Conference Abstract

Everything seems to have gone quiet the last couple of weeks. That's because we are all into the next TMA (tutor marked assignment) at the moment. It's in 2 parts: 

1. Short conference abstract
2. Extended abstract - goes into more detail about the project, sources that will be drawn on, and how networking has contributed to the project's development.

This is my 2nd draft of the short abstract. The aim is to give enough information about the presentation to advertise it and get people to come and listen. I'm not really happy with it at the moment because I would like to turn it round and have information about the conference at the beginning and the rest following after. Try as I might, I haven't managed to do that and for it to still make any sense.

If you would like to comment with some constructive feedback, I'd be very grateful. Comments are moderated, just to eliminate spam but as long as any criticism is worded constructively and doesn't contain any swearing, I'll publish it.

Individual Learning Plans: from paper to online

How many things can you think of, that were once only available in paper form but are now online? Every day, we undertake a variety of tasks using the Internet, which only a decade ago were predominantly paper-based: banking, job applications, travel timetables, sharing photos, to name but a few. There is now a public expectation of being able to input and access key information online.

In education, the primary and secondary sectors have largely kept pace with innovative technologies and online provision, using it to improve the quality of teaching, learning and assessment. As well as many proprietary software products being marketed, there has also been a surge of open source material, which has enabled schools to adopt and adapt products for their own needs, without a large financial outlay. Further education may, however, have been left behind in this respect, so that what is now the norm for schools could still be considered an innovation within the field of adult education.

In further education, tutors encourage their learners to set personal goals and short-term targets to direct and focus their learning. It is important to recognise and record progress and achievement, and on government funded courses, this is done through the use of Individual Learning Plans (ILPs). Many providers are still using paper forms for this, which tutors and learners tend to regard as tedious and bureaucratic. Could an online interactive eILP be more relevant and engaging for 21^st century learners?

This multimedia presentation offers H818 conference delegates the opportunity to decide for themselves the extent to which an eILP gives learners an innovative and engaging alternative to current paper documents. It will begin by examining some of the shortfalls of the existing paper ILP, and the learner and tutor feedback that led to the desire to create an eILP. I will then demonstrate the process of creating such an eILP within the open source Moodle virtual learning environment (VLE). I will show how activities within Moodle, such as the database activity, can be used to create an eILP. Reflections of the lessons learnt along the way will be shared, including learner and tutor feedback through recorded interviews.

Other further education providers have participated in related projects but many of these have focussed more on the e-portfolio than an eILP. Gloucestershire Council began to capture evidence of learner progress in the form of video and audio portfolios but stopped short of developing the ILP itself. Similarly, the National Star College has adopted the use of e-portfolios with pictures, podcasts and video to record the achievements of learners with learning difficulties. My project adds to and extends the work of these by attempting to revitalise and modernise the underpinning paperwork - specifically the ILP.

Conference Poster

One of the main outcomes of this H818 module, is an online conference, hosted in Cloudworks. As part of the preparation for this, we have all been making multimedia posters. We could choose which tools to use for this and have been helping each other out with feedback. Mine is now almost to the point of being ready. I've been sharing it in Open Studio (only other students can view and comment there) but now I'm sharing it with a wider audience. Please feel free to comment and suggest improvements, but all comments are moderated.

Individual Learning Plans: from paper to online (public version)—Nicki BerryDocs.com

Activity 5.2 - Identifying sources

Here's the task:

1. Identify between five and eight sources or resources that you feel will provide a more in-depth understanding of what is significant about your topic. These may include ones identified in the H818 Media format forum. Draw on your notes from Section 4.2 as a starting point.
2. Make notes on each one, recording useful examples, quotations, data and infographics that you may wish to cite or build upon during the productive phase in Units 7 and 8. 
   Your notes should make clear why each source or resource may be helpful to the topic you have chosen and not simply describe its content.

I started out looking through the sources that I have already accumulated and picked out some that were worth a re-read. Here's my final list:

1. Teaching Learning and Assessment for Adults by OECD
   On P. 14, there is a list of five steps which make up a learner journey. I think these steps will be useful to compare with the five stages of RARPA (Recognising and recording progress and achievement). There is definitely some overlap, even though this article doesn't directly refer to the RARPA process. As this article is written by an organisation which is associated with finding best practice in education, if their recommendations align nicely with what we are trying to achieve through RARPA and the ILP, this will be a useful text to draw on for justification.


2. Recommending learning activities as a strategy for self-regulated learning
   I'm less certain about whether I will use this one. I think I like the idea of a 'learning activity recommender'. This might tie into an eILP in some way. I may scrap the idea but for now, I'm keeping it.


3. It's all about the learners
   This is one of three articles from an online journal called 'Adults Learning'. Since it is a UK-based journal and focusses on adult education, which is very much my field, it is completely relevant. I like this article because Gloucestershire Council were in the same situation as us - needing to improve their implementation of the RARPA process. Actually, I imagine there are/were many providers who need to do this. It's just that some have taken on the challenge better than others. I'd like to hope we're one of those.


4. If it ain't broke...
   This article argues in favour of keeping RARPA as a way of giving 'a true sense of self worth and ownership of learning to the learner'. In making our ILPs more interactive, this is what I hope to achieve. Rather than ILPs being seen as an irritating piece of paperwork, I want them to be useful for learners in managing and engaging with their own learning.


5. Goal setting behaviour in massive open online courses
   I was doubtful as to whether to keep this on my list, as it is really about MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and my project isn't about MOOCs. However it does talk about goal setting behaviour, which is relevant, so for now it stays.


6. Digital learning, digital scholarship and design thinking
   This must be an extract from a larger work because in the introduction, which is on P. 547, it talks about 'a sense of urgency' in using 'new media' to make learning resources more relevant to today's learners... and that is really what this project is all about. Yes, I want to add in new features that can't be there with a paper document but more than anything, I want the ILP to engage learners, rather than putting them off and I think in today's multimedia society, something that is online is more likely to do that.


7. A measure of success
   I like this article because it talks about the learning process being 'co-managed both tutor and learner', which is just what we are aiming to achieve. At the moment, even where learners are filling in their own ILP, I feel like it is still very much a tutor-led activity. I don't see much evidence of learners linking their learning outside the classroom to their targets and being keen to record this. The situation I would love to see might look like this... 
   
   An ESOL learner has a target of listening to his/her child read and using that to learn the meaning of one new word per day. As they listen to their child read, they ask what a word means. The child translates it into their mother tongue and then they play about with using the word in sentences. Together, they go online and do mummy/daddy's homework. They record the word, it's meaning and an example of its use in a glossary and then link to it from the evidence section of their target. At the end of the week, they review all the words and then mark the target as achieved.