link to website
from Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users
"One thing that could make a big difference [to training]
Non-fiction writing: write conversationally
Blogs: reduce talking about yourself by 80% (make up the difference with things that benefit the reader)
Classroom teaching: reduce lecture by 50% (make up the difference in listening with interaction and doing
Tech books and articles for learning: reduce lecture by 50%, make up the difference with graphics, case-studies and examples, interactive exericses, thought-provoking puzzles, FAQs, etc.
Paragraphs: vary your sentence length (related to pacing)
Stories: think seduction
Photographs: use aperture-priority (unless you're shooting water and want that fuzzy flowy water thing)
Photographic composition: use the rule of thirds
Digital video: (applies to photography as well) pay attention to nose room"(jump to the blog entry for visuals)
link to website
Interesting reflection from Michael Nelson about the way a resource for the new TAA Cert 4 is structured.
'sure our training packages talk about holistic assessment etc., but the framework of CBT has certainly directed the 'delivery' of learning on the book I'm reading (Learning Design - Participant Guide, from Pearson Education). I'd much rather get together with a bunch of other people interested in helping others learn and then work out what we think is important ourselves. It may be that we'd differ from the Cert IV qualification, and we'd probably not go into so much detail, but I'm certain that I'd learn a hell of a lot more through the process of thinking (and debating) rather than being spoon fed my desired behaviour. We could then evaluate our actual practice with our own set of desired skills and knowledge to see where to focus our own learning ... setting our own (achievable) learning goals and learning tasks.'
link to website
a collection of nearly 200 visualisations of networks. Could prove a useful source of images for future use. includes inks to original sources of images.
link to website
from Dave Cormier comes the notion of the Feedbook
"The feedbook is a collection of feeds (including podcast, blogs and someday soon hopefully vlogs) contained in an open ended opml first seeded by a course instructor and added to (or pared down) according to student needs.
The feedbook is a collection of feeds (including podcast, blogs and someday soon hopefully vlogs) contained in an open ended opml first seeded by a course instructor and added to (or pared down) according to student needs.....
This would make up the main 'textbook' for the course. The students would not be getting a textbook positioned from a single instructor from last year or even a couple of years ago, but a collection of essays written right now about changes that affect the current issues in education. The instrutors can add their own flavour to the course in their own blogs as well as modeling blogging as good educational practice."
link to website
Good reminder from Ian Robertson of Rogers' Theory of Diffusion of Innovation:
"Diffusion of innovation theory posits that there are four factors that influence the uptake of an innovation: relative advantage; compatibility; trialability; and observability.
Relative advantage:the perceived benefit that will accrue as a result of adoption in comparison to existing practices. The greater the perceived relative advantage, the greater the likelihood of adoption.
Compatibility: the level of congruence with the individual's existing values and beliefs, compatibility with previously introduced ideas and compatibility with needs. The greater the compatibility the greater the likelihood of adoption.
Complexity : the perceived level of difficulty that individuals experience in understanding and using the innovation. The more complex the innovation the less likely it is to be adopted.
Trialability: the degree to which experimentation is possible. In cases where it is possible to trial the innovation adoption is more likely. Observability refers to the degree to which the result of adoption can be observed. The more explicit the results the more likely is adoption (Rogers, 1995)."
from James Farmer
I'm just gathering some new resources for sessions on blogging and thought that this would form a good, gentle introduction to blogging, bloglines and the potential for individual publishing.
The original pointer to this presentation was at http://incsub.org/blog/2005/sbs-presentation-blogs-and-broadcast-the-kodak-web but the Flash wouldn't load nicely for me, so I hunted down this link to the .swf (which is link above). No control bar on the playback though.
Link to website
via James Farmer at incsub.org
This is a series of case studies about various online offerings at Deakin Uni. They each include audio (I do like the small audio grabs by topic) and walkthroughs of the courses with text box explanations. Being from Deakin the examples are higher ed sector. I found the categorising and cross referencing of examples made navigating the site fairly easy - for example you can view all the Problem Based Learning Examples or all the Post Grad examples.
Intro from site
"Welcome to our Contemporary online teaching case site. It features the work of over 70 Deakin University staff in developing and using new media and online technologies to foster student learning. The site was developed through University strategic teaching and learning innovation funding. It has been designed to help teachers work creatively and productively in their online teaching.
Each of the cases locate new media and online technologies in the context of broader views of what it means to teach and learn effectively in different disciplines and professional fields in tertiary education.
You can browse the cases by Discipline, Faculty and Case participant via the top menu. You can engage with the cases by approaches to learning (and teaching) and graduate attributes which they illustrate, study level, degree of online-ness and types of online features adopted, and other tools used. These views into the cases can be found on the left hand menu. You'll also find in this menu 2003 Deakin Online Teaching and Learning Fellowship cases and information on the site itself, including the project team who developed it."
Ron Oliver Keynote from our internal Learning Design Showcase in early October.
"Learning designs that promote learning"
Slides for this presentation available at http://elrond.scam.ecu.edu.au/oliver/2005/tasmania.pdf
There's lots of doom and gloom about the use of technology in teaching and learning in literature, but can you imagine a world without technology? Use of technology, it is suggested, is used to maintain current practice. Ron is interested in the use of tech to enhance teaching and learning. (re-reading my notes I am reminded of Anne Bartlett-Bragg's insistence on the need for renovating vs creating learning in the Cool Results Online Event in September)
We need to start out with a clear conception of what constitutes learning - frequently it is seen as about knowledge acquisition. Ron prefers to think of it as experiential and performance based. In higher Education, tend to focus on learning self sufficiency- general skills such as thinking.
Learning Designs
In traditional environment is about planning the lesson, now that tech involved, people have forgotten about the planning needed.
Through the use of ADDIE and similar processes, often the materials are not good, not deep enough. Gagne - attention, inform objectives and stimulate recall.
Levels of engagement
Information access> information organisation > information processing
3 states of engagement, each important, and all 3 should be included.
Supporting effective learning
Knowledge construction
Through practice and reflection
Experiential processes
Thoughtful activities
Through self regulation
Meaningful assessment and guidance
Learning Designs
What is often missed is engagement for the learner. Reading text - very little stays in beyond very short term memory.
Inquiry based learning
· Rule based
· Case based
· Strategy based
· Role based
Jonassen argues that everything needs to have a context and a purpose.
Rule Based learning design
Trying to get learners to develop process or procedure. Giving students an opportunity to work with the processes through a task. Students are cast as actors. Series of activities for learners including accessing resources to support, and teacher actively supporting and connecting students.
Case Based
When you don't know what the rules are, this is higher level learning, enabling them to put own steps into processes.
Give tasks but not precise steps to follow, give example of how students have done it in the past.
Strategy Based Design
Where open ended situation with no set solution. Problem solving, knowledge application. Strategic thinking. Synthesizing. High level engagement, works well in groups (as do all of these)
When this project is marked, it is not on decision made, but on how arguments made. Knowledge as a means to an end, rather than knowledge for it's own sake.
Role Based Learning
Used Marie Jasinski example.
Very open environment. Each learner given role within learning environment. Each person needs to research and negotiate outcomes. Students learning about environment that are working in. articulating, assimilating, arguing.
Ron's recommended links
www.learningdesigns.uow.edu.au [website has more information]
LAMS
James Dalziel
Icons used to develop a learning sequence
lamsinternational.com - exemplars are available.
Technology facilitated learning
· Information access
· Networked communication
· Interactive learning objects
· Publication (get students to put resources they develop online for future students)
The approach
· Intended outcomes
· How might that be demonstrated
· Describe a task that will lead to that outcome (authentic)
Supports
· Way points
· Guides, templates, schedules
· Peers, collaboration.
· Mentors colleagues, workplace supervisors.
· Tutorials, discussions information, rules, quiz.
· Have to collect the resources -
Have to make absolutely sure that I provide the supports, can't throw them to the wilderness of independent learning. Trick is to negotiate with students.
Tasks as organiser of student activity.
Too many resources should be made available so they can choose which ones not to use.
Future holds a lot of promise if we follow these principles.
Ron's home page includign links to papers, presentations etc http://elrond.scam.ecu.edu.au/oliver
This toolkit grew out of discussions with teaching teams, looking at and using the Designing Elearning website and searching for tools to use in my work.
The visual nature of the learning design maps in the Designing Elearning website seem to strike a chord with most people (http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/designing/), which got me thinking about creating a toolkit for workshopping delivery models with teaching staff. You can use this toolkit for designing learning in a range of contexts - online, workplace and on campus.
This is an example of a delivery model under development using the Learning Design Toolkit.
click on the image for a larger version
What's in the toolkit?
· Icon cards
· Idea cards
· Context markers
The four icons relate to the icons used in the Designing Elearning Maps, however the words have changed! The reason for this is that we have used Ron Oliver's concepts of Learning Design extensively internally, and I wanted to maintain the same language.
Included are 66 'idea cards'. These have been developed with photos mainly sourced through Flickr. Please do not remove the attribution, as that is a condition the photo owners have placed on their use. See further information at end of this document.
Also in the kit are some context labels. These can be used on the left hand side of the map to identify the location or context of the learning.
In your physical toolkit, I'd also recommend:
· Dark masking tape - for marking out lines easily
· Whiteboard markers
· Blutac
· Butcher’s paper as an alternative to a whiteboard
· Camera for documenting your finished learning design
Download the files
There are three files to be downloaded. Each contains multiple pdfs.
Download icons.pdf (557kb)
Download cards.pdf (2Mb)
Download contexts.zip (161kb)
Printing and preparing your own toolkit
· Use the heaviest weight card you can for printing out the pdfs - a good quality white card is best. Print at high quality if available in your printer settings.
· Print multiple copies of icons.pdf
· Print a single copy each of cards.pdf and contexts.pdf
· Laminate the printed pages and then cut out shapes. Red marks indicate cutting lines on the idea cards
TIP: you can buy A4 sheets of fridge magnet backing from office and craft supplies stores, which can be attached to the back of the large icons for use on magnetic whiteboards.
Customisation:
If you wish to make changes to the large icons, please email me for the .png files. You are welcome to use the concept and create your own personalised set of cards. The .png template in Macromedia Fireworks I used for creating the cards is available on request via email as well.
How I use the toolkit
One aspect of my role is working with delivery teams as they develop or refine their delivery and assessment models. At the end of the session, I recommend taking photos to document the process.
Using a large whiteboard, icons can be used to build a physical representation of the model.
You will need to agree on your timescale - depending on the situation, this may be in days, weeks or months.
The idea cards should be scattered between the participants to act as a prompt for various activities, means of support or resources to be made available.
One advantage of using a whiteboard is that links can be drawn between items, extra information added in and infinite changes can be made through the model development process.
If you find you use the toolkit in different ways, I'd love to hear about it!
Permission to reproduce and adapt
This toolkit has been released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 licence that allows you to:
· to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
· to make derivative works
If you are redistributing the Toolkit please indicate it was "originally developed by Kirsty Sharp in 2005 (email: Kirsty@otheredge.com.au)"
More information at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/
Sharing - there is a pdf version of this post available: LearningDesignToolkit.pdf
Enjoy!
Clive Chappell afternoon session: Integrating Learning and Work: issues for pedagogy
Message about changing pedagogy came through the High Level Review of Training Packages - learning needed to become more learner centred, work centered, attribute focused
Learning about work should have more than a simple task focus. Attributes about problem solving, thinking, team work etc. VET practitioners need to understand the world of work. Historically we used to operate in quite different ways when a learner and worker. Being designated as a learner in a workplace is not a badge of honour, so how we integrate work and learning so that learner can feel good about it, and workplaces create learning opportunities is the challenge for VET practitioners.
Pedagogy
From transmission to emphasis on transaction and transformation of learning. Person that is learning is changing the skill and taking it into their own world. It is a transformative experience for the learner and the skill.
From disciplinary knowledge to working knowledge.
From codified knowledge, the underpinning to that knowledge that is created in the process of working - often never codified - through negotiation, observation, tips, changes made through work practices. No matter how good you are at codifying, being passed on verbally is practically the only way of passing on the working knowledge.
From developing skills to developing people - needs to be an equal emphasis - that is where it has been out of balance previously.
Pedagogical decision making
Pragmatism tied to a broad understanding of possibilities is great
Simulations
Duplicating experience of work in educational institutions
· Reproduces workplace characteristics
· Students recognise the differences between educational and real workplace settings - mixed messages between the workplace and the simulated environment. Identity shifts for the learner - frequently changing roles ruins continuity e.g. skipping from learner, assessee, team player, and worker. Assessment in the simulated workplace has gaps.
Work based projects
· Conducted by students in workplaces.
· Negotiated between the student, employer and institution - proper and true negotiation.
· Dual outcomes for employer and educational program. Differences between what is needed for assessment and employer. Clarity for students.
· Extended involvement - from small projects potential for ongoing involvement.
Work Experience
Griffiths (2004) UK
· Traditional - sides with learning
· Experiential - develop employability skills, perhaps some objectives, de-briefing
· Generic - log books, portfolios, and evidence of meeting outcomes. Assumption of generic workplaces rather than leveraging differences
· Work process - learning the context of the particular workplace
· Connective - learn vertically and horizontally, collaborative work, community of practice known to learner. Best model but required huge effort on part of employer depends on sophistication of workplace
Learning conducive work
Learning is a natural and automatic outcome of experiencing work without direct educational intervention.
Challenge then is: “to understand the ways in which workplaces can provide an environment in which earning is a natural and automatic outcome of experiencing work without direct educational interventions.”
How workplaces can encourage learning?
|
Job |
Clear work objectives Degree of exposure to change Extent of feedback provided |
Work |
Understanding org context Understanding org context Appreciation of business objectives Exp in working in different areas |
|
Social interaction |
Experience of working in groups Exposure to external professional contacts Value org places on individuals work |
| Managerial environment |
Managerial support for learning Rewards Provision of useful feedback Degree org knowledge provided to employees |
Recently we hosted an internal Learning Design Showcase. Two invited speakers were Clive Chappell and Ron Oliver who both presented keynotes and afternoon talks.
These first notes are from Clive Chappell's keynote session titled "The Future of Learning and Work"
What might the future mean?
Changes in: the workplace, employment, and types of work. Skills expectations of workers have changed as middle layers of management and supervision removed from the workplace. There has been less commitment to skills development where a casualised workforce is in place.
Learning at Work
There are real advantages for workers who need to learn: Workers have the most authentic and useful location in which learning can take place. With the changes in the business world, individual workers have to take more responsibility for own learning. Need for greater integration between learning and work. Take it much more seriously.
Within businesses there needs to be closer links by VET with HR, strategy, job design and work organisation. If looking for possibilities in VET provision then this is an opportunity for us. VET professionals become workforce development consultants.
Two new directions emerging rapidly.
· Aging population
This issue is focusing government attention on skill shortages, meaning that increased competition for workers with the right skills is emerging. Whilst this has impact on our (VET) market, this also applies internally. Greater pressure to work harder and smarter, work organised in different ways = more responsibility and self-supervision, balanced with need to keep staff happy so you can keep staff. Training will be taken more seriously in large companies, as they need to build their workforces.
· Use of technology
Move away from it just being a computer - wireless, mobile phones. We have seen a rapid social uptake, forms of communication gives hints for potential for learning.
· Consumerisation of learning
Increasingly individuals are paying for own learning, they have higher expectations, how/ why/ what/ when - personalisation and customisation.
Question for VET and governments alike is how to re-engage older workers, and engage 14-15 year olds who have not yet engaged - these may be the only people who can fill the skills gaps.
· Challenges for RTOs
Need for specialist staff - too much is being asked of teachers in breadth and depth of skills - need to manage the need for specialist requirements - partnerships with other organisations give a possible solution between public and private domain.
For NCVER by Mark Cully - What it's worth: Establishing the value of vocational qualifications to employers
Key messages
This research starts from the premise that the value of qualifications to employers is what they are prepared to pay for them in the labour market.
There are clear differences in the way employers value the importance of qualifications for different categories of worker. Employers consider formal qualifications as important or essential for management, professional and trades/technical operations, less so in the clerical, sales and service, and plant and machine operator occupations, and virtually non-existent in labour and related occupations.
While employers may use qualifications in the selection process as a signal of competence, direct industry experience and evidence of personal qualities are often rated higher and more valuable.
Although qualifications are a less important element in the recruitment process than other factors, it is clear that those with higher-level qualifications have superior labour market outcomes.
Those with non-school qualifications (those issued by registered training providers and higher education providers) are more likely to be employed on a full-time basis, although much is dependent on the level of qualification - indicated by individuals with degrees or higher having the best employment outcomes.
In terms of earnings, there are considerable gains for degree and diploma holders, as well as those who have completed an Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) certificate level III/IV qualification. High school Year 12 levels appear to matter more than lower-level (certificate I and II) vocational qualifications.
World trends in staff development: Implications on the performance of technical education institutions
by PHIL LOVEDER
There are a range of important challenges for technical education institutions arising from the
trends and issues reported earlier in this paper. In particular, institutions are increasingly
concerned about their ability to adapt their staff and professional development practices to the
new training environment.