Open Education Resources for Vocational Content

Open Education Resources - The Context

We are witnessing a change in the aspiration, consumption, and education-employability landscapes.
Unlike earlier gradually skills careers are not being looked upon as second class livelihood options compared to the traditional and non-skills career options. As the skills careers (e.g. chefs) receive increasingly positive and even preferential acceptance more youth are aspirationally inclined to adopt skilled professions.
Demand for a better life-style has percolated to to the bottom of the pyramid. This has triggered the 

Connectivity with affordable and accessible Internet, mobile penetration, peer-connectivity, and access to information has:
- Opened a much wider array of career options
- Started connecting people (socially and professionally)
- Made information easier to find and consume

Awareness, information, learning, and employability opportunities have thus become democratized.


Open Education Resources - The Need in the Skills Context

While there is an exponential growth in the number of players who are creating (and often duplicating) skills training content. Most of it is not available to the potential target audience. 
Increasingly products, services, and information when made available are spawning success stories. While there is a need and a demand, the supply of proper channelization, consumption, and assessment followed by accepted certification that links to employment is missing. 

Providing skills learning content is equivalent to building highways where none existed or where smaller roads prevented traffic flow. Once connected, growth of the areas around is inevitable and empirically proven.

Providing curated learning opportunities are key to triggering adoption and usage. This is where Skills Open Education Resources can:
- Help make career choices with information that lets one evaluate options
- Initiate and sustain self and assisted study
- Channelize intent into learning and thereafter employability


Open Education Resources - Potential Impact on the Skills Value Chain

The skills value chain is currently an effort intensive 'push' initiative for the players in the space, since after expending a large amount of effort the end realization yield is often not encouraging.

Open Education Resources has the potential of introducing a 'pull' mechanism that will impact multiple touch points and ease the effort required as well as deepen the impact. Some of the touch points in the skills value chain include:

- Mobilization
- Career Choice/Counselling
- Learning (Knowledge Acquisition through self-learning, flipped education and other means)
- Certification

Open Education Resources - Why this is the Right Moment

Almost all developed nations and large parts of the Occident already has well-formed vocational systems in place, often intertwined with the basic and extended education system, developing nations are in the midst of fine-tuning vocational frameworks as an evolutionary process. 

This is actually an advantage. Just as India leap-frogged into 2.5G avoiding the transition from analogue in mobile telephony, we can use Open Education Resources , along with the distilled wisdom and also adopt mature frameworks to quickly leap frog into a situation that enables a quantum jump in impact in the Skills space. 

The socio-political climate in India is at an all time most conducive. 

Exploring a Myth - "... convert this WBT/ILT to a Game-Based Learning ..."

I started writing this a long time back. A good 6 years ago I think... I found it in my inbox and realized that it is still quite relevant. So, here's from the draft box...


I've heard this phrase over and over again. In fact, I dread when I will next hear it. This statement is a bit of a hydra monster with multiple ugly heads:

1. The marketing dudes are convinced that

Can Digitization of Vocational Learning Content Help?

I was a part of a conversation about how education should be open, affordable, and accessible. Now those are three very powerful words that can get a lot of opinionated responses. Generally, I noticed that the efforts are directed towards institutionalized learning whether it be school or college level education. Coming into contact with vocational education I realized that in India, learning resources are present in silos, and largely in printed format. Alternatively, the wealth is stuck in the craniums of experts who are few and far between. Of course there are many players who have created video and other engaging forms of vocational learning but most of this is closed and difficult to find.

I started thinking of the printed vocational resources (or books) that the Governmental agencies have as print material. What is their true potential? They are created by experts and hopefully periodically updated. I also wondered about the potential impact, if these were to be digitized. The word digitized is a loosely used word. Scanning a book or making it into a page turner is not what I had in mind when I used the word. Digitization would imply converting printed content to searchable Unicode text. It would also imply meta tagging the content as far as possible, including the images. The end product of digitization in my mind in something as universally repurposable as possible. Something that can be accessed across as many media displayable devices as possible and yet be discoverable and usable.

It is easy to get excited (and then distracted) by a means of delivery (ebook, video, animation, live-conferencing and what have we...). Devices and mediums change over time. What is a rage today may quickly lose relevance tomorrow. To maintain objectivity I have generalized a tablet as delivery mechanism but ideally, the digitized content should be available across a wide swathe of devices and form factors to be usable and effective.

Digitization of vocational learning content from the printed format could have a number of advantages both convenient, pedagogic, and functional. Even as we embrace the convenience and adaptability of tablets and include them as a part of vocational training, the ubiquity of screens has given pause to many educators who are now faced with  decisions on how to implement screen-based techniques and technologies into their classrooms.

Vocational Teaching-Learning transfers the skills of a trade and workmanship to an audience who are, primarily, young adults. This audience is almost always composed of digital natives who naturally understand, easily adopt, and quickly start using the technology and the associated user interactions needed to operate touch and media devices and extract maximum value from any content provided on such devices.

This helps us jump to optimally using digitized content for vocational education. Digitized content consumed through devices like tablets can aid a number of vocational learning pathways, including:

• Learning by watching
• Learning by imitating
• Learning by practising
• Learning through feedback
• Learning through conversation
• Learning by teaching and helping
• Learning by real-world problem-solving
• Learning through enquiry
• Learning by critical thinking
• Learning by listening, transcribing and remembering
• Learning by reflecting
• Learning on the fly
• Learning by being coached
• Learning by competing
• Learning through virtual environments
• Learning through simulation

The combination of these factors delivered through a digital delivery mechanism like a tablet could make for more effective learning, knowledge retention and lead to better application in the workspace post the training phase.

A number of factors can make digitized content delivered on devices like tablets and other smart devices more effective when compared to static printed learning material. Some of the factors could be:

Access

• Learning material in the vocational education space is fairly niche and is usually procedural and technical in nature. Digitization is key to making it widely available in a shareable manner, since in the print format, authors and institutions can find it difficult to reach out to a wide enough audience. Hence, digitized content can help provide on-demand local, national and international access to courses, curriculum resources or collections. It opens access to collections of information and resources that cannot always be accessed physically by users.
• It also enhances opportunities for increasing the number of potential students in courses or users of information and to allow greater public interface with institutional assets
• The number of trainers who are both experts in their trades and in transferring the knowledge to vocational learners are never enough given both geographic availability and certified capabilities. Digitized content that allows available master trainers to pool their knowledge-base and interact with a greater number of students than otherwise physically possible have a positive multiplier effect.  
• With a digital delivery platform, master trainers can reach out learners, overcoming geographic boundaries, and become virtual media mentors and even address learning audiences very too few in numbers or in locations too remote, that are otherwise unviable for existing training providers to cater to.
• Once digitized, access to rapid and constant upgrades is simpler. While in print, upgrades need to be accumulated and executed in a time-expensive, low periodicity manner, digitized content upgrades can be pushed seamlessly as revisions that always keep the learner attached to the latest and most relevant content.
• While there is a glut of available information, learners trying to access content that is unstructured through search are often lured into non-content related or even tangential interactions that take away from the learning purpose at hand. Access to curated and mediated digitized content can focus the learners into more effective content absorption.
• Availability of training content in multiple languages is one of the key factors in vocational learning content absorption.With digitization, interlinkage with rapid  translation mechanisms can make the learning potential available to many in their native tongues.

Enhanced Services:

• Digitized conversion allows for the use of existing courses or resources in new or different ways as described in the possibilities for the application of various learning pathways.
• Assessment and certification can be included as a part of the learning path. Also, custom learning paths, and just-in-time training delivery is also possible with digitized content.
• Blended learning models of various types is possible:
• Blend of offline, online, and in-person learning
• Blend of classroom and self-paced e-Learning
• Blend of self-assessment and guided practice followed by final certification
• Digitization creates a pool of constantly relevant content that can be packaged according to different needs in response to varied demands.

Partnerships

• Digitization can pave the way for building partnerships between institutions to improve the quality of learning by sharing resources, adopting common standards and facilitating good practice and the exchange of information and expertise.
• Merging various efforts from different identified funding opportunities and injecting a collaborative element can digital content collaborations even more successful, while clearly denoting and maintaining intellectual property rights of the content from multiple authorities.
• Digitization also can bring together information about courses and resources that have already been digitized through federated search and use strategies.

Promotion, Marketing and Discoverability

• Digitization and digital publication automatically makes large sections of content discoverable. This in turn can raise awareness levels about the range of courses and educational resources available for study
• Once there is a sufficient pool of structured and optimized vocation learning content, with targeted promotion ad inter-linking local and international content aligning to geographically required standards can enhance both qualification and further study needs

References:

• http://javanan.moe.gov.ir/getattachment/a3f0f07b-440c-4f5f-9723-0cde34489cda/Vocational-Learning-1-.aspx
• http://publishing.sfu.ca/2013/01/e-books-and-early-elementary-education-a-balancing-act-of-technology-and-teaching-pedagogy/  
• http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/jgcc_ebooks_quickreport.pdf
• http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11145-009-9182-x?LI=true
• http://www.deakin.edu.au/arts-ed/education/research/images/teach-international-students-in-vocational-education.pdf
• http://www.skillsdevelopment.org/PDF/How-to-teach-vocational-education.pdf

 

In an Era of Connection and Content

I grew up spending large chunks of my summer vacations in the neighbouring British Council Library. Information was scarce finding it in the library was like wading through Ali Baba's cave.

After an internal mail urging 'innovation' it struck me that all the learning companies I've worked in never pinned down the way learning has changed.

Now we have two main components, Connection and Content, that drive the way learning works today.

Content:

Gradually information has moved from being the means by which one could gain value. Earlier if you had information you had the edge.
Information is now commoditized. 
My experiences from my childhood was like finding and drinking hungrily from a dripping tap compared to the phenomenon now where we are trying to drink the river standing in the torrent. 
It is not only the Internet. Although it IS the main conduit.
What one does with the content is now more important than just being in possession of it.
Existence of MooCs, social media, Wikipedia, are all indicators of this phenomenon.
Curated content is more important than just having the content.
Content that is arranged better is more discoverable. Greater discoverability is the first step to being more valuable.

Connection:

Connectivity is the Magnus Carlsen of learning now. Sharing has multiple positive outcomes in terms of learning:

• Social validation
• Better curation
• Adds perspectives
• Promotes continuity through varied ownership, so that if the prinicple sponsor/champion is removed the learning is still in public memory and it can still be continued.

11% Download Educational Apps on their Smarthones

Pinterest bubbled up a very interesting infographic that shows that about 11% of people they surveyed/tracked would actually download an educational app on their smartphone. 

This compared to 64% who would download games is actually quite exciting and augurs well for education on mobile phones.

You can read the original article from http://blog.websourcing.fr/infographie-telechargements-mobiles-sont-jeux/ 

Here's the inforgraphic (click to view a larger version):

Link: Are we wired for mobile learning?

I stumbled upon a very interesting article/write-up that explores how effective we would be using mobiles to learn.


I love the info-graphic used to explain the entire thing...


Original source : http://goo.gl/E9MFB

Transparency in Assessment

Getting into an Indian Institute of Technology is a dream for millions of students in India. Thousands actually make the grade. 


In an interesting development, the central body for conducting the entrance test has decided that they will put up all the answer scripts AND the key. This will let an aspirant get a clear picture of what went right/wrong.


Found this transparency quite brilliant... Read the original article from:
http://goo.gl/GKH6S


Wonder how many other such institutions do this...