Personal Blogs

In the last few 4 years, I have been shifting my provision for apprenticeships to use more technology.  The reasons are multiple, two examples being financial and quality.

Financial - there has been reduced funding in education and my organisation is predominantly FE where cuts have been hard.  There is therefore the need to ensure cost-effective delivery

Quality - the learning resources were limited and there was the need to increase the number of and the quality of learning resources to support learning preferences and impact positively on achievement

2014/5 OutcomeTarget - the VLE has developed to a point where through instructional design, I was able to review our Apprenticeship delivery with a significant reduction in both learning plan time and face to face visits (covered in an earlier blog today).  There is more emphasis on learning through the VLE, with tutoring support via some of the face to face visits and additional emails, forums and mobile contact.  The other face to face visits can be used for general tutoring support and assessment.

Students Perception - The perception of the quality of the learning, I believe, has been raised.  The learner has access to a community with dedicated support resources and interaction with others.  The reduced visits encourages interaction with the learner having a significant/leading role in their learning path.  For example, there are multiple learning objects to access for all the units that make up the provision.  The learner (with facilitation support) can select the learning tools that works best for them.  Due to increased online learning we have identified the need for improved referencing from our learners as these resources can then be shared across the community.   We are trying to encourage connectivism and networking.  We are also making every effort to encourage the development of life-long learning skills and to convert those seeing the course as a pure acquisition exercise to an alternative opportunity for learning where everyone can be both learner and teacher whilst still ensuring they feel they are receiving the specialist guidance and advice.  There is still an expectation that they will acquire skills/knowledge as as we have an employer stakeholder within the apprenticeship process there has to be some acknowledgement of that.  Fortunately, with apprenticeships there are formalised competency standards that have to be demonstrated so we are able to clearly indicate where learning and/or competence is met but we also have freedom to explore the subject outside of this syllabus to offer a broader learning experience.

Academic performance I feel will be unaffected.  For the last 3 years we have achieved 10% above national benchmark.  I expect this to remain as although less face to face visits, we have improved our learning activites and considered accessibility issues too.  There is  strong instuctional design that offers a clear expectation of both learner and tutor/teacher.

In terms of whether technology embodies assumptions about the nature of teaching and learning in highed education, I  would conclude that this is not true.  There is still many elements of HE that will use technology such as a VLE as a pure repository tool full of lecture based powerpoints.  At the other end of the spectrum there will be examples of student orientated, interaction, social learning courses where learners share, debate and conclude together and these combined discussions (virtual) will offer a rich learning experience.  The assumption will be affected much by the learners own experiences to date and all too often these are still teacher focused.

Going forward though, the landscape I believe is changing, fast.  Expectation will change and the shift from teacher led/acquisition models will make way (by demand) to student led/participation learning journeys.  A key development is accessibility with wifi connections being distributed country wide (UK) with few areas of  poor accessibility, this barrier is lifted and the full use of learning objects can be utlised be it video, audio, web 2.0 tools etc.