Work @ TAFE

From EDUCAUSE REVIEW | September/October 2005, Volume 40, Number 5:

Is covering content enough? Content-focused learning has a relatively short half-life, particularly since most learners’ careers will span a variety of different, possibly unrelated fields over the course of their lifetime. “Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed).”

I love this quote (originally from George Siemens) we were just talking about this idea in our web design class the other day. I’ve been trying not to give “the right answer” lately in class but instead get students thinking about where they can find the answer themselves…

In my typically stimulating fashion, I asked one student the other day “So how can we find out how to do it?”… and he replied with a grin: “we can ask you”.

Yesterday I had the chance to spend 2 hours with a bunch of TAFEies from Baulkham hills and Nepean…We had a great time seeing (and trying) some of the free and easy tools out there on the web!

We started out by looking at Wikipedia, and seeing how the web is changing into something that everyone can contribute to. I’m hoping that this is a good way to introduce a great free resource (Wikipedia), while also highlighting how the Web is moving from “Read only” to “Read/Write”, but am waiting for feedback from participants to help me understand whether it was helpful or not!

I think most people were suprised at how easy it is to get their own website up, but ideally we needed more time to practise using our sites… A few people identified this on their feedback forms. It’s great to see that everyone found the workshop to be very useful (on the feedback form anyway!)

Here’s some snippets from the sites people created:

Sandra reflects on one of the highlights of last week’s teaching:

Relief on our students faces! As students start to complete their final external exams this week, one of the great feelings as ateacher is to watch the transformation of students. Last week they were nervous, demanding and tired.

While another person seems to be beginning a novel where CLAMS plays an antagonist! . JforJules points out that technology introduces a “fantastic new world of interest and rubbish. how to discern is the trick” - how to discern… a good question! (Relevance, relevance, relevance)

Jill notes that “Another aspect of technology and learning is the ability for students to use online tools” - an incredibly important point! We always need to consider carefully our target audience when choosing to use a technology in some learning activity!

Well, I certainly enjoyed the two hours! I’m still struggling to re-jig this workshop so that people can have a website that they want to continue to use after the workshop… even if it was only reflecting on teaching experience once a month or something. Ideas?

Just had an unreal presentation by Russ Weakley (WebStandards Group, MaxDesign and WebEssentials05) demonstrating a real site being designed step-by-step using CSS. Apart from being an incredible opportunity to witness the process and thoughts of a design professional in action, Russ’s presentation has also challenged me to rethink they way I facilitate at TAFE.

I think what struck me was the diversity of the audience (in terms of background knowledge) and therefore how it would be difficult to meet everyone’s needs, but nontheless, the way nearly everyone came away from Russ’s presentation motivated to find out more. I wonder if I spend too much time trying to make sure that everyone can follow what we’re doing so that the motivation and excitement of what we’re doing drips out into a big puddle …. Yes there is a difference between a one-off presentation and an 18week semester, but nonetheless, a demonstration/seminar session each week could be really effective.

…Methinks this needs more thought and interaction with other peoples ideas and experience…

Back in November last year, we were musing about how we could improve the Web Design course for next semester. Well, now it’s Week 5 of that next semester, so I thought it might be a good time for us all to reflect a bit on how things have been going and get some feedback from all of us - participants and facilitators - on how the course is progressing.

Perceived Problems

First, just to recap what the perceived problems were. One of the issues highlighted through the feedback Genie collected last year was that participants thought the course was delivered either too fast or too slow (corresponding to too little or too much content).

The other main issue that we facilitators identified was that, although students were learning the material throughout the 18 weeks, the last 3-4 weeks was the only time that it was all put into practise as a cohesive whole. This left some participants coming away having completed their client project successfully, but not feeling confident that they could do it again without the classroom support.

The new course…

This semester, we’ve tried to address these issues as well as improve the flexibility of the delivery in a number of ways.

Course and Student Blogs

The central point of contact online has been moved from a password-protected Learning Management System to the much simpler free blogger website: Tafe Web Developer - learning technologies together (note that this provides a point of contact, not a repository of resources that could potentially infringe copyright!). More importantly, participants in the class have been encouraged to create and use their own blog as a means of processing their own learning, communicating their own thoughts to the world and building their technical currency. The participant controls their own learning space beyond the boundaries of the formal course, providing a repository of much (but not all) the learning that they have processed as well as links to the online resources which they have found worthwhile.

I’m also hoping that as we progress through the semester the participant blogs will become a source of information for each other as we develop a learning community - each of us filtering relevant news and information for each other from the Web simply by our common interest.

Self-paced delivery

The participant blogs also provide a way for students to communicate their learning and reflections in their own time. Often in Adult Education the ability to attend the classroom activity varies according to other commitments (work or otherwise). The online learning spaces (blogs) go a small way towards enabling participants to interact with each other’s learning even when they are not physically in the classroom.

More importantly, participants are able to work through the learning at their own pace. Some students may demonstrate competence for a few modules in the first week, while others might want to set some extra time aside to work through unfamiliar material more thoroughly. This has been made possible by agreeing on individual learning contracts where desired and providing a number of self-paced mini-projects for students to learn the required competencies.

The mini-projects

The primary aim of the mini-projects is to provide a way for participants to learn the skills of website design holistically. In the past, each individual module/competency has been taught (usually one after the other) and then participants had to gel all of these together in their client project. What we are trying to do is introduce all topics in some small way in the first mini-project, then build on these from one project to the next.

For example, the first mini-project follows closely from Elizabeth Castro’s excellent new book, Creating a Web Page in HTML, ensuring that all participants learn HTML/CSS the right way from the start. But we also begin learning about client documentation, project management, information architecture, accessibility etc., during this first project so that we have a foundation to build upon for the second mini-project.

The focus of the second project shifts slightly to emphasise more communication skills such as client interviews, project management skills, further documentation, while giving participants an opportunity to practise their HTML/CSS skills as they implement the client requirements.

We will possibly begin a third project concurrently, a real client project from the community. This mini-project will not require handing-in on behalf of the participants, but rather should provide a platform for real learning where we can continue building on our foundation of project management, communication and technical skills by applying ourselves as a team to a real project in the classroom. This project may not be completed by the one class but may rollover into the next semester.

The aim of these mini-projects is that when participants begin their own client projects they will feel confident within themselves to implement the whole project with minimal help from the facilitators - from project planning right through to testing and sign-off. This will provide valid evidence for us facilitators to use for assessment and will hopefully leave successful participants feeling ready to continue implementing web-design projects beyond the boundaries of the course. Again, I’m also hoping that participants will continue to support each other after the course by contributing to each others’ learning on their blogs.

Reflections so far…

This is where I want to hand over to anyone and everyone. Whether you’re a facilitator of the course, or a participant, or someone who just happened to read this, I’m sure you’ve got some constructive criticism or feedback. Some people have already expressed some frustration at constantly updating their blog, others have been thankful for the flexibility that the course structure offers, so whatever you think, you probably won’t be alone! I’ll be adding my own comments expressing both the good and the bad

As second semester 2004 is drawing to a close, I find myself experiencing (yet again) the frustration of “last-minute learning” in my Web Design class - and I want to do something about it for next semester.

The problem

The more I think about it, the complete process of designing and implementing a website for a client is really only learned during the last few weeks as the students race to get their Client site finished before the end of semester. It’s during these weeks that the first real Client Documentation is prepared, Information Architectures are designed for the first real situation, MS Project Plans are created for the first real project etc. I think this is due to the linear fashion with which we currently teach all the material (with practical assignments and workshops along the way of course!), until towards the end of the semester when students focus primarily on their client projects. But I’m wondering whether a more iterative learning cycle would be more effective and perhaps more student-centred… for example…

Gene, who teaches parts of the course with Jude and me, came up with the great idea at the end of last semester of using some of the modules that she facilitates (Instructional Design / communications) as a “mini” client project, giving students a small taste of the whole project cycle before their major assessment - their real client project. We tried this approach this semester and I think it worked well for the scope that we gave it: students got a taste of a mock client interview and both Gene and I were able to assess most students on their HTML/CSS/Instructional design skills early in the semester. Yet I think I missed the opportunity to use this mini project as an introduction to the complete web design lifecycle (for example, I could have also introduced information architecture, documenting the design, performance testing, accessibility testing etc.)

The idea

Jude and I had a chat the other day about the possibility of a more iterative (or cyclic?) learning process for the students, where they go through the complete lifecycle two or three times during the semester (this was probably Gene’s original idea!). For example,

1. during the first 2-3 weeks while learning the fundamentals of XHTML and CSS, we could begin the first mini project: planning, designing and implementing our own website. This mini project would include everything from a small MS Project plan, a (brief) information architecture, design, documentation, implementation, performance and accessibility testing.
2. During the implementation phase of the first mini project, we could begin the planning and interviews for the second mini project: the instructional design site. Again going through the complete lifecycle (perhaps in more depth or with more restrictions on accessibility/performance?)
3. During the implementation phase of the second mini project, students could begin the planning/interviews for their actual client project - again going through the whole lifecycle (but this time, hopefully on their own).

Of course, as new skills are learned, students would be (hopefully) updating and maintaining their own websites.

But that’s too much work!

… I hear you saying! And perhaps it is impossible to do this without packing more work into an already bulging course - which I want to avoid at all costs. But perhaps it is possible to do without increasing the workload. For example, we could provide strong scaffolding (in the form of templates) for the documentation, project plan and testing cycle for the first mini project, so really students would be filling in the blanks while learning the ropes. Some of the scaffolding could then be removed for the second mini project and finally taken down completely for the final client project. Similarly, the first mini-project would just introduce many of the techniques/skills without going into much depth, the second could build on those and introduce more depth, while the client project would ideally contain little new learning (probably impossible in practice).

I think this structure would enable us to continue developing the self-paced learning strategies that we’ve used this semester and may even enable further flexibility in terms of blended delivery (once the scaffolding/templates and other resources for the mini-projects have been created/updated).

Any comments or criticisms? Can you see any other ways that this might be helpful or unhelpful for the modules that you teach? Or, if you are a student, does the problem description above fairly describe the situation you are now in and do you think this iterative structure would have been helpful or unhelpful for your learning?

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

Really enjoyed the Cert III macros class today. I spent a lot of time on Thursday building activities to scaffold a few concepts/skills in MS Access. I’m particularly enjoying seeing the participants investigating and learning themselves!

For example, one of the focuses today was to see how we can use VBA within Access. We’ve already done extensive work using VBA in Excel, but Access is quite different in that it tries to make things a lot simpler, but inevitably makes things more difficult. We had a discovery task (based on a Moodle forum), where the participants ran out of the blocks to discover themselves how they can display a simple MessageBox from a button on a form (displaying something like “This database was designed by [whoever]”. The participants really got into the activity and raced to find different ways to do so in Access. When some students found a way, they then posted to the forum (with some encouragement) enabling others to try their method.

I then extended a scenario from their Excel VBA coding to Access, enabling participants to build upon their previous knowledge from the Excel exercises - again, letting participants discover and help each other.

I guess I’m really enjoying seeing students discover things themselves through carefully structured activities, rather than just listenting to me telling them how to do it then practicing themselves.

I’ve been trialling different methods lately to enable the web-design students to learn at their own pace… but combined with 8 hours of web-design on a Tuesday, it’s progressing at the cost of a headache each week! (For me and the students!)

I think, within a social constructivist framework, it is inevitable that all learners will be at different points of the course… If someone misses a week, I don’t think it’s valid to say, “well, you’ll just have to catch up!”, and expect them to construct this weeks new learning activities on top of a hole where the previous weeks foundation should be. And in and adult learning environment, it is inevitable that participants will be away for substantial amounts of time.

For this reason I’ve been keeping individual progress sheets for the students in class, and setting individual learning contracts. This seems to be working well so far. Most learners are grouped together with one other person who is doing the same activity, and people work well together in these small groups.

Yet this also means that it is more difficult to have activities where we are all together. I’ve been trying to use the forums a little for this purpose (as people can contribute at different points in time without a problem), but I don’t feel this can replace actually working together as a class on some activity or game or discussion etc. I’m instead trying to disperse a few interesting “break activities” that give people a break from the activities that they are working on at their own pace, and to come together to discuss/try/play with something useful but not necessary. For example, yesterday as a break activity, we all had a go at downloading the Web Developers extension for FireFox, played with it for a while, and then talked about the features that we found really useful.

So, all-in-all, it seems to be going well. Students seem positive about the work they are doing and amazingly managed (yesterday) to work well for the whole day (9-5). Everyone is progressing without feeling too overwhelmed. I’m able to keep up with where everyone is up to (using the individual progress sheets) so we don’t waste time trying to work that out each week. But at the end of the day, it is a long day for everyone!

The group activities that we ran in class on Friday seemed to work really well! Although not all participants were keen to work in the larger groups, everyone seemed to interact quite well and “socially construct” their knowledge together I spent quite a bit of time on Wednesday trying to build the learning around a social constructivist philosophy.

The paired activities went well too. Participants came up with designs for a database scenario and posted their designs to the discussion forum I had set up, before posting comments on each others designs. We were able to use these to discuss 1st and 2nd Normal form for databases! This was really exciting for me - to see learners discovering the database theory in the context of their own database designs!

Hopefully I can become a bit more efficient in creating similar activity-based learning sessions!