Work @ TAFE

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