Via Derek Wenmouth, comes a link to this blog - not just any 'new normal' will do - by Lesley Murrihy a NZ primary school principal. It is a call, like several other blogs/articles, for the current Covid-19 'rapid change in educational delivery' to be a lever for change within the educational system. Lesley, writes well about the need to use the learnings, wrought by the pandemic on society across the globe, to be an opportunity to sit back and think about what the actual objectives of education are. In particular, the role of education in addressing the societal equities brought about by the shifts in the last several decades to globalisation and marketisation of everything.
As someone who has benefited through the social mobility availed through access to education for my parents' generation through the sacrifices undertaken by my grandparents, I have always been aware and a supporter of the advantages conferred by being literate and 'educated'. We the benefits, also come the responsibility to 'feed it forward'.
In NZ, the reform of vocational education (RoVE) has provided a once in a life time opportunity to create a vocational education system which 'puts learners at the heart' of their learning. Due to the 'Level 4' restrictions in NZ across April, the formation of one of the pillars of RoVE, the merger of all the polytechnics and institutes of technology in to one NZ Institute of Skills and Technology (NZIST - interim name) was decidedly low key. There were no major announcements apart from the main NZIST board being formed and individual boards appointed for all the 'subsideries'.
The need to rapidly then shift to distance learning, due to having to be in 'lockdown' and work from home for over 5 weeks, created a mass professional development objective across the entire educational sector. Therefore, we now have two unique 'once in a lifetime' opportunities to go forward with.
The blog by Lesley, indicates the need to be circumspect and to identify the objectives of education. In NZ VET, some of this was completed through the RoVE process. It is now important to perhaps review these objectives, in light of what has now taken place across the pandemic. NZ will have to remain, for the near future, 'an island of itself'. The NZ government's decision to 'go hard and go early' has led to the possibility of eliminating the virus. However, to keep the virus at bay will mean keeping external borders closed and strong social distancing measures. High earners of income like tourism will struggle and other parts of the economy, will have to shift to meet new challenges. VET's role is to support training and education and be 'agile' and flexible to meet industry needs as many may have to seek retraining.
The mass 'training' of the VET workforce to be able to 'deliver' to learners remotely, will now be an advantage. How this is leveraged will be important. The opportunity is now there to provide education 'when and where' learners require the learning. Instead of institutionally directed learning, the possibility of co-created curriculum with learners, is now even more achieveable. What is now required is time to think through the best ways to meet learners' needs given the access we now have to wider understanding and capability of technology-enhanced learning.
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Monday, April 20, 2020
Returning to LinkedIn as a resource - distance/remote learning
I joined LinkedIn quite a few years ago but never really participated until a couple of months ago.
The reasons are many, but one would be the 'corporate' or 'organisational management' focus for many of the posts in my feed due to the people I am linked in with.
However, the international effects of Covid-19 has meant everyone has been affected as people scramble, in their own contexts, to cope with the need for rapid change.
The effect on having to shift education online has therefore created a large amount of activity and LinkedIn has been a source of many good articles, resources, think pieces and guides on how to cope.
Here is a small selection, gleaned over the last couple of weeks:
- Inge de Waard has provided some 'quick guides' on shifting from f2f to remote/distance learning, albeit from a higher education context, but still good templates to customise from.
- Alison Miller who consults in the elearning arena, provides links to a range of resources.
- Mark Nichols work on distance learning is always good to keep up with.
- Derek Wenmoth often helps educators see beyond the present and presents implication for current decisions.
- Michael Sankey's work is focussed on bigger picture and organisation strategy related to on-line learning.
- Peter Mellow often links to useful resources for educators.
- Joyce Seitzinger is a go to for learning design in the area of distance/online learning.
- Mark Brown provides a mix of links to the big picture and educator practice.
Therefore, tapping into the present social networking opportunities, provides for a way to benchmark what we are doing at Ara. In particular, some idea of what others are doing, the important theoretical underpinnings for decisions made on curriculum and learning design, and reflections on things that have worked and challenges. All in, a good way to be supported and not feel that we are not the only ones caught up in a massive shift from the known into the unforseeable.
The reasons are many, but one would be the 'corporate' or 'organisational management' focus for many of the posts in my feed due to the people I am linked in with.
However, the international effects of Covid-19 has meant everyone has been affected as people scramble, in their own contexts, to cope with the need for rapid change.
The effect on having to shift education online has therefore created a large amount of activity and LinkedIn has been a source of many good articles, resources, think pieces and guides on how to cope.
Here is a small selection, gleaned over the last couple of weeks:
- Inge de Waard has provided some 'quick guides' on shifting from f2f to remote/distance learning, albeit from a higher education context, but still good templates to customise from.
- Alison Miller who consults in the elearning arena, provides links to a range of resources.
- Mark Nichols work on distance learning is always good to keep up with.
- Derek Wenmoth often helps educators see beyond the present and presents implication for current decisions.
- Michael Sankey's work is focussed on bigger picture and organisation strategy related to on-line learning.
- Peter Mellow often links to useful resources for educators.
- Joyce Seitzinger is a go to for learning design in the area of distance/online learning.
- Mark Brown provides a mix of links to the big picture and educator practice.
Therefore, tapping into the present social networking opportunities, provides for a way to benchmark what we are doing at Ara. In particular, some idea of what others are doing, the important theoretical underpinnings for decisions made on curriculum and learning design, and reflections on things that have worked and challenges. All in, a good way to be supported and not feel that we are not the only ones caught up in a massive shift from the known into the unforseeable.
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
Holding on to institutional learning in response to swift change
We are now into our third week of Level 4 'lockdown' in New Zealand, with another week to go. Indications are promising, with a decline in number of covid-19 cases in the last several days. A decision will be made Monday next week (20/4) on what will happen next. Whether the country will continue at L4 or move progressively to L3. Even at L3, most schools and VET institutes and universities will likely remain closed for the short term.
Therefore, we continue with distance/remote delivery for the short term, with plans to move back into normal delivery soon. Planning for the next month or so, will therefore be difficult, given the uncertainties. At the moment, after 3 weeks of intense activity providing professional development and support to our lecturers to move to distance delivery, we move into the next stage of ensuring distance delivery challenges are provided with sufficient advise and information to solve these. Coupled with this work, is the next step of ensuring learning and teaching for the rest of the semester is also well resourced and supported. One key task will be to help lecturers re-configure summative assessments to allow for distance learning. We have begun looking into on-line invigilation/proctoring platforms. These tools come at some costs and summative assessments online have not been encouraged. However, there will be a few programmes requiring traditional exams, due to registration board requirements and we will need to find, evaluate, test and implement a process very quickly, if exams have to be run online.
The Easter 'break' has also provided some time to reflect on the swift changes. I have been ambivalent about the range of on-line tools we have been supporting our lecturers to use. In the main, these tools (LMS, video conferecing, video lecture capture), provide a way for our lecturers to replicate f2f teaching on-line. The 'push' content out to learners model, is still the majority approach instead of a 'pull' and co-constructed model of learning which is possible. Digital literacy challenges and some equity issues with learners access to hardware and infrastructure (wifi) mean some programmes have been able to move into a holding pattern of sorts. However, in the main, we still see the teacher directed model as predominant. Therefore, in a way, as with the earthquakes, the opportunity to sift practice has been lost, due to constraints of time and capability. However, there will be pockets of innovation, these we need to record, evaluate, celebrate and disseminate.
Derek Wenmouth provides some ideas for moving forward. There is need to think through what is to be emphased, going forward. Is education to meet compliance/'quality'/learner outcomes? or should we transition to something better? In the VET sector, the combination of the sudden move to another mode of delivery, unfamiliar to many institutes, and the formation of the NZ Institute of Skills and Technology, provide a once in a generation opportunity to shift practice. We learnt much from coping with the earthquakes, almost a decade ago. However, may initiatives moved back to the status quo once the market driven model of education took precedence. After all, Canterbury providers had to compete with all the other institutes and 'doing thing differently' was often 'less cost efficient'
Hopefully, this time around, some of the learnings from having to move to another form of delivery, will provide the nucleus for really actioning the mantra of 'the learner at the heart of learning'. As meeting the covid-19 challenge has shown, we have the technology and much of the capability with some innovation being shown. These need to be tapped into, going into the future, to ensure VET is 'seamless' as far as the learner is concerned and that 'delivery' is driven by the learner, not by the educational provider, as has been the case thus far.
Therefore, we continue with distance/remote delivery for the short term, with plans to move back into normal delivery soon. Planning for the next month or so, will therefore be difficult, given the uncertainties. At the moment, after 3 weeks of intense activity providing professional development and support to our lecturers to move to distance delivery, we move into the next stage of ensuring distance delivery challenges are provided with sufficient advise and information to solve these. Coupled with this work, is the next step of ensuring learning and teaching for the rest of the semester is also well resourced and supported. One key task will be to help lecturers re-configure summative assessments to allow for distance learning. We have begun looking into on-line invigilation/proctoring platforms. These tools come at some costs and summative assessments online have not been encouraged. However, there will be a few programmes requiring traditional exams, due to registration board requirements and we will need to find, evaluate, test and implement a process very quickly, if exams have to be run online.
The Easter 'break' has also provided some time to reflect on the swift changes. I have been ambivalent about the range of on-line tools we have been supporting our lecturers to use. In the main, these tools (LMS, video conferecing, video lecture capture), provide a way for our lecturers to replicate f2f teaching on-line. The 'push' content out to learners model, is still the majority approach instead of a 'pull' and co-constructed model of learning which is possible. Digital literacy challenges and some equity issues with learners access to hardware and infrastructure (wifi) mean some programmes have been able to move into a holding pattern of sorts. However, in the main, we still see the teacher directed model as predominant. Therefore, in a way, as with the earthquakes, the opportunity to sift practice has been lost, due to constraints of time and capability. However, there will be pockets of innovation, these we need to record, evaluate, celebrate and disseminate.
Derek Wenmouth provides some ideas for moving forward. There is need to think through what is to be emphased, going forward. Is education to meet compliance/'quality'/learner outcomes? or should we transition to something better? In the VET sector, the combination of the sudden move to another mode of delivery, unfamiliar to many institutes, and the formation of the NZ Institute of Skills and Technology, provide a once in a generation opportunity to shift practice. We learnt much from coping with the earthquakes, almost a decade ago. However, may initiatives moved back to the status quo once the market driven model of education took precedence. After all, Canterbury providers had to compete with all the other institutes and 'doing thing differently' was often 'less cost efficient'
Hopefully, this time around, some of the learnings from having to move to another form of delivery, will provide the nucleus for really actioning the mantra of 'the learner at the heart of learning'. As meeting the covid-19 challenge has shown, we have the technology and much of the capability with some innovation being shown. These need to be tapped into, going into the future, to ensure VET is 'seamless' as far as the learner is concerned and that 'delivery' is driven by the learner, not by the educational provider, as has been the case thus far.
Monday, April 06, 2020
Are you zoomed out?
I think I can speak for many when I say 'I am zoomed out!'. Last week, our team ran 4 workshops for our lecturers as they prepare to embark on distance learning. We had daily zoom team meetings to coordinate the workshops, debrief and additional meetings with our learning technologies to work out the technology. Average number of video conferencing meetings - 4 per day! All of this activity, left little time to do actual work.
This week, we are only offering one workshop this morning, to tie things together and bring the series of 'distance learning teaching' workshops to a close. However, we will be supporting the learning technologies team with their workshops covering our core learning platforms, Moodle, Panopto (for video sharing) and zoom (for video conferencing). They are offering 5 workshops this week, Taking that is a short week as Friday is a public holiday, it will be another busy week on-line in virtual meetings.
Therefore, it was good to read through this blog by Daniel Stanford on iddblog on alternatives to video conferencing. Our lecturers have become attached to zoom as it provides an easy entry into distance teaching. However, the 'stage on the sage' delivery approach is prevalent when all you do when you move to teaching on-line, is replicate the lecture. Therefore, the blog provides a platform for thinking through, more critically, the other ways possible to connect with and engage our learners.
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