education staff working in elearning environments

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EDUCATION STAFF WORKING IN ELEARNING ENVIRONMENTS: SKILLS AND COMPETENCES Olimpius ISTRATE Institute for Education, Dr. Louis Pasteur str., Bucharest, Romania [email protected] Abstract: The big challenge for the education practitioners acting in virtual environments is to surpass the novelty not only through adequately use of the technologies, but also through knowledge and use of adapted virtual education practices. The present paper looks towards the characteristics of an efficient elearning activity, trying to identify the set of skills and competences associated to the new staff which an institution need to adequately prepare when undertaking online or blended learning. Keywords: elearning environment, skills of personnel, efficient virtual education. I. EFFICIENT ELEARNING DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT Most of the modern educational environments are designed and developed to incorporate new education strategies and practices, able to provide the educational process with adapted, improved, significant, and efficient learning experiences. The transformation implies several lines of action and activity types: Quality assurance of the process of education/training, based on the relevant elements for efficient education strategies. Transposition of the curriculum, based on proven, strong pedagogical principles. Assurance of the technical instrumentary needed for appropriate support of intended didactic strategies, of communication between the actors involved, of administrative management and so on. Assurance of the quality of education staff involved. The profile of an efficient elearning activity rise a serie of challenges for both the institution in terms of capacity and readiness and for the staff involved in terms of preparedness, knowledge, skills and specific competences to cope with wide range of issues from communication and technical type to pedagogical and managerial ones. Usually, the new technologies are seen as having a great potential to surmount a set of limitations which caracterise conventional instruction; therefore, when we are talking about quality and efficiency in education, it is expected that the learning experience and outcomes to be higher in the education situation assisted by ICT, being they offline, online, self tutored, in fully integrated virtual campuses and so on. In this view, a complete elearning experience has several attributes which rely on a proper design and implementation: the intended learning objectives and the assessment modalities have to be described very clear and precise; they should include transversal/ key competences; from the design phase, there must be specified some alternative specific ways to support participants with different learning rhythms and to include/ encourage learners with different cognitive capacities; motivation of participants must be sustained through special methods and techniques; the learning rhythm must be constant, without long interruptions; accent should be put on variated, sufficient learning tasks, with clear deadlines;

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Page 1: education staff working in elearning environments

EDUCATION STAFF WORKING IN ELEARNING ENVIRONMENTS: SKILLS AND

COMPETENCES

Olimpius ISTRATE Institute for Education, Dr. Louis Pasteur str., Bucharest, Romania

[email protected]

Abstract: The big challenge for the education practitioners acting in virtual environments is to surpass

the novelty not only through adequately use of the technologies, but also through knowledge and use of

adapted virtual education practices. The present paper looks towards the characteristics of an efficient

elearning activity, trying to identify the set of skills and competences associated to the new staff which

an institution need to adequately prepare when undertaking online or blended learning.

Keywords: elearning environment, skills of personnel, efficient virtual education.

I. EFFICIENT ELEARNING DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

Most of the modern educational environments are designed and developed to incorporate new

education strategies and practices, able to provide the educational process with adapted, improved,

significant, and efficient learning experiences. The transformation implies several lines of action and

activity types:

Quality assurance of the process of education/training, based on the relevant elements for

efficient education strategies.

Transposition of the curriculum, based on proven, strong pedagogical principles.

Assurance of the technical instrumentary needed for appropriate support of intended

didactic strategies, of communication between the actors involved, of administrative

management and so on.

Assurance of the quality of education staff involved.

The profile of an efficient elearning activity rise a serie of challenges for both the institution –

in terms of capacity and readiness – and for the staff involved – in terms of preparedness, knowledge,

skills and specific competences to cope with wide range of issues from communication and technical

type to pedagogical and managerial ones. Usually, the new technologies are seen as having a great

potential to surmount a set of limitations which caracterise conventional instruction; therefore, when

we are talking about quality and efficiency in education, it is expected that the learning experience and

outcomes to be higher in the education situation assisted by ICT, being they offline, online, self

tutored, in fully integrated virtual campuses and so on. In this view, a complete elearning experience

has several attributes which rely on a proper design and implementation:

the intended learning objectives and the assessment modalities have to be described very

clear and precise; they should include transversal/ key competences;

from the design phase, there must be specified some alternative specific ways to support

participants with different learning rhythms and to include/ encourage learners with

different cognitive capacities;

motivation of participants must be sustained through special methods and techniques;

the learning rhythm must be constant, without long interruptions; accent should be put on

variated, sufficient learning tasks, with clear deadlines;

Page 2: education staff working in elearning environments

the learning sessions with digital support, especially the long ones, must be as interactive

as possible and must emotionally involve the participants into learning;

the learning support and the feedback offered to participants must be in-time and on-topic;

the tutor must monitor each learner’ activity and to guide its learning towards achieving

the education goals, as much as possible in the cognitive and socio-affective “zone of

proximal development”;

cooperation between participants (to collaboratively solve various tasks) must be

encoraged and supported; equally, the autonomy in learning must be promoted;

the new elements in the learning path, together with the innovative interaction ways have

to be gradually introduced, and described based on the traditional, known experiences.

Summarising, the following general scheme should be brought into attention of developers

and instructional designers, but as well to the attention of course authors and support personnel

involved in the elearning activities. The scheme is built on the pentagonal curriculum model:

Figure 1. Added value of ICT in education and training: a view upon the curriculum components

The education sciences domain provides many research reports concerning the quality of

education and the efficiency of teaching-leraning process. At questions of whom?, which facts?, which

moment, approach or instrument we owe the efficiency of teaching learning process?, literature

reveals different factors which in certain conditions increase the eficiency of instruction. These studies

reveal some elements, principles, stakes which has to be taken in account for an efficient instruction

design.These principles represent a sort of conditions, attributes or instructional standards (of the

largest generality) for the designing and evaluation of activities from educational process. The

research reports’ conclusions are repeatedly reconfirmed and are congruent with what practice

imposed as valid in the last decade:

1. The instruction based on a design for an reflective/reflexive learning. During instruction,

the possibility to reflect about learning has to be offered to the student. The reflexive

learning represents an active process of cognition construction, through which the

memory content (mediated by thinking processes) is transformed, enlarged, connected, is

structurated or is created.

EDUCATIONAL AIMS

- clear; - precise; - target

knowledge, skills and attitudes in

the domain of study, as well as

transversal competences

LEARNING CONTEXT

- opportunities for

differentiation and

personalisation;

- pace and length of the learning

path is considered from multiple

perspectives.

DIDACTIC STRATEGIES

- interactivity; sustained support,

on-time feedback; - encouraging

learning autonomy, as well as

cooperation; - directed and non-

directed learning; - gradual

construction of knowledge,

adequated didactic methods.

ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES

- combine various methods and

instruments; - allow feedback;

- allows self-assessment, inter-

evaluation, external evaluation;

- sustain adaptive paths;

- assessment situations are created

as learning opportunities.

CONTENT

- has visual and audio

alternatives; - relevant; -

adequated to age and interests of

learners; - logical organisation;

capitalise upon previous

learning aquisition.

Page 3: education staff working in elearning environments

2. Multiple support in cognitive, motivational and emotional plans. A good instruction not

only helps students in thinking and learning, but also offers a motivation and an emotional

adequate context. The instruction produces cogniscible effects if the objectives are well

defined, if the anterior aknowledgements are activated, if a stimulative content is

presented, if the learning process is guided, if the feedback for task is given, if the learning

progress is evaluated and the knowledge transfer is guaranted.

3. Taken in account of individual particularities of the students. The instruction and

aquisition evaluation are very efficacy if students are assisted in individual particularities

reveal; more, when they are helped to remove their minuses. Students are more

performance in learning if the instruction is adapted ti their needs and individual features.

4. The knowledge aquisition and application in varied contexts. The instruction is focalized

from the very begining on assimilation of fundamentals: declarative knowledgements

(concepts, facts) and procedural (rules) which has to became a part of memory in correct,

structurated,interconnected patterns. For the flexible use of this knowledge, a repeated

practical application and evaluation is necessary. Such situations has to vary in difficulty,

in their correspondence with real cases and in the guiding level.

5. The development and evaluation of fundamental knowledgements but also the stimulation

of higher-order skills. The analytical thinking processes are stimulated when student is

solicitated to decompund elements (of discipline content) , to compare them, to evaluate

and to explain. The creative thinking can be sutained when student task is ti imagine

elements of knowledge and to develop own products. Analitical and creative thinking can

be trained using stages of problem solving. Aknowledgements, thinking and the capacity

to solve problems has to represent an integrated part of acquisition evaluation.

6. The stimulation of reasoning capacities. For a succesfull reasoning the identification,

construction and evaluation of reasons is neccesary. The education methods which sustain

reasoning are: group activities with structured procedures, pro/against listings,

questionnaires concerning aknowledgements, synthetisations, work cards for thinking

stimulation, debates on a given subject,problematised learning, graphics organizers.

7. The design and guiding od self-controlled learning. The notion of self controlled learning

means that students controls /regulates this process according to given objectives and

selects activities to improve the results.

8. The increasing of learning efficacy. The learning efficacy represents the ratio between

resources/invested efforts and obtained results. The high efficacy learning appears when

students work with challenging tasks, without overloaded; such tasks depend on previous

knowledge, but neccesits new aknowledgements or skills.

9. The interest awakening and maintening. The students are interested when they believe that

they represent an important part of the group or when they can prove competence in a

field, when they can define their own objectives or can work protected against the

compatration with other students. Abouit the discipline content, should be reinforced the

importance for their life and aims.

10. The positive feelings intensification. The symphathy between teacher and student can be

incrased by differnt strategies such as: the relationship intensification, interactions

promoting, establish of cooperative learning structures, implementation of collaboration

programmes.

11. The diminish of negative feelings. To diminish fear, envy and anger appeared during

learning, diverse strategies can be used: the assuring of succes in learning, mistakes

acceptance, relaxing moments using, encouraging the comparisons concerning to

biographic or criterial frame, not to social standards.

12. The respect and responsability setting up. The education has the mission to form general

social skills instudents, based on resppect and responsability for/faced to others,

environment, society in general. Such values and correlated attitudes can be obtained if

certain conditons are created: a community creaton where members take care each other,

use democratic rules in decision taking, responding to questions concerning the own

personality development and integrating controversial subjects in teaching.

13. Self instruction materials using.

Page 4: education staff working in elearning environments

To sustain a self controlled learning, special materials are necessary, provided with a rationale

reasoning for which they has to be studied, a description of previous achieved pre-knowledge required

to understand the new content and the way in which this content will be achieved. A consistent

orientation toward learning objectives, a clear structure of content, a guided learning, clear working

tasks whixch allow student to check his aknowledgements, pre and post thematic organizers, a varied

difficulty background of exercises together with their solutions (complete, uncomplete or multiple),

illustrations which contribute to content understatnding and text attributes which facility searching,

organization and integration of knowledge are required, too.

From the specificity of presented elements, some important conclusions can be drawn,

regarding to efficient education characteristics:

a. first, the instruction can be conceptualised in pedagogical (educational sciences) reference

frame, its attributes can be creatively promoted/uptaken in educational practice;

b. second, an efficient instruction represents not only the result of teacher aknowledge, but

his art/ability to use a strategy, method, procedure in proper moment and in agiven

situation (N.L. Gage. The scientific basis of the art of teaching. New York: Teachers

College Press, 1978; Birzea, Cezar. Arta si stiinta educatiei. Bucuresti: E.D.P., R.A.,

1998.);

c. third, the instruction approach neccesits decision making from teacher, an objective

situation analyse and turning to account the professional competence and avaible

resources;

d. fourth, the educator has to consider/see the student as an autonomous person, with

individual features with makes him different.

II. NEW CHALLENGES AND NEW COMPETENCES FOR STAFF

As many studies are indicating, the performance of the staff involed in elearning activities is

highly correlated with the level of support received from the management, including the extent to

which the procedures are regulated in specific documents and institutional policy papers. It is desirable

that within the institution would exist a collaborative, stimulative environment, in which the personnel

cooperate towards a better understanding of the nature of the tasks implied by the new technologies, as

well as towards a more efficient practice within virtual educational platform. Motivation, implication,

involvement – these are the dimensions supporting a high quality work, which are occuring in time, in

a both constant and dynamic socio-professional medium, online or offline.

Main categories of competences necessary for dealing with the elearning situations are four:

- academic – knowledge, abilities and attitudes specific to the study domain;

- pedagogical – knowledge and capacities to design, develop and evaluate a learning

situation;

- managerial – skills necessary to organise learners, resources, time and tasks;

- technical – ICT skills.

The big challenge for the education practitioners acting in virtual environments is to surpass

the novelty not only through adequately use of the technologies, but also through knowledge and use

of adapted virtual education practices. The technical aspects consist in appropriate use of some

instruments such as forum, blog, wiki, bookmarking tools, collaborative documents – which suppose

some hours of hands-on training.The pedagogical dimension is much more complicated, regarding

development of some specific competences towards: a learner-centred approach, collaborative

learning, continuous support and counseling, online assessment, motivational techniques and so on.

Here is a list of tasks and roles associated with education staff in the virtual environments:

- design of educational activities;

- organisation of the intructional process and context;

- analysis of resources and instruments available;

- choose of didactic strategies and methods;

- design of instructional alternatives;

- prevention of interruption and distractions;

Page 5: education staff working in elearning environments

- facilitation of learning;

- ensuring good conditions for learning and communicating;

- provoking thinking, challenging previous knowledge/prerequisites;

- formulating answers;

- stimulating debates;

- encouraging students, motivating them to keep going;

- suggestion of new paths for deep learning and alternative solution searching;

- assistance, monitoring, assessment;

- animating discussions, giving hints;

- guidance, counselling;

- prevention, management and capitalising upon education crisis situations;

- decision and asking for opinion, proposal of themes and tasks;

- coordination, organising groups and learning teams;

- learning support;

- moderation, communication.

Figure 2. Today’s educator: integrated profile of competence

A complete vision of the transformation in the set of skills necessary to education staff

working on the virtual environments would include pedagogical and academic competences, filtered

and refined through the present technological context, projected in a “know how” which makes today

the difference between good educators and the others.

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