NCVER 2010 day one morning

At the annual NCVER 'no-frills' conference at Polytechnic West/ Central Insitute of Technology in Perth today & tomorrow. Perth weather has been nice & sunny with cold starts but pleasant afternoons. A great change from the rather gloomy weather we have been getting in Christchurch over the last two months.


Staying with my sister and being well looked after by my Mum & Dad. Took the train in this morning, clean, modern & not too crowded. Looking forward to several papers at this conference and to catching up with some of the researchers from Oz.

First up, A welcome from Mr. Wayne Collier, Polytechnic West and Reverend Seer with a welcome to the land, then the opening address by the Hon. Peter Collier, Minister of Energy; Training & workforce development who has contributed to bringing up the status of 'training' as no longer just a 'non-academic' option but as an important contribution towards building a skilled workforce. WA has just formed the Dept. of Training & Workforce Development (end of 2009) to provide structures for the long term development of work skills.

First keynote from inaugural CEO for the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) in India, Dilip Chenoy. He spoke of the challenges through tapping into opportunities for collaboration & cooperation to skill 150 million people by 2022. He covered the skill challenge presented to developing countries, the Indian National skill development framework, the role of the NSDC and then the opportunities for collatboration & cooperation both nationally & internationally. An interesting presentation on a different perspective towards developing skills for large numbers of people in a developing country. Presented a concept on the 4 collar workforce, white, grey - knowledge workers, blue & rust - skilled workers in construction etc. Skills strategy needs to increase skill training /development eight fold from what is currently available. Currently, need to improve overall quality/outcomes, increase retention & ensure seamless integration between school & work - very similar challenges to developed countries. NSDC has a role to try to be a implementation partner to coordinate training from both the public & private sector towards meeting Indian skill development framework requirements. From TAFE point of view, expertise in'train the trainers' would be sought.


First paper of the concurrent sessions (5 in each stream) with Sandra Condon who manages 'disability services' at Polytechnic West on 'Breaking down the barriers for apprentices with learning disability (LD) '. She presented her research experience, the project & its 'after effects'. Her study investigated teaching & learning strategies that contribute to unit of competency completion rates for apprentices with a LD'. Review of literature revealed some correlation between students who left school early with low literacy / numeracy completion rates to completion rates of students diagnosed with LD - ie low completions. Therefore, important to identify students and also to provided relevant support to assist with completion of qualifications.

Then Sonia Davids from Dept. of Educationa and Training, Queensland. Leading change - vision to reality - a study of the PD strategy for the QLD VET sector.

Developed to assist with PD for VET to run 2007 to 2010 & this presentation on the review of this with proposals for improvement. Sonia provided a background on the QLD skills plan 2006 which led to the VET PD strategy and an overview of the strategy itself. Outcomes of the VET PD include the website, products/services, research,VET futures & VET PD pathways. Large numbers of VET teachers / trainers have engaged through this programme via access to the website, workshops, training opportunities etc. Good outcomes also include focussed PD plan for the sector, initiated & nurtured sector wide collaboration & involvement and provided key resources for RTOs to access & share. The 4 priorities will be interested to the NZ context.

Review undertaking using interviews, electronic survey & discussion forums/interviews with wide range of VET organisations. Results will be used to establish the VET PD strategy for 2011 to 2013. Review revealed the important categories within each of the 4 PD priorities so that the next strategy able to support the ongoing PD process.

Interactive ebooks with Inanimate alice and istories

An great example of the future of ebooks via Evan McIntoch’s edublog. Inanimatealice has been released since 2006 and currently has 4 out of 10 episodes available for download and viewing/reading. The book details how a young girl grows up to become a game digital designer. Each chapter seems to improve in sophistication as the techniques possible through interactive ebooks are explored and modelled. Also, each chapter increases in length, fro 5 minutes to 30 minutes, with greater use of interactive sections. There is some work still to be done on navigation, for instance if you are part way through an interactive section and are interrupted, when you click on the icon to go back to the relevant bit, you need to repeat the entire interaction. So a criteria I would like to see for interactive ebooks is to be able to dip in and out where ever you want to, like in a real book. 


There is a discussion on the impact of interactive ebooks on publishingperspectives. Interative ebooks will have many possible applications in education. It is also possible to purchase the platform on which inanimatealice has been developed. Istories is promoted as a straightforward way to construct digital stories which include pictures, text, videos, interactive sections and sound/music. Does cost a bit though.

I have been reflecting on the different literacies our staff bring with them and how to better introduce staff unfamiliar with academic tasks like reading education journal articles. The end objective is to encourage a deeper engagement with the scholarship of teaching and learning. Will think through a possible project to develop an example of an interactive ebook that can be useful to introduce some of the concepts or theories of adult education. Staff can then build their own versions to share with other staff and this can then be a shared resource we can use for future courses. This ebook could be consolidated using powerpoint or better still using something like voicethread or perhaps even live binders. Live binders featured on Jane Hart’s tools this week and seems to be imminently suited to eportfolios with a show and tell type structure. So there are possibilities to explore for interactive ebook authoring and application.

App Stores, new hardware and mLearncon 2010

Did a catch up over the course of last week on technology in teaching and learning. First up, App stores.Popular mobile operating systems all now have an app store of some kind or other. Apple's itunes App store has over 200,000 apps for iphones and ipod touches.  Other app stores include the up and coming Android with it's market, blackberry world, Nokia's ovi stores and Palm's app catalog. 

There are also sites which provide assess to multiple platforms with this report featuring getjar and others including Handago recently acquired by Pocketgear and also Handmark and Appboy. For free apps,
Mobango provides a comprehensive list featuring all the popular OS. I will be keeping at eye on these and may put in a formal project to further explore how many of our students actually access and use apps and how readily CPIT caters for students' mobile usage. Also if some apps may be useful in some specific content areas and the apps availabity / integration with Moodle.

Caught up with Engadget's posts from the last two weeks and a few new hardware of interest to the education community. Firstly, an etext book called the kno which is like two ipads joined together. Innovative and a good way forward into interactive books and how to leverage possibilities for learning using ebook technology. Secondly, launch of the iphone 4 OS with video calling capabilites using 'facetime'.  will be interesting to see if anyone develops this one further to allow for conference video calling on mobile phones to be a reality. And the launch of the new Xbox360 and kinect provides educators with another challenge, to harness games technology to enhance learning.

Ingnatia from ignatiawebs was attending mlearncon 2010 organised by the elearning guild in San Diego. A foretase of mlearn 2010? Of note was the presentations by Toni Ahonen on the future of learning.

Trip to Singapore - wrap up

Back home after almost a week in Singapore. Left Singapore’s balmy 30’C plus weather to return to wintry Christchurch. Cycled in to work this frosty morning and checked the temps. at 10am to be 1’C.


Managed to do the obligatory catch up with various aunties, cozzies and my mother-in-law. Good to catch up with news in Singapore on what all the various family members are up to. The Temasek Polytechnic International Conference on Teaching & Learning went well. All the keynotes provided good presentations and workshops. There was a wide range of presentations / papers and I have been catching up with the full papers this morning. Of note are: Gary Poole’s paper to support his presentation on ‘I care & I can’; two papers with a problem based learning focus, one on student experiences by Chan Chun Ming (Temasek Polytechnic) and the other by Lisa Lim and Madeliene Lew (Republic Polytechnic) on first year students perception of one day/one problem PBL strategy; and two on feedback – one by Daphne Pan and Kiruthika Ragupathi from National University of Singapore and the other by Min Yan, David Carless, Diane Salter and Joy Lam on Feedback.

The staff at the local Polytechnics and Institute of Technical Education (ITE) seem to all be very young (perhaps it’s just me feeling old), enthusiastic about teaching and keen to learn. Networked with a few of the Polytechnic & ITE academic / staff development staff and they seem to all be focused on student centred forms of learning including an emphasis on problem based learning, especially at the polytechnic level.

Singapore, as usual, has changed physically since I was last there almost two years ago. New buildings including three tall buildings on the waterfront with what looks like a ship on the top of it. The MRT and most public areas were even more crowded that before. Where do all the people come from?? And how many more will be packed into a very small island? So good to come back to NZ where I did the grocery shopping at the local supermarket on Saturday afternoon. Just the usual small number of people about, enough to know that the supermarket was not closed.

Temasek Polytechnic International Conference on Teaching & Learning - day 3

The last day cosists of two workshops sessions, one in the morning with either Prof. David Boud on 'assessment reform in education' and the other with Ass. Prof. Gary Poole on ' Self-directed projects as assignment options'. The second workshop sessions are in the afternoon. Workshop sessions bracketed with one lot of concurrent sessions along with usual refuel /networking sessions.


I chose to attend the session/seminar Ass. Prof. Gary Poole with the other 1/2 of the CPIT team attending the session facilitated by Prof. David Boud. The objectives of Gary's seesion were to define 'self-direction' in student learning, identify key elements of an effective self-directed project option and to begin designing our own self-directed project option. He is keen to use the workshop, where everyone is prepared to come to do the work and shop for ideas as well :) to achieve the session's objectives.

When self-directed projects are used, the logistics, structure and preparation are crucial to ensure students are provided with sufficient support to complete their project. In particular, the negotiation process to agree to criteria for doing the project, meeting project objectives and assessing or evaluating the project is crucial. This allows for moderation of various self-directed projects to ensure parity between various self-directed projects.

After morning tea, last concurrent sessions take place. I attended the sessions which had an academic/ teacher development focus. First up, Tay Sing Leong & Roger Khoo from Insitute of Technical Education on 'staff active and reflective learning (ARL)' to enhance student management. ARL to assist staff with career exploration, public responsibility, leadership development, intellectual pursuits and professional development. ARL should be a facilitated process. The facilitator's role is to encourage active participation, create a safe space be mindful of power and who has it. Provides a forum for support, building a COP and increasing teaching practice skills.

Then 'exploring transnational approaches to educational integrity: A showcase of work of the work of Asian Pacific Forum of Educational Integrity (APFEI)' by Ruth Walker, Tracey Bretag & Julianne East from the University of Woolongong, Australia. Integrity could be academic integrity / educational values (honesty, trust, equity, respect and responsibility). Generally, the onus seems to be on students to imbibe these values and assumption is that there is a shared understanding of the requirements of academic integrity. However, challenges posed by changing student profile including internation, lower socio-economical status students and changes to social conventions on copyright requires a rethink of perception of integrity. Therefore, need to move beyond 'student deficit' but need ot focus on educative rather than punitive approaches; align policies & practices; recognise need for academics, authors and teachers to model ethical practice; realise implications of using digital technologies & changed 'economies of effort' (competing pressures of popular media culture & pedagogical directives). Approaches to help students come to grips with the concept of educational integrity include various strategies around increasing students' awareness of issues.

Final concurrent session was with Lyn Williams & Robin Graham from CPIT run a workshop on 'the complexities of learning be a tertiary teacher: emerging perspectives on the boundaries between formal & informal learning in tertiary teacher professional development'. The presentation covered the development and initial implementation of a newly developed teaching qualification, research proposal to investigate effectiveness of new qualification and feedback on ideas on how the move forward with this project. Background of CPIT & the qualification within a NZ context was firstly covered. Then the research question 'what do new vocational tutors percieve as the significant influences on and themes of their emerging practice for improving teaching to enhance student learning?' was 'unpacked' to explain the direction & focus of the project. A collaborative participatory model is proposed as a research method. Then the audience asked for feedback and suggestions on what methods, questions, gaps etc. would be useful.

In the afternoon, the concurrent workshops ran with Prof. Stephen Brookfield running one on discussion as a way of teaching and the other with Prof. Diana Laurrilard on 'A learning design support environment for collaborative pedagogical innovation'. I attended Prof. Laurrillard's workshop in order to become more familiar with her ' conversational framework'. Outcomes of this workshop / seminar are to be able to appreciate the complexity of the learning design process; a sense of how this might be embedded in a design support environment and how collaborative online design tools could enable lecturers to act 'like scientists'. Collabortive pedagogy innovation includes teachers collaborating, sharing designs or capturing pedagogy, testing pedagogic design and challenging the technology. Theorectical background includes social constructivism, collaboration, constructionist learning and knowledge building. Need for teachers to be reflective practioners (like researchers as reflective practitioners) which means building on work of other teachers; working in collaborative teams of respected peers; seeking ways of rethinking their teaching; being able to experiment, and reflect on results; and disseminating findings for peer review and use by others. Used SMS aggregation system to provide for interactivity during the session.

Introduced the concepts for capturing good pedagogy (iCOPER - standardised description of instructional model) / and Learning Design Support Enviroment (LDSE) as software developed to try to represent methods of teaching. Founded on work of Beetham (2004) - teachers'knowledge is mostly implicit' Oliver et al (2009) & Dernlet et al (2009) - teachers are not used to recording or sharing their teaching methods and Sharpe & Oliver (2007) - process of course design is complicaed and often remains a private, tacit process. Existing learning design representations tend to not allow 'tweaking' so the two examples presented provide for opportunities by practioners to adjust and customise to their own context, student profile / learning and individual teaching pedagogical approaches. A comparison made of these two 'tools'.

Good pedagogy implies alignment between learning outcomes, assessments and learning activities. Activities are categorised by the nature of the learning activities and there should be a focus on learner time (less directed, more self directed learning time).

There are possibilites for taking an existing lesson and formulating a pedagogical pattern which is generic and can then be customised for other contexts. Example at http://www.learningdesigns.uow.edu.au/
Opportunity to work through an example was then used to help the seminar participants come to grips with the concept.

temasek Polytechnic International Teaching & Learning conference - day two afternoon

Concurrent sessions this afternoon. I attended the sessions on elearning.


First on was Jillian Lee & Carol Lee from Temasek Polytechnic Engineering school shared a 'case study of students' experience of online learning.' This was a case study of a support course set up for students who were in a remedial class for year one algebra. Instead of standard lessons, these students recieved online delivery via online videos, pop quizzes, a written test and evaluated using an online survey

Effectiveness of the online module showed 2/3 to 3/4 of students able to score 100% on pop quizzes / written test. Useability & student perceptions were evaluated through the online survey. Generally, good feedback for the online option.

The next session was on 'innovative use of technology for vocational education' from Judy Lim Kim Kee, Lim Juat Fong, Soh Guan Kiong and Lim See Yew who are from the Institute of Technical Education. Online portal created to encourage students to be more independent learners, collaborative learning and increase literacy. Blended learning suited to student context. Elearning seen to provide opportunity to differentiation and adaptation of teaching and learning to individualise instruction. mlearning seen as an alternative. This has a fact mode, quiz mode, SMS mode (including a real time quiz - fastest fingers quiz) and video mode (short instructional video clips). Access vis GPRS or by memory card.

Another approach is to use remote virtual educational laboratory (cyberlab). This provides access to and control of real laboratory instrumentation and experiences. Various virtual instruments were provided for students to practice how to set up and use equipment. Students are able to do independent study on equipment to ensure competency.

iDe'lite - used to provide real time / role play type training for service training. Videos used to run through procedures (e.g. facial massage) and especially useful with various service based programmes.

Last session for the afternoon with Noor Fariday A. Rahim from Temasek Polytechnic on ' Web 2.0 with blended e-learning in education to engage youthes and enhance their learning. A case study of using web 2.0, elearning & blended learning in one module 'effective internet research (EIR)', a cross disciplinary subject. Began with covering definitions and examples of Web 2.0 and blended e-learning. Used blogs, wikis, forums, live chats with audio, video, print, elearning with f2f tutorials. These provide a more flexible, stimulating and independent learning environment. Linked to the specialised subject by completing a subject orientated project and also topics which impact on youth. MSN live chat as a ice-breaker and for building rapport. Blogs to reflect on student's learning process. Twitter for tutor to connect with students. Wikis to virtually collaborate and share group project. Discussion forums to learn, exchange and share knowledge about their research interests with others and Web 2.0 with blended elearning activities linked to assessment (graded portfolio).

Need to support/scaffold students into processes like blogging which young people are not as keen to use. This can be done by using a template by providing the points to write about and also model by providing an example. Introduce concepts like metaphors to help students construct better reflective blogs.

Online survey results reveal satisfaction with the teaching approach with over 90% satisfied, learnt a lot, interesting, electures convenient and helped them learn how to search the internet more effectively.

Temasek Polytechnic International Teaching & Learning Conference

day two began with a video produced to celebrate the Temasek Polytechnic 20th anniversary.


First session was presented by four students speaking on their experiences of assessment processes. A good opportunity for the student voice to be heard :) a range of project based / realistic / real-world focused / applied assessments were described by the four very articulate students. The assessments were underpinned by a problem based learning focus including group work, peer assessments, reflective journals and team / individual projects.

The first keynote was with Professor David Boud on "a new assessment agenda: equipping students for the continuing challenges of learning and assessment". His presentation covered why assessments seemed to have failed educationally and pedagogically and how to move assessments and transform them towards supporting longer term learning. A key factor in changing assessment practices is to shift the ways in educational practioners' assessment thinking.

Assessments have failed as it tends to drive compliance, not initiative; foster depenency by learners on assesors and being assessed; backward looking to what has been rather than what may be achieved; makes us fearful rather than build confidence and depletes capacity rather than builds it. Reasons for this state of affairs include a fixation with certification and with measurement (e.g. norm referencing which is based on the performance of student cohorts and the standard is there set by each group!).

Into the future, we do not know what we must prepare for students for as the future is unknown. Therefore, students need to be prepared to cope with the requirements of the future. Assessments mean different things to different people. Assessments have moved from educational measurement to competence, authenticity and attributes and in the future moves to building capacity for judgement. This then provides students with skills to cope with future needs.

Therefore, shift in assessment thinking involves - from teacher to learning centred; from testing knowledge to judging outcomes; assessing subjects to judging professional capability; and testing students to producing learners.

Current agenda of assessment includes assessment based on explicit standards, constructive alignment between desired learning outcomes, teaching & learning activities & assessment; well-timed, high quality feedback to students; and assessment of graduate attributes. Need to move assessments from certification(summative assessments) to aiding learning (formative assesments) and fostering lifelong learning (sustainable assessment).

Sustainable assessments look beyond the immediate context, avoids creating dependency and focuses on higher-order knowledge and skills in context. Needs to develop informed judgement by developing students capacity to make judgement; assessments are about informing students' own judgement and opportunities for developing informed judgement to be staged across a programme. also needs to construct reflexive learners by involving students in assessment, position students to see themselves as learners who are pro-active and generative and focus on reflexivity and self-regulation though every aspect of a course. also forms the becoming practioner as assessments help calibrate judgement; develops confidence and skills to manage their own learning and assessments and develops capacity to work effectively with others to assist learning and mutually develop informed judgement.

After morning tea, the second keynote for the day from Ass. Prof. Gary Poole from the University of Columbia who presented on "I care and I can: the importance of student attitutes towards course relevance and their ability to succeed. Why does it matter to educators that different people have different beliefs about whether they can or cannot do something. Gary covered two items. Why the content of the presentation is important and how pedogogical practices can help to encourage students to succeed.

The ways students think about a subject, affects their learning of that subject. This includes the extent with which students find relevance and value in the subject matter; different students' perceptions about the difficulty or intellectual accessibility of course material. Therefore, I care - beliefs about relevance and I can - beliefs about self-efficacy.

Do we introduce a problem before or after the presentation of content? After - case based, can apply newly acquired knowledge to problem. Before - problem based, can place new knowledge in the context of the problem and can see the relevance of the knowledge early.

how will students know that they can? Then may find out from their teachers or from other students. Students need to be cognisant of the need for effort on their part as an important adjunct to their own natural ability and the help of others. Teachers need to set 'problems' which are clear, challenging and relevant and to know now much support should be provided for students to learn through solving the problem.

Morning session ended with the the results carried out by two students of a student survey on I care / I can carried out at Temasek Polytechnic.

questions include 'for me, the person who usually drives my learning are -- students themselves (70%) with lecturers, parents etc. very much less

'I will accept the diploma if offered to me right now without any work or courses' 90% said NO.

Reasons for answers include I need to acquire the necessary knowledge/skills (60%), i do not feel right to recieve something for nothing, studying gives sense of satisfaction.

how confident are students when they first start? - 90% confident

ability to succeed is within your control - almost 80% strongly agree

factors which help students succeed? Students efford almost 80%, both lecturers & student support also important.

most important factor which motivates learning? acquiring knowledge & getting good job around 35%.

students require relevance of studies to future career - yes.

therefore students care about acquiring knowledge /skills, they are confident and willing to work and if shown relevance of content will maintain motivation.

Temasek Polytechnic International Teaching & Learning conference - Day 1 afternoon

After lunch, my presentation on the CPIT mportfolio project took place with a good group attending. The concept used in the project is now so much more easier to put into place with the improved capabilities and range of mobile hardware and web 2.0 based software now available.


Stayed for presentations by two others. First up Nalaka Edirisinghe on managing learner diversity in teaching a year 1 programme. The development and provision to first year Diploma in IT students by using programming languages which are pertinent to their specialisations (eg. game programming). Students could then begin work on the language they would be studying over the course of three years but all the different groups of students were taught in a generalised course. This had advantages for the students but led to more work for teaching staff to set up the relevant examples in all three languages and write assessment questions which could be answered with anyone of the languages taught.

Next up Tan Hock Seng also from Temasek Polytechnic on 'a model of simulation-based learning. This focused on finding out is SBL was actually useful as a learning tool. A good followup to Diana Laurrilard's presentation by providing an example of how a well thought out interactive virtual machine (eg. a lathe) assists or does not assists / enhance student learning. also a similar concept to the 'laying out a building site' simulation used at CPIT to help construction students become familiar with a practical task before actually undertaken the actual practical task.

After afternoon tea, attended a couple of sessions. First up, Chung Yin Wah from Nanyang Polytechnic on the 'accumulated experience sharing system' (AES). Nanyang Polytechnic uses a practice and application-oriented training featuring authentic learning environments. Examples include chemical engineering, engineering, software quality and security and business administration, supported through industry sponsorship and real-life project work opportunities. These help to emulate and integrate real-life industrial environments in teaching and learning. The AES has a repository of over 5000 projects between staff/students and industry projects/services. This repository can then be used by future students to provide examples and also as a way to help other students with information including tacit knowledge they can mine for their own projects. Staff can also use the AES as a teaching resource to show exemplars and model project development stages.

Next up, Catherine Ross from the Open Polytechnic in New Zealand on ' I don't feel so isolated': crossing the boundaries of distance through peer mentoring and support. This project put in place for 1st year students by the Open Poly. to support students, especially those in programmes which have a high attrition rate. Peer mentoring is used by employing experienced senior students to support newer students. Learning motivation theories including Dweck (1999) theories of self, self motivation theory (Cohen, Garcia, Apfel & master, 2008), strengths approach (Anderson, 2003), positive psychology. This approach centre on identifying students' underlying goals /motivation, focus on existing strengths and competencies, draw out past successes and validate effort rather than achievement. The programme help new students to settle into study and peer mentors maintain contact via telephone. Contact times concide with stages which have been found to be times students have difficulties, these include start of course / before the first assignment, second assessment/mid-course and end of year assessment / examination. In each contact time, specific 'scripts' are followed in order to ensure students recieve the appropriate support.

Temasek Polytechnic International Teaching & Learning Conference - day 1 morning

At the Temasek iternational Teaching & Learning conference today. Conference opened with 10 minute video on Temasek Polytechnic's facilities, programmes and educational philosophies. Welcome from the Temasek Polytechnic Choral followed by official opening address by Mr. Boo Kheng Hua, the Principal and CEO of Temasek Polytechnic. The conference officially opened by guests of honour along with presentation of gifts to the keynote presentation. feedback, comments & questions can be texted to


First keynote, the much anticipated Professor Stephen Brookfield on 'Becoming a Skillful Teacher'.

Who we are as teachers may be premised on who we are as learners. Stephen proposed that being a poor learner helped him to become a better teacher.He illustrated this proposal by telling his story, of how being a student who struggled academically flourished when he was provided the opportunities for self direction and support for individualised assistance when required. From his experiences as a Phd student, he became interested in the importance of building trust between students and teacher. Especially in how this reciprocal trust may be used to enhance the development of critical thinking strategies.

He also spoke of the challenges of teaching, using the term the term 'muddling through' but doing this in a delibrate and reflective manner to ensure the one learns from each teaching situation.

Four assumptions - teaching is helping learning, good teaching = whatever helps students learn, best teaching is critical reflective - checking assumptions informing your practice and most importatnt the pedagogical knowledge we need - how students experience learning. He provided stories from his own teaching for each of the four assumptions. An engaging approach as he was able to built rapport and empathy from the audience. Remember the examples which are also provided in several of his books. He also spoke on his use of the Critical Incident Questionnaire in probing student's perception of learning progress.

after morning tea, a session - pedagogy - in search of a definition - which is background and presentation from the interactive digital media programme at Temasek Polytechnic's Informatics and IT school. Began with overview of digital use by Singaporeans and then of TP students. Findings show a preference for a 'blended learning approach' to teaching and learning. TP using IDM technology to form communities of self-directed learners to help co-create knowledge, personalised to individual learning needs and be accessible anytime/anywhere. An example of better meaningful learning is to encourage sharing of information beween students via shared note-taking etc. to encourage this, some changes need to be made to physical environments, definitions (learning spaces) and pedagogy which encourages not only mastery of knowledge & skills but also knowledge construction and sharing.

Dr. Diana Laurillard presented keynote on 'can pedagogical creativity cross discipline boundaries? The role of learning technologits in collaborative innovation'  from the London Knowledge lab. The presentation covered 'why might we need digital tech in learning & teaching?', optimising the learning design process, improving leanring through technology and capturing pedagogy. Need to not just use the technology because it is there but to challenge how technology can actually enhance student learning.

Why? might be through fit to pedagogy (personalised, social and/or active learning, digital skills for work & life), logistics (flexibility, wider reach, better use of teacher time), economics (blended delivery, much more for slightly more and sharing tools, resources & designs), strategic fit and student demand.

To optimise the learning design revolves around encouraging and supporting educators as 'researchers' to adopt, critique, adapt, do and then evaluate. Can be done via "scaffolding the learning design process, embracing a gentle introduction by modelling and visually representing the learning design process, capturing teachers' learning designs for later revision or sharing in appropriate visual representations and foster a community of practice in which teachers can share, take inspiration from, each others' teaching & learning designs". this is based on the concept that the learner (the connversational framework model), in order to understand concepts or adopt practices/ skills (learning concept) is through carrying out an action plan (learning outocome) which is tempered by reflection and adaption. Teachers add to learning by teacher contact (listening / reading) beings guided, students asking questions and through teaching practice which involves working to a goal, providing feedback and by students experimenting and revising. Other learners can also support this via students having access to ideas of others, comparing student outputs and being able to articulate ideas and use all thes to improve on their own learning outputs.

Used an example to explain how to use technology to improve learning by unpacking how 'parts of an engine' can be enhanced. For instance, just using flash to just label parts or reassemble a 3D engine might not lead to greater reflection/adaption. needs to include a more delibrate feedback cycle to encourage in deeper learning, for instance why putting an engine together in various ways affect efficiency etc.
with capturing pedagogy, an example used where by a specific example of a learning activity can be generalised and then contextualised to another use. Firstly, highlight the actual keywords which are learning outcomes, then convert to more generalised description and then adapt to other specialists areas. This can be visually expressed and patterns can be better discerned, adapted, improved etc.

Use of mobile devices on met in singapore

In Singapore this week for the temasek polytechnic international teaching n learning conference which begins on Wednesday. First up a catch up with the rellies. Did several trips on the mass rapid transport system which is clean, efficient and cheap
capacity was crowded to chocker to fully stuffed!! Seems a lot more crowded then when I visited a couple of years ago. Of note is the prevalence of mobile use.ranging from grannies txting to school kids sharing iPods with one earbud for each person to little tods playing games on PSPs. Also usual business types with smartphones and every other person seems to me poking at a small screen. At least 70% seem to be engaged with some sort of mobile device with those not either reading or sleeping. Will visit a couple oh the technology malls tomorrow which will be techy heaven.

ITPNZ Foundation tutors Forum - 3rd June

Presented a version of the ‘perspectives of new trades tutors’ Ako Aotearoa Southern Hub funded project at the ITPNZ Foundation Educators’Forum at the Wellington city campus of Whitireia Polytechnic yesterday. The title of the presentation was “ITP communities of practice: Their contribution to the induction of new trades tutors.” I used a comparison of various activity theory nodes (subject, tools, object, communities of practice, rules, division of labour, mediating artefacts) to compare the socio-cultural spheres of new tutors who come into ITP teaching careers with a workplace /trades orientation and the needs of ITPs which are focused on the scholarship of teaching and learning. This, along with the concept of vocational identity boundary crossing, presented at the ITF conference in March, provide for a metaphor to explain and assist the transition of trades people into trades teachers.

Tacit Knowledge

An article on the New Scientist via my iGoogle page caught my attention this morning. This is probably because the term came up as a point of discussion in one of my adult learning principles classes. Several of the students were not familiar with the term and we then did a brief side step during the course of the lesson to explore the implications of tacit knowledge on their roles as teachers. In summary, the article provides a good overview, brief history of how Polanyi coined the term tacit knowledge and the three kinds of tacit knowledge. These are somatic (innate), relational (social/logistical) and collective (contextual/socio-cultural).
Above of use also to my current research in trying to unpack how trade skills (much of which seem to have become tacit in experts/tutors) can be better modelled / taught to novices.


The article above also leads to a website of the University of Cardiff research group, led by Harry Collins, working on expertise. Lots of information on this site to trawl through with up to date information on various aspects of expertise. Links to publications and books produced so it will take me some time to trawl through all the interesting bits.

Silicon Coach for studying trades based skills acquisition

Had a look at Silicon Coach with Andy Hearn, CPIT tutor in the school of science who teaches students on the sports and fitness programmes and the new Batchelor of Applied Science. This software is a specialised video analysis tool for sports to record sports activities, review and analyse the movements and then to share the findings.


The software includes a video format converter which is handy. Also nifty tools for drawing lines on to the video to compare angles of movement etc. There is also the ability to run two videos side by side and to superimpose videos one on top of each other to do comparative studies. The software seems to be easy and intuitive to use. Presentations may then be build from various analysis of sports peoples’ performances and exported via email, on to DVDs, or on to ipods.

I can see some use for Silicon Coach in our multimodal study of apprentices’ learning. This is especially if we are comparing, say the movement of the tutor and the students when learning discrete skills. This skill will need to be very specialised in order to make the most of the software. However, there is no facility to annotate the videos unless we transport the videos into another programme or to do thematic analysis on video clips.

So the choice video analysis software will be dependent on what our research goal are for each of our multimodal studies. It will be worthwhile to learn how to use Silicon Coach to do at least one in-depth study of skill based learning as this area does not seem to have received much attention. Something to think about as we embark on next semester’s project on studying apprentices learning in the areas of welding and building.

Comparing nVivo and alasti for video analysis

At present, the qualitative software analysis platform we use at CPIT is nVivo. I am now using nVivo with the ‘perspectives of first year apprentices’ project and the thematic analysis of interview data for the ‘perspectives of new trades tutors’ was completed using nVivo. I have discussed pros and cons of using Vivo before, Presently, I find it is easy to use and generally intuitive with regards to dealing with text analysis although I also take into account that nVivo does impose a certain way of thinking about qualitative analysis.


Discussions with a few other researchers who work with video data reveal several use atlasti. So I downloaded a free trial version of atlasti and have completed transcription of a short video clip with both sets of software. The free version of atlasti allows users to upload 10 primary documents, work with 50 codes, 100 quotations and 30 memos.

Here is a comparison of older versions of nVivo and Atlasti, As a comparison, of my own evaluation of the two, I have jotted down some notes.

The first task is to learn a whole set of new terms!! Atlasti – hermeneutic unit vs project on nvivo. Alasti quotes or quotations vs nodes in nVivo for themes. Networks in alasti vs models in nvivo etc etc.

Atlasti is more ‘windows like’ in layout but nVivo uses the concept of folders to store and navigate through the various layers of data. Atlasti is more intuitive to use for uploading ‘primary documents’ which are referred to as ‘sources’ in nVivo.

Importing videos into each programme meant we had to convert videos to the correct file format which could be read by each data analysis software package. We used any video converter which is a free download and easy to use. Converting between video formats using this tool is straightforward.

Time stamp on nVivo only allows for a minute intervals which are, at the moment, not fine enough with the transcripts we have been producing. Also only one column for timespan and another for comments. However, custom columns can be added.

Had to convert word table of transcripts into a rtf or txt file to upload as a ‘primary document’ in atlasti which mucked up the organisation of the word table. Assigning quotations (nodes in nVivo) was simple, similar to adding comments to a word document. Coding also straight forward using a drag and drop technique. Video coding using an editing technique to snip segments out of the video to code.

Coding video using nVivo also involves a snipping / selection process and then a drag and drop of the selected segment to the code required. The coding summary records the timespan or the transcript fragment.

On alasti, the coding is marked on the transcript on a side screen and the actual video clip comes up.

Will need to work with both nVivo and Atlasti for another couple of clips to become proficient at the technicalities of working with each tool. At the moment, they both complete similar tasks although for the moment, Atlasti provides a better method to access video segments which have been coded.

Using google books for research and teaching

Besides searching the web using Google, the google tool I use the most is Google books. I also have an iGoogle site which has usual calendar/weather plus links to RSS feeds for local NZ news, BBC news and Endgagets plus a few widgets which I use often including a currency converter, scrabble dictionary and a measurements converter. Google scholar also features high on my list of google tools to use as it augments the CPIT Proquest database for scholarly, peer-reviewed articles. I often use google scholar as a precursor to Proquest to get a feel for the researchers working in a pertinent field and then continue on with the Proquest databases.


However, I find myself using Google books at least a couple of times a day to look things up and to add to articles found on Google scholar or Proquests. Since starting the use of google books at the end of 2008, I now have over 500 books categorised into 47 bookshelves. 99% of these offer previews. Often the contents page and first introductory chapter contain enough information to follow through either with an interloan request to the library for a copy of the relevant chapter or a purchase request to the library. I am also now placing GB as a tag on to articles / books stored on Endnotes as a cross reference for me to access the relevant article or book easily.

Google books show up well on my ipod touch as well so with an ipad, the reading experience will be even better. It is really the convenience more than anything else which makes google books such a great resource. When I get the time in the future, I will contribute with reviews of books etc. as many of the books currently in my library tend to be focused on workplace learning, apprentice research, identity formation etc. which are not really books read by the general public.

I have found Google books to be a good way to ease adult education students into reading online.  I provide hyperlinks to pertinent and seminal books on Moodle as 'readings' the week before a scheduled f2f or online session. During the session we discuss a few main points I have asked the students to find out by reading a chapter in the book.  Almost always, when the class is introduced to Google books, there will be a discussion on how to read a book online, it's advantages/ disadvantages and how to later find the reading again. So using reading archived on Google books is one way to introduce tutors to the concept of ebooks. 

Digital literacy for tutors includes debates on the use of interactive white boards and mobile technology along with the availability and accessibility to digital information. These are all crucial components of the classroom of the future, whether f2f or online.  Google books is one way to introduce people to how technology has changed the way in which we are able to access information. From there, it becomes easier to springboard ideas about how to integrate technology into helping students learn better in different teaching contexts.

CORE presentation from Lois Christmas on insights on learner experiences.

Attended to-day’s CORE session presented by Lois Christmas on her Graham Nuttall classroom research trust award . Lois presented on her study of a year 3 to 4 class studying numeracy. She probed the assumptions of how an effective teacher organises a class, provided suggestions as to how to take the pressure off teachers who want to do what they think they have to do, considered teaching as inquiry through a different lens and challenged school leaders to ensure that they allow teachers enough freedom to implement effective learning environments for their students.


A well attended presentation and Lois presented her study well with insightful observations of how children experienced numeracy learning in a primary school classroom. Data was collected mainly through the use of field notes. Photos were taken to assist with stimulating recall with students during one on one interview sessions. A puppet (Mr. Ed.) who took on the role of ‘someone who knew even less than the student’ was used to help illicit responses from children.

The study took place in a NZ classroom which had all the hallmarks of a great learning environment. The class was vibrant, exciting, positive, well organised and student contributions and talk was valued by an excellent teacher. The classroom was also well resourced with games, worksheets, computers etc. to be used as tools to assist the learning of basic numeracy facts.

The organisation of the class was a typical one used in numeracy teaching in NZ where the main objectives is the ‘create new knowledge’ through the learning of strategies and knowledge. Each session begins with a ‘hotspot’ session on the mat which is a whole class session to do learning and review concepts already learnt. Then the class is divided into two groups. As the teacher works with each group, the rest of the class practices, plays games or work in groups. Then the class meets again at the end for a ‘reflective’ session.

One of the findings of Lois’ study is that the teacher has very little time, using the above classroom organisational structure to actually work with individuals or to be able to gauge individual students’ understandings. Flexibility in school leadership to allow teachers to use other classroom organisational structures in tandem with the recommended approach is recommended. In Lois’ study, one student’s misconceptions about place values in adding and subtracting whole numbers was not addressed leading to deeper confusion as the curriculum moved on into more complex numbers.

This study is a good example of how much the private lives/ thought processes of learners are hidden from teachers, even in a classroom which is an exemplar of primary schools in NZ. There is much to learn from this form of research in the vocational education sector, so onwards with our multimodal project.

Learning welding #6 - coming to grips with video transcription

Flip and I collected a series of videos and voice recordings over the last couple of weeks and are busy transcribing the material. To begin, we are selecting portions of the videos and recordings to transcribe by first doing a preview of the entire recording. Time codes with pertinent notes are taken at key portions of the recordings. These are noted for follow up.


We then select the recordings which we will focus on studying and transcribe these. This is mainly for both of us to practice video and voice transcription. We then compare out transcriptions to find out the nuances of transcription which are different. For the moment, Flip, with his intimate knowledge of welding is content focused. I tend to be able to put my researcher’s hat on as I am an absolute novice to the welding trade. This provides a good model which I will need to think through when we extend the multimodal project to include other trades. Flip will need to hone his skills as a researcher when he works with other trades as there will perhaps only be the two of us to work with tutors from other trades. This ‘apprenticeship’ model has worked well for the project so far towards building capability for vocational education research focused on trades learning.

Studying the video recordings is providing good practice at honing observational skills. For instance, I now notice the differences in how students touch metal services they are filing down for macro testing of welds. There is touching to gauge smoothness, but also touching to clear the surface of debris. When the surface is being studied for smoothness the tilt of the head is an indication of this action. Whereas when clearing the surface of debris, there is no head tilt. This indicates the importance of being attuned to whole body movements and not to just concentrate on the actual activity. The stance with which the student approaches a filing task seems to also be significant in indicating their confidence at completing the task.

Analysis of voice recordings indicate students who have been learning welding for a term (8 weeks) to be comfortable with the use of technical language related to welding. When the tutor talks to them in small groups, there is general nodding of heads when specific welding procedures are mentioned. In a short recording of the tutor discussing the results of the ‘nick break’, three students other than the student whose work is being evaluated gather around the tutor. All students are focused on how the tutor dissects the results of the ‘nick break’. Through the course of the short conversation of only 4 minutes, at least 16 technical terms specific to welding is used.

The above is a good example of how deeply students have begun to be acculturated into the community of practice of welding, in particular, how the common understanding of welding terms allows them to discuss welding concepts with the tutor. This is a good example of how inter-subjective understanding (Hutchins and Klausen, 1998), as described in paper on airline cockpit communications,  is being learnt through the tutor modelling the use of these terms within the context of welding.

Dr. Elly Govers on programme design for student learning

Last Friday, attended the first of a series of workshops which inform CPIT staff on the programme design role which will be facilitated by staff in the Centre for Educational Development (CED). At the moment, the CED has a core staff of acting manager, staff developers (one on literacy/numeracy support and me – research support for the moment) and three ‘educational designers’. The adverts for a manager have gone out and the plan is to have a manager in place by the beginning of next semester. The CED is tasked with assisting faculties to develop programmes of study which reflect the CPIT kaupapa (guiding philosophies).

Dr. Elly Govers, Academic adviser, from Eastern Institute of Technology presented some of her Phd work which investigated aspects of programme design for student- centred learning. She compared five programmes to distil the underlying programme design philosophies. Documentation and interviews with managers, tutors and ITOs involved in informing programme design was used to unravel the various approaches taken to create programmes of study.


She presented five metaphors which can be used to better understand approaches to programme design. These are :-

• Consumable product - viewing learning as an outcome and students obtaining a product which they have paid for. An aspect dear to the heart ITP management.
• Production process – whereby learning has a purpose and the main purpose is to produce work-ready graduates. Many ITP tutors seemed to have this focus.
• To temper the above, the concept of guided tour is used where by students pay for a product and work towards a vocational qualification but are also provided an experience with which they can engage with to make learning enjoyable and relevant.
• Guided adventure has more of a humanistic direction. Students are assisted to find purpose and then work towards their own goals. The programme in the study which contributed this metaphor is in the area of language learning and specifically Maori. Elly is interested in finding out if the subject area or socio-cultural context contributed to this finding.
• Mission is another metaphor which encompasses learning as transformation and students learning not only skills/knowledge leading to a job but for learning to contribute to the formation of a better world. The concepts in this metaphor relate to sustainability, internationalisation / biculturalism etc. aspects the CED identify as being important in developing the ongoing ‘health’ of a learning and teaching organisation.

Above metaphors were well received by the audience and may be useful in providing a shared language between CED staff and CPIT management and teaching staff as they work towards improving the programme development process.

Peerwise workshop presented by Dr, Paul Denny on 16th April

Attended workshop convened by Southern hub of Ako Aotearoa by Dr. Paul Denny of University of Auckland a week ago. I am putting this post up now as I was interested in gauging participant response to his presentation. So a week or so after the presentation, I can report that there is movement at CPIT on using Peerwise.


Paul is a member of the Ako Aotearoa Academy having earned his wings at last year’s tertiary excellence awards. A good representation of CPIT staff, private providers & ITO representatives attended the workshop at CPIT on the afternoon of Friday 16th April.

Paul provided a very good workshop, with enough time for participants to have a good play with Peerwise. He modelled good teaching practice and it was a pleasure to watch him take the participants gradually through the ins and outs of using Peerwise. In essence, Peerwise is a ‘social networking’ site for students to share multiple choice questions. The concepts which bring Peerwise beyond the usual is the ability for students not only to enter multiple choice questions and answers but to also rate and comment on questions inputted by other students. Having to write multiple choice questions is in itself, no easy task as this guideline describes. Students working on compiling the questions need to understand the topic and then construct clear and meaningful questions. Students are able to then rate/rank and comment on the questions of other students. This engages students in another layer of interaction with the subject content. Therefore, concepts used in Peerwise supported by sound educational theory.

At CPIT, the interest in Peerwise as led to a workshop, which I will run later this week, for school of business tutors on discussing merits or other wise of using Peerwise. Will need to sell the idea that the students will be doing most of the work! Plus interest from the Carpentry ITP consortium of using Peerwise as a repository of multiple choice questions suitable for sharing between the ITPs teaching carpentry trades in NZ. Adult education will also be evaluating the use of Peerwise into one of the Diploma in Tertiary Teaching & Learning courses, to introduce new tutors to the process of using a modified form of social networking to help engage their students in active learning.

Learning welding #5 and learning how to be a builder #1

We have now had confirmation of funding from Ako Aotearoa Southern Hub for the second semester re-iteration of the ‘Studying the learning of trades students using multimodal data analysis’ research programme, which is planned to have at least 6 projects and maybe move to 8, depending on findings which eventuate from each project.


The welding students are now into the second term of learning welding. A few students have dropped out but the remaining students have made good progress thus far. They seem to be more confident with working through the various welding exercises required to complete the course. Observations of tutor and student conversations reveal overt signs of understanding of technical terms and jargon used within the welding context. However, it will be good to try to find out their actual understanding of the process. Something we will think through when we work with next semester’s intake of students.

In the next project, we will also be collecting data at building sites through contacts made via Marc Mendoca at Fletcher Construction, a large local construction company. The research intent is to gather data from construction worksites of ‘learning conversations’ between apprentices and peers, other workers, supervisors etc. We will have to see, once we get out on to a worksite, how to best gather data to work with.

One of the ways of might be to do a comparative exercise with each trade on learning a type of skill using a distinct type of knowledge. Gentile’s taxonomy may be helpful in choosing skills which are similar in objectives. There are many ways to classify knowledge, Gott’s (1989) classification of knowledge may be helpful in defining the knowledge component to study. This classification is similar to Nuttall’s method to classify learning outcomes but it is more general and pertinent to skills training. The classification defines knowledge into procedural (how to do it), declarative (knowledge of devise or system) and strategic (how to decide what to do and when).

Future of the use of technology in learning aka currently as mlearning

Organising myself for conferences this year. The last bits of the $$ available from my tertiary teaching excellence award will be going towards several conferences in Europe which have an emphasis on mobile learning. First up would be Handheld 2010 from 10th to 13th of October in London, then a Forum Oxford: futures technologies conference on 15th October followed on with the annual mlearning 2010 conference in Malta from 19th to 22nd October.

I will be evaluating the progress of papers on mlearning and to work out if I will continue to follow this area of research. My work into apprenticeship learning is taking up much of my energies at the present. It is an area with very little research focus and therefore important to continue with. The use of technology into teaching is now, for many tutors at CPIT, a way of integrating technology into helping students learn.


My view on mlearning is that very very soon, all technology assisted learning will be mobile. It’s sort of the normal way which learners should be approaching learning, anytime and anywhere. It’s no different to what has taken place for 100s of years when we carried books around and read them when on the go and dipped into reference books whenever we had to find things out. Technology now enables this to take place much more efficiently. Instead of carrying a couple of books, I now carry hundreds on my ipod touch, instead of waiting to get home to look up something, I now google it if there is wifi available. Just in time approach is an innate human response. Wifi availability is also now becoming much more ubiquitious. For instance, there is 15 minutes of free Wifi available at my local Christchurch airport and Wellington airport offers free Wifi. The last three conferences I attended had free Wifi available to delegates. People now assume they will be connected wirelessly and for no cost.

The early work of mlearning learning on’micro learning’ etc. and working with small screens is all but obsolete with the coming of nettabs like the ipad. With an ipad, there is no need to reconfigure LMS like Moodle or web pages to optimise interaction with the hardware. The ease of use of the ipad will change the nature of how we access and utilise information. Therefore, before we know it, mlearning will be normal technology assisted learning. There has been a flurry of articles on using the ipad in education including pros and cons and various uses in learning.

Over the weekend, I caught up with an interesting presentation from Dr.dana boyd at Games based learning 2010 which was held recently. This presentation provides some suggestions for educators in leveraging social networks for enhancing student learning. For educators, there is a need to understand what technologies are out there, who uses them, how they are used and why. How these technologies are ‘rupturing’ the way in which how young people see the world and the role of educators in helping young people get the most out of technologies. She covers perceptive insights into the implications for young people and educators using social networking sites as examples. All of the social networking sites are now accessible via mobile devices and this migration from desktop to mobile is accelerating.

Also in the same conference, Professor James Gee presented a good overview of the role of games in providing situated learning opportunities for students which I am going to evaluate for suitability as a resource for my adult learning principles course. He is one of the members of the New London Group who authored the paper on the "pedagogy of multiliteracies" which is informing my practice and the various research projects I am working on at the moment. 
 
Both the above presentations provide justification and food for thought on how technology may contribute to enhancing learning for students plus the ways in which ubiquitious computing is now almost mainstream.
 

ITF NZ vocational research forum - day two afternoon

After lunch attended a comprehensive session by Anna Boyd, Healthrose research & Doug Pouwhare from the electricity supply ITO on how to increase participation rates of Maori, Pacific peoples, migrants and women in their industry. Electricity generation, transmission, distribution and retails industry has very low participation rates amongst women, Maori & Pacifica peoples. Successive strategic plans in 2002 & 2009 did not provide direction towards improving participation rates. Enablers were employer and provider related and also depended on trainee ambitions, experiences and personal qualities. Barriers include disconnect between theory and practice, lack of practical application, poor quality training, lack of employer support and negative spillover of other work and home obligations. Issues for Maori include importance of family/whanau, proximityof workplace/training to family/whanau, Maori in leadership/supervisory roles and the importance of ‘getting a trade’. Issues for Pacific trainees include meeting the aspirations of family for a better life and screening of applicants on personal presentation and communication skills. Issues for women were entrenched view on woman’s capability to work in the industry, women can do anything and attraction of outside work.. Issues for migrants were language barriers, recognition of qualifications and different ways of working and settlement issues for new migrants. Implications include recruitment/selection practices of industry was limiting the pool of potential employees/trainees and industry appears to have a low state of readiness to respond to diversity issues. Key interventions include ones that promote employer support for trainees and a commitment to training and need to address barriers to recruitment into industry.Future work proposed to raise awareness in industry, iwi discussions and supporting a cohort of women into the industry (which will be part of an action research project).

Then session by Dr. Chris Holland from Work & Education Research & Development Services, on building leadership through the development of mentoring. Overview of literature on mentoring reveals two streams – the restricted/functionalist (tends to be hierarchical) & the relational model (holistic approach with mentor / mentee learning together). The ITO good practice guide to workplace mentoring available through ITF. Mentoring workshops supported by ITF and funded by Ako Aotearoa with workshops in Auckland/Wellington and through 3 ITOs. Project completed with the fire service with volunteer firemen to evaluate mentoring improvements. Various examples of mentoring occurred including buddying, mentoring by senior, one-up mentoring, group mentoring, rotational mentoring, volunteer-selected mentor and mentoring based on external expertise. Call for some form of professional development support to be provided to mentors.

After afternoon tea, attended the session by Profession Frank Sligo, Dr, Niki Murray, Elspeth Tilley and Margie Comrie, Massey University and Carol Atkin from Literacy Aotearoa on modern apprentices’ (MA) literacy learning. MA may request for LLN support and by 31/12/08, 191 MAs had been seen for LLN tuition to a maximum of 30 hours a year. This project carried out a formative evaluation of the literacy tuition including review MA’sMAC’s and adult literacy tutors’ and employers’perspectives of literacy programmes, assess impact of tuition on MA’s progress in apprenticeship (theory & practical) and assess the merit of the MA literacy programme and make recommendations for improvement. Types of assistance varied from high needs (more than 30 hours) to moderate (11 + hours) to low needs (under10 hours). Apart from LNN support, supportive employer, genuine mentor, a partnership between MAC,employer and literacy tutor needed plus workplace culture needs to be positive about LLN. Full report expected to be out by May.

Conference closed with a plenary session on linking VET research with government policy and priorities with panel members – Monique Dawson from Dept. of Labour, Roger Smyth from Ministry of Education and Peter Palmer from the Tertiary Education Commission. Roger Smyth reported on late but ongoing progress on industry training including ALLs survey & completion rates of apprentices. Need for research on what contributes to learning and what are the connections between tertiary education and the labour market. Also a need to better understand the sub-degree system plus encouragement to use qualitative approaches to gain better depth of understanding. Projects need to come up with clear messages and usable by the people who are connected to the research. Researchers need to be familiar with what the policy analysts are working towards as well and recommends being savvy about obtaining correct support to champion the findings.

Peter Palmer reported on TEC’s focus on maximising pool of $$ available for tertiary ed. Performance issues now a focus of TEC which are detailed in the Tertiary Strategy released late last year. Gaps in research include trying to understand what drives performance issues in the tertiary sector. Fundamental research needs to be undertaken to understand what works and what does not. Relevance of learning to work needs to be investigated as well.

Monique Dawson provided background on now the Dept. of Labour tries to advise on skills forecasting. Liaises withTEC/MOE and Dept.of Immigration to try to ensure required skill needs are made. Evidence of market led training not meeting need of improving productivity in the NZ workforce, so more research in this area recommended. Jeremy Baker encourages practitioner research as being one important way to address the issues proposed by the three speakers. All good direction for planning of future research projects :)

ITF day 2 - morning sessions

Day 2 begins with a keynote from Professor Paul Dalziel from the AERU at Lincoln University on the OECD leveraging training and skills development in SMEs study – a NZ study. Began with a background on the role of the OECD and its influence in training and skills development. Provided details on objectives of LEED, a multi-country study of how SMEs may be able to leverage training and skill development. NZ is the first country to participate. Four key concepts covered – formal / informal learning, knowledge-intensive service activities (KISA), regional skills ecosystems and particular issues of SMEs.


KISA includes R & D, international marketing, financing, management consulting, intellectual property legal services, HR & accounting – some research shows the capacity of firms to perform KISA more effectively may differentiate a firm from its competitors.

Ecosystems venn diagram need to meet to produce high skill ecosystem, the parts are firms, education & training, individuals and policy settings. Small changes by each part of the ecosystem may work towards enhancing the total ecosystem. In NZ, ITOs contribute to industry ecosystems but ITPs lead regional ecosystems.

90% of enterprises in NZ are SME and they generally cannot afford to maintain large KISAs. Therefore, may be greater reliance on informal, on the job, unstructured training by SMEs. Small firms provide their own KISAs inexpertly because they cannot afford to purchase them.

Details of preliminary findings of the NZ LEEDs study were provided focused on the web based questionnaire. Almost all firms had a budget set aside for training and about 70% had training plans. However, the amount of $$ actually put into training was very low. ½ wanted to engage with formal training and for many costs was the challenge. Over ½ reported staff as involved in informal learning activities. Majority of informal learning from clients and co-workers, then informal networks, suppliers, industry associations etc. Study also made of highly innovative firms as compared to others. Innovative firms tend to be ‘older’ and has numbers of staff on the higher end of the SME definition (i.e. between 10 -19 employees). These firms more likely to have training plans plus some $$ in training budget, engaged in formal training & more informal learning activities tracked. NZ report about to be released & available from Paul via email.

All in a good overview with interesting tie in to Gemma Peircy's work on skill ecosytems.

Concurrent sessions begin with a session by Dr. Karen Vaughan & Marie Cameron from the NZ Council for Educational research presenting on an Ako Aotearoa national fund project on workplace assessments. In this presentation, useful ways to structure assessment of learning in the workplace was proposed. Began with a review of workplace learning, workplace assessment and ITOs roles in assessment. Most industry training occurs/assessed on job (8% off-job, 43% on job, 49% blended – usually >20% off-job).

Four principles distilled. Firstly, good assessment requires appropriately recruited, trained and professionally developed people (including for verifiers). Secondly, moderation contributes to the validity and reliability of assessment decisions. Next, the ITOs assessment structures and systems must support the learning process. Lastly, ITOs and workplaces have a clear purpose for assessment and they work together.

Next session from Department of Labour presented by Richard Manning from work by Vij Kooleya and Dr. Ram SriRamaratnam on ‘what will the labour market look like in the future? Overall employment growth rate of employment of 2.5% per annum from 2003-2008,lowered to 0.5% between 2008-2013 & 0.8 % between 2013 – 2018. semi-skilled and skilled trades record negative growths between 2008-2013. Growth in skill-associates & high skilled occupations. Total employment forecasted to increase from now to 2013 as recession eases. Potential areas of employment growth include forestry & logging, communications, health/community services etc. Decreases expected esp.in all forms of manufacturing and construction. Implications of aging workforce indicate slowly rising numbers of people retiring from the workforce over the next 10 years.

A busy morning bracketed with good conversations with various other people interested in discussing either my presentation yesterday or interested in details of the ‘first year apprentices’perspectives’project.

ITF NZ vocational education research forum - day one afternoon

My session came up first thing after lunch. I presented on the concept of assisting the boundary crossing of new trades tutors into acceptance of an identity as a teacher. Basically a report on a subset of the Ako Aotearoa southern hub funded project’perspectives of new trades tutors’. I introduced concepts of cultural-historical activity theory (CHATs) and metaphors of boundary crossing, boundary objects and boundary crossers using examples from the study but encouraging audience to think about examples within their own contexts.


Next session was with Dr. Heather Lees with Peter Engelbrecht and Peter Whittaker from the ETITO, on capturing skill utilisation: workplace evidence in national qualifications and literacy profiles. Overview of current ETITO qualification development/review process. Preparatory research followed by consulting industry (mainly SMEs) and develop qualification. New approach included workplace visits to the process instead of just a consultation group. A qualification role profile report was constructed to inform the development of a role competency map. This include non-technical (personal attributes, attitudes, industry knowledge, firm) and technical skills (general, trade/professiona and firm specific technical skills). Norhdaug’s classification of skills (1993) used to help prioritise the types of non-technical, technical or firm specific skills into the qualification. Literacy and numeracy skill profiles/demands of various tasks were also considered.Links were made between literacy and qualifications profiles in tandem so that both are integrated/embedded.

After afternoon tea, attended sessions by Katherine Percy, Workbase and Ravi Kulatunga from etc. Consulting. On cost effective method for measuring business benefits of workplace literacy learning. Example based on work with five companies. Began with measuring productivity in the form of KPIs (production, warehousing, health & safety, HR, customer service etc.) Did one base line measure than another one after the programme & a period of time has passed to allow return of investment of staff attending/completing programme to bed down. Quantitative approach used supplemented with qualitative data from focus groups. Quantitative data show positive returns with increases in labour productivity, employee skills, service delivery etc & reduction in absenteeism, error rate, overtime etc. The evaluation exercise led to better understanding by each company on how to leverage the workplace literacy programmes to help improve workplace productivity.


A full day closed with plenary session from Anne Alkema, Dr. Cathy Wright and Dr. John Benseman– Department of Labour on Workplace LLN (learning literacy and numeracy). Anne went through literature which tells us it is difficult to quantify the benefits of embedding LLN in workplace learning, however, intangible benefits (improved confidence, self efficacy etc.) other than actual literacy/numeracy skills appear to be there but difficult to pin down. 3 completed studies used to provide summaries. Key messages for employer-led LNN indicate lack of awareness about link between LNN & workplace issues, there is need to promote LNN training as a part of a whole business approach and access to funding is an issue. From the Modern apprentices perspectives, there is a divide between the ‘literate’ world and the trade world, apprentices employ coping strategies to mask L & N issues, workplace productivity takes priority. Impact of LLN support for apprentices include improved confidence etc. Common themes include need to do considerable work to raise awareness of LLN, workplaces still unable to integrate and there is still a ‘deficit’ approach to LLN. Cathy presented on literature review undertaken with LLN – need to gain & sustain company commitment including supervisors being part of learning project team, identity literacy needs by conducting company & individual needs assessment, full & consultative planning before programme begins, create a positive learning environment. Need to include context into curriculum design, make programme design a collaborative effort, select skilful instructors, use a flexible delivery mix, tailored /flexible support required. Lead into the upskill study which is about to be completed by this group. Went through findings from a study to evaluate role of LLN in upskilling by Wolf and Evans (2009). John provided guidelines on how to use research literature to inform current LLN programmes. Good resources produced by NRDC & need to think of how this information can be passes on to practitioners.

ITF NZ vocational education research forum

At the annual NZ vocational education and training research forum held at Victoria University’s Rutherford House. Over 200 participants and a host of interesting presentations to look forward to. Flip Leijten, who is working with me on the multimodal projects is also attending, It will be good to find out his perspectives on the various concepts he will encounter over the two days. It is a good way to introduce Flip to conference presentations as next year we plan to present our findings from the multimodal projects at this conference & other similar ones in Oz.


Jeremy Baker CEO of ITF opens with a warm welcome. Seems many abstracts submitted but presentations selected for quality and relevance. Representatives from all sectors of voc. ed. in NZ represented and this is the one conference in NZ which is focused on voc. ed. research. Good to see the growth of interest in the area considering that there was very little research in NZ in voc. ed. a decade ago.

Conference opens with a welcome address from Dr. Peter Coolbear, director of Ako Aotearoa who spoke on excellence in vocational education in NZ. Focus on defining excellence as being the learner perspective & how learners and employers view their educational experience and assess the value of their learning. Drivers of excellence include personal motivation of learner, personal motivation of educator, the organisation, the system, policy settings and the funding incentives. Also provided an overview of the four Ako Aotearoa National funded projects plus some of the hub projects and good practise projects how these fit into the Ako Aotearoa objectives of ensuring key findings reach decision makers to provide for prompt action.

First keynote by Professor Richard Lakes from Georgia State University on VET sectors: Alignments in workforce and economic development. Began with a summary of USA voc. ed. direction. Then discussed the national crisis of youth transitions as less than 25% of high school seniors qualify for college, poor results on PISA study with USA on the bottom quadrant of science and math, highest incarceration rate etc. Presented Georgia work ready project as one way to work through challenges presented. Workkeys is used as a diagnostic test (applied maths, reading for info & locating info. & work habits) to establish work readiness. Various public sector funded initiatives detailed to assist various groups to access voc. ed. to prepare school leavers for available work.. Detailed various methods used to link to state policy to match workforce skills requirements in various specialised sectors & especially in emergent industries like the life sciences / biotech sector, aviation maintenance etc.

After morning tea, attended a series of presentations from Phd students doing research in the voc ed area. Short 15 minute presentations so only an overview of each study. I was interested in finding out more about research approaches and methodology.

Begins with Lois Parks from Victoria University on a ‘theory of national Human resource development policy evaluation and engagement’. Her study based on the tourism industry. Introduced usual strategic HRD/VET logic whereby govt. organises qualifications etc which eventually leads to skills development in the industry targets. Proposes an alternative approach which is a critical HRD/stakeholder evaluation logic. This proposal uses iterative cycles of stakeholder engagement to fine tune skills development so that skills meet relevant/current industry needs. Data analysis leads to the building of a series of models.

Then ‘human capital deficiency in the NZ dairy industry – a case study’ presented by Rachel Lowry (with Professor Graham Elkin) from the University of Otago.Based on a study written up 2 years ago and involves specifically looking at the knowledge, skills and attitudes (KSA) of dairy farm assistants. Dairy industry an important contributor to the NZ economy & has been impacted on my various macro (technological, economic, legal-political, socio-cultural and international) and micro (customers/clients, competitors, suppliers, labour supply and government policies) influences. Skill shortage still impacting on industry despite higher unemployment rate in NZ. Interviews with dairy farm employers to find out what KSA they require when they appoint dairy farm assistants. Performance gaps were then identified and current training needs not 100% met. More authentic learning systems recommended to bridge the gap.

Last presentation before lunch was an interesting one from Kim Hastwell from Auckland University on ‘potential language, literacy and numeracy challenges of supermarket work.’. Research based on workplace experience for training opportunities programme students. Highest two levels of students in the TOPs courses are afforded opportunities for work experience, mostly in supermarkets. Students were mainly refugee/migrants unfamiliar/ new to NZ culture. Interviews of supermarket markets to find out pre-requisites for employment. None mentioned literacy or numeracy but all mentioned communication skills (mainly oral communication) along with usual work readiness skills. Assumption seemed to have been made by managers that if someone could speak and understand English, they would also have the relevant literacy/numeracy skills. Job demands for ‘customer service’ covered a whole host of actual KSA. Although literacy events did not required extended reading/writing, the supermarket environment is extremely literacy-rich. Numeracy was often ‘embedded’ or ‘invisible’ and required the ability to estimate (sometimes more a spatial perspective), conduct accuracy with mental arithmetic, understand different date formats along with understand graphs and tables. Implications for training needs to include employment pre-requisites couched under specific social and cultural mores, foundation for on the job communication, literacy & numeracy learning needs to be workplace relevant (including voluntary work experience).

Spotlight on Tertiary teaching in Canterbury and beyond - some presentations now available

Our ever efficient Ako Aotearoa Academy manager, Helen Dobson has now put up various presentations and submissions generated at the Ako Akotearoa Academy / Ako Aotearoa Southern Hub event in Christchurch held on 26th March.

Especially fortuious is that all the presentations which I missed in the conconcurrent sessions are now available :) Helen has also collated the feedback from the event for the organisers, the Canterbury chapter of the Ako Aotearoa Academy, to assess.  The feedback was overwhelmingly in support of the event, so it looks like there is consensus for another similar event next year.

Skill Acquistion - readings

Over the Easter ‘break’ I worked on my thesis and also did a read up on skill acquisition. Found the book edited by A.M. Williams & N.J. Hodges (2004) – Skill acquisition in sport: research, theory & practice to be helpful.

Most books on skill acquisition are older( pre 1960s) and out of print. Contemporary books on the topic are on sports skills so the above book provides a good example of the genre & provides good overviews of aspects of skills acquisition including individual differences, understanding role of feedback, instructions, demonstrations and the learning process, observational learning and expertise.

Some chapters of the Williams and Hodges book are available on Google books.  In particular, the first chapter by Summers, J. J. – a historical perspective of skill acquisition is a good summary and revision.  The next three sections cover a good range of articles on the information processing perspectives, expertise approach and the newer ecological/dynamic systems approach to studying skills acquisition. This book provides more studies / details on the last approach ‘dynamics of skill acquisition: a constraints –led approach by Keith Davids, Chris Button and Simon Bennett.

Other books in the CPIT library include ‘Motor learning and performance: a situation-based learning approach’ by Richard Schmidt and Craig Wrisberg. A textbook on the topic. Well structured and covers the important background theories on motor learning. Has good real world examples. Highly readable. Some chapters available as previews on Google books.

Motor control, learning and development (2008) by Andrea Utley and Sarah Astill provides a good overview of the essentials in the field including classification of skill, theories of motor control and learning, stages in motor learning, implications for practice and the role and function of feedback. A more detailed / higher level version of above is ‘Motor learning and control: concepts and applications’ (2007) by Richard A. Mcgill. Well laid out as a text book with good overviews of the precepts of the field. This book is supported by a website which has review questions/quizzes, weblinks and related readings. Also a preview of 9th edition with chapters 1 & 3 with details of Gentile’s taxonomy on page 12 which may be useful for coding purposes in our project.

The other book which is important is the older NCVER publication edited by John Stevenson. Almost every chapter in Cognition at work (1994) is pertinent to our project. A newer book (2003) also edited by John Stevenson ‘ Developing vocational expertise: Principles and issues in vocational education’ is more generalised. A slightly newer book, Cognition and communication at work edited by Y. Engestrom and D. Middleton has previews on google books. Again most chapters are pertinent. Chapter 2 by Edwin Hutchins & Tove Klausen on ‘distributed cognition in an airline cockpit’ has a good description of how to find meaning using videos and audio recordings of a complex work tasks.

There are also pertinent chapters in the book ‘workplace learning in context’ edited by Helen Rainbird, Alison Fuller & Anne Munro. Preview of many chapters on Google books. Three chapters of relevance from this book. Chapter 11 by Michael Young on ‘conceptualising vocational knowledge: Some theorectical considerations’ provides background and theorectical foundations which updates and extend on precepts used in the ‘Cognition at work’ book. Chapter 12 by Michael Eraut on ‘transfer of knowledge between education and workplace settings’ provides a framework to understand the knowledge found in the workplace. We can adjust this framework to extend on Nuttall’s recommendation for analysing concepts to be learnt in a classroom. Chapter 9 by Yrjo Engestrom on ‘the new generation of expertise’ presents 7 thesis on a new way to understand expertise. This book also has chapters on learning through work by Stephen Billett, expansive learning environments by Alison Fuller and Lorna Unwin, learner biographies by Karen Evans, Natasha Kersch and Akiko Sakamoto, conception and measurement of learning at work by Paul Hager and complexities of workplace learning – problems and dangers in trying to measure attainment by Phil and Heather Hodkinson.