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...

Nice tips for remote employee training

Working from home has become an almost defacto reality for a large portion of technology workers in  the West and now in other countries like India as well...


I was reading an interesting article with tips on how workers who work from home can be trained. A very interesting perspective...


Here's the link:
http://goo.gl/QV3IL

USA, China, and Finland... Symptoms from three systems...

China has recently announced that they are going to increase spending on education to 4% of their GDP. This is significant in context of the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's saying "the way boost education development is to have schools run by educationalists. He also "defined "educationalists" to be those who love to teach and know how to teach, and those who have been teachers for their entire lives."


Now compare this with the US education system. With the administration 'making' school compete for survival, the school system is responding with rather dubious methods of making the grade (just to prevent losing their jobs when their school is shutdown). Ironically this is in the backdrop of the "No Child Left Behind" policy of the US administration.


Reading the article 'When test scores seem too good to believe' in USAtoday, how this pressure is making teachers (!)... Not students... adopt unfair means to spike up performance. This also makes me wonder about the system itself. How, what, and how much does an average student learn in a typical school lifetime?

The Atlanta Journal Constitution wrote a very thought provoking blog post on how China is edging ahead the race education in comparison to the US. In fact, the comparison to the former USSR's success in producing stellar education outcomes.

In contrast, Ira David Socol has an interesting perspective where Finland seems to have a better model and track record that both USA and China. The interesting factoid is also how Ireland has been suggested to follow Finland model for financial recovery. What would be even more interesting is to compare how Ireland's education system fares in comparison.

New Features in Moodle 2.0

A shiny new Moodle 2.0 was launched a few days ago. Here a few links that describe all the new features:

• A YouTube playlist of Moodle 2.0 features 
• A brief tour of Moodle 2.0
• A very interesting compilation about the impact from the new features
• The official release notes

Virtual Classrooms with Facebook enabled Skype 5

I was reading a mashable.com post about Skype 5 that integrates your Facebook timeline.

This means that now you have all the elements that you normally get from a commercial solution for an online classroom session:

• A chat stream for the participants to converse while a session is in progress
• Video based (conference)/interaction (Skype 5 allows 10 people video conferencing)
• Ability to white-board 
• Ability to "dial-in" using VoIP and normal telephones
• Ability to SMS and interact
• Social media interaction (Facebook integration in this case) 

It will be a good thing to use this and setup teaching interfaces. Since Skype can now deal with dropped calls
(auto reconnection is a new feature), low bandwidth users how the option of joining with the Facebook timeline,  SMS, chat, or audio.

Here's how the new interface looks in Skype 5.0 looks

Here are some links that describe the new Skype features:

• The mashable.com article
• Skype's own blog

ItzaBitza—Microsoft's new learning game for kids

Microsoft (and Sabi games) has made an interesting game that teaches kids reading comprehension as they play the game. This game utilizes multi-touch interfaces like tablet PCs.

The story in the game evolves as the kids use their fingers or a stylus to draw things like houses and other things to crack puzzles and win challenges. The interesting part is the "Living Ink" technology used in the game that recognizes the shapes and that objects that the kids draw and makes them into a part of the game.

This way the young players are constantly playing and creating a unique game experience for themselves.

Here are some links where you can see a little more of how this game works:

• "ItzaBitza" Game Demo
• The ItzaBitza Game Trailer
• Download a demo version here
• Sabi's website where you can learn about the variants of this game
• Download videos for your media player here
• A mom blogging about testing the game with here kids
  
  

Interesting Ways to Learn and Teach Languages

I stumbled across http://www.howtolearnlanguagesfast.com/

The URL sounded quite gimmicky, so I was a tad bit apprehensive.

However, there are quite a few interesting ideas like using images and associated mnemonics to remember clusters of words, using mind maps and even singing to learn languages.

Very interesting...

Open eLMS

Discovered Open eLMS.

http://www.openelms.org/

Seems quite cool since it looks simpler and better than Moodle. I’m intrigued by the Employee Management System which claims to integrate systems to measure the competencies with the LMS.

Will explore…

Simple and effective elearning examples

Here is a link that lists more than 35 interesting examples of how elearning can be engaging, effective, and yet simple.


http://blog.cathy-moore.com/elearning-samples/

This is yet another great post on Cathy Moore's blog. :)

Excellent example of a branching logic case study

Very often instructional designers start thinking about how case studies are complicated to present to the learner.
Here is an example of how a simplified interaction interface can make a case study work very well:

http://www.worldwarfighter.com/hajikamal/activity/

It is good to notice how the complexity is hidden from the learner.

Cathy Moore's blog has an interesting analysis of how this was made (info from behind the scene), that makes an interesting read.

http://blog.cathy-moore.com/2010/05/elearning-example-branching-scenario/#more-979

Visualization tools to help you avoid boring elearning

Here are a few blog posts that say simple, yet interesting, things about how we can design learning experiences better.

http://blog.cathy-moore.com/category/instructional-design/

http://blog.cathy-moore.com/2007/08/visualization-tools-to-help-you-avoid-boring-elearning/#more-57

Have a look at the Browse by category section as well.

 

<A big thank you to Kamlesh Kalyan for sharing this one.>

A Brief Look at Story-based Learning

Using stories to teach

Storytelling is a powerful way of organizing information, conveying emotions, and teaching people.
Stories with vivid characters and plots are used with great effect to design and create learning and design scenarios to address a range of business needs. Stories and scenarios are customized and used with  web-based learning tools since like movies or a good book, they have the power to carry users into authentic settings and into the lives of interesting, believable characters.
Story-based learning delivered through the computer leverages a range of media elements and wraps them using a plot into a potent instructional form. Added elements of interactivity help learner make decisions that control the movement of the story, as it were, and gain greater immersion.

The Story-based learning methodology uses the age old but simple art of narrative to achieve the following:

• Make the instructional content interesting and immersive.
• Make the learner identify with the different characters of the story.
• Show how the different events and elements of the story are relevant to the learner’s work-life and work environment.

Here is a little video that speaks about how stories can be used to teach without appearing didactic or overly persuasive. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFC-URW6wkU&feature=fvw

 

Broad categories of story-based learning types

Based on the complexity of narrative and use of associated instructional techniques can be divided into:

·         Simple stories to initiate learning
At the simplest level stories and simple scenarios are used to initiate learners into a series of learning content chunks. A simple story or scenario is used in such cases to attract and draw the learner into the learning sequence. The plot in this case in not very evolved and often multiple unrelated or related anecdotes are used throughout the length of the learning program to keep up learner engagement. The learning sequence itself maybe simple, linear, or even complex and branched.
Parable like stories are also used in simple used of learning to drive home concepts or learning objectives. The stories used in such cases are always simple, short, and usually with a straightforward plotline.

·         Involved with interwoven plot
Higher impact uses draw on stories with evolved plotlines that are specifically written around design strategies. The story is the central mechanism of continuity that carries the entire learning process for the learner. Often the learner is asked to make decisions that may seem to alter the sequence of events. Usually the plot is crafted to guide the learner through a decided path of learning and set outcomes. The learner merely gets an illusion of being in control to reinforce the sense of immersion and enforce involvement with what is being taught.

·         Completely immersive with a simulated learning environment
This is the most complex form of instruction that uses engines to allow learners to craft their own learning  experience using the backbone of a story. Each learner comes away after the experience with a unique experiential learning experience.
Simulations of reality immerse learners and make them part of an evolving story where the decisions they make actually changes the sequence of events. The learning interface is used to merely collect information, allow learners to react and make decisions, and to present analyses and the outcomes of decisions made. The story in the back end is complex and uses a very strongly crafted logic to trigger and alter the situations in the story to provide the experience in the world of the story where the learner is completely immersed.
When used with social learning this form allows learners to not only create their own learning experience but also react and learn from other learners. In games this learning behavior is often seen in massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG).

 

Qualities and Benefits of Effective Story-based Learning:

Stories address universal themes
Students can relate to the characters and the challenges they face.

Unusual
Learners do not want to hear about everyday life or learn from rigidly encoded content. Stories let them find something interesting and a little different.

Personal
Learners appreciate hearing a real, authentic story from the person who experienced it firsthand.
Stories created for the online learning experience are particularly interesting and make the learning seem more human. When used aptly, sharing a personal and appropriate story will actually increases learner involvement and empathy enormously.

Demonstrates consequences or rewards for choices made
Main characters in learning stories are often rewarded for making good choices and punished for bad choices.

Appeals to the three main representational systems
Stories can involve visual, auditory, and kinesthetic experiences. Some learners respond to images, some to sounds and some to feelings. Great learning stories, use descriptions from all three representational systems. This involves learners with a range of cognitive needs.

Greater learning gains
Studies have proven that learners exhibit learning gains can often be better than those produced by traditional instructional approaches. (Scott W. McQuiggan, Jonathan P. Rowe, Sunyoung Lee and ,James C. Lester - Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695).
The motivational benefits of narrative-centered learning with regard to self-efficacy, presence, interest, and perception of control are substantially greater than other means of instruction.

Virtual Field Trip... !

Just learnt about the concept of the Virtual Field trip (http://www.simplek12.com/virtualfieldtrips ) from @SimpleK12 on Twitter.

The concept is simple. Instead of the real location show the a series of websites about the place. Perhaps in the near future with virtual reality the children can even experience the place.

For now though I have mixed feelings about this concept. Most of (children included) are glued to one or the other screen (TV, PC, Mobile, Gaming Console etc.). An actual attempt at going to a place in reality is so much better than just surfing websites.

OpenSource Tools for Learners

I was just reading about TechRepublic’s list of 10 ‘Linux applications’ for educational environments (http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=853).

 

Surprised that Moodle is not included. Must compare and find out why Atutor pipped Moodle to the post in the list, J