact in future encounters. We need to actively promote debriefing in all learning xperiences...particularly negative ones. It can help to prevent the formation of erroneous impressions of learner competence."
BY MALCOLM WHEATLEY
"THE BOTTOM LINE
Is open source right for every organization? In the end, argues Andy Mulholland, chief technology officer for Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, it's a question of attitude. "The arguments for and against open-source software often get very trivialized," he says. "It's not a technology issue; it's a business issue to do with externalization."
Companies with an external focus, he says, which are used to working collaboratively with other organizations, and perhaps are already using collaborative technologies, stand to gain much more from open source than companies with an internal focus, which see the technology in terms of cost savings.
"The lesson of the Web is that standardization is better than differentiation," Mulholland claims. "Is there a virtue in doing things differently? Is there a virtue in doing things the same way as everybody else?" As the past decade has shown, standardization with a proprietary flavor—think Microsoft—has its drawbacks: bloatware, security loopholes, eye-popping license fees and an unsettling reliance upon a single vendor. In offices around the globe, an era of open-source standardization, determined to condemn such drawbacks to history, may be dawning."
link to website
Building redesign by IDEO for Stanford
"Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning plays a critical role in forging new learning methodologies and technologies for Stanford University. To begin the design investigation for SCILs home at Wallenberg Hall, IDEO went in the field to broadly understand how learning happens at Stanford University. Emphasis was placed on out-of- classroom learning, as the research led us to key findings that revealed that crucial learning happened beyond classroom boundaries. "
link to pdf
LSDA UK
Brenda Little with Helen Connor, Yann Lebeau, David Pierce, Elaine Sinclair, Liz Thomas and Karen Yarrow
A team led by Brenda Little at the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information at the Open University (OU) conducted the research for this study.
This bulletin reports on a study of vocational higher education undertaken against a backdrop of government policies on education that seek to redress the balance between academic and vocational routes to high-level qualifications and an emerging skills strategy that aims to create a demand-led approach to skills training.
....
The study, which was limited to England, aimed to collate employers views on the:
value of vocational higher education (HE)
relative merits of such provision in higher education institutions (HEIs)
and further education colleges (FECs).
Developing an Online Curriculum (Soft Cover):
Technologies and Techniques
Lynnette R. Porter; Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, USA Our Price: $53.96 US List Price: $59.95
ISBN: 1-59140-226-3
Imprint: InfoSci
Number of pages: Paperback; 340 pages
Copyright: 2004
Order Now!
Description
Developing an Online Educational Curriculum: Techniques and Technologies acts as a guidebook for teachers and administrators as they look for support with their online education programs. It offers teaching suggestions for everything from course development to time management and community building. The book is designed to provide information to help teachers work more effectively with online tools, develop course materials for existing online courses, work with the internet as a medium of education and complete daily activities - such as evaluating assignments, lecturing and communicating with students more easily. Administrators are also given support in their efforts to recruit, train, and retain online teachers, allocate resources for online education and evaluate online materials for promotion and tenure.
A1. Basic Online ( For all units: to be implemented by January 2004)
Each unit offered by Deakin will have:
A Deakin Studies online (DSO) site established;
The DSO site will include, where appropriate and feasible and where they exist, the Unit Guide, a ‘resources area’ where an electronic version of the Readings (where appropriate) and other resources might be placed, and the opportunity for the teaching staff to communicate with students through a noticeboard (one-many communication e.g. announcements). A facility for structured online interaction between teacher and students will also be available to use at the choice of the lecturers involved in the unit, with the proviso that all students in unites that do not meet face-to-face at least once a week will have such opportunities for facilitated online interaction.
full policy here
Australian vocational education and training statistics: Trends in 'traditional apprenticeships'
Authors: Louise Brooks
Publication date: 16 February 2004
Publication type: Formal report
This paper analyses trends in 'traditional apprenticeships' (as defined within the report), compared to those in 'other' apprenticeship contracts, since 1996. It shows that growth in the apprenticeships and trainees system has mostly been outside 'traditional apprenticeships'. The analysis concludes that 'traditional apprenticeships' were mostly undertaken by younger males, at Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) level III and full-time, while 'other' apprentices and trainees were more likely to be older females, working part-time.
This paper defines 'traditional apprentices' as 'someone who is employed under a contract of training in a trades occupation, training towards a qualification at AQF Lvel 3 or higher, and the expected duration of that contract is more than 2 years for fulltime workers (or more than 8 years for parttime workers)'. This conforms to the common understanding of how somebody prepares themselves for a career in trades such as plumbing, carpentry and hairdressing.
Traditional apprentices are overwhelmingly male, young, employed full time,and training towards an AQF lvl 3 certificate.
More than 3 in 4 of all teenagers employed in the trades at December 2002 were undertaking a 'traditional apprenticeship', up from around 2 in 3 at December 1996.
Page 26 "The industries where apprentices and trainees were most prominent as a proportion of employed persons in 2002 were transport and storage, accommodation, cafes and restaurants, retail trade, and property and business services."
From eLearn Magazine
By Lisa Currin
Publicizing all of MITs course materials on the Web is only half our mission, admits MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) program director Anne Margulies. The other half is to do it in a way that enables others to follow in our footsteps. If were the only ones publishing all our course materials, we will have failed. Our ultimate goal is to start an open knowledge movement that will put a vast amount of educational material on the Webnot just MIT materials.