Tel: 01908
654705
Web site: http://oubs.open.ac.uk/gilly
Key words: online
networking; e-moderating; supply chains.
Interaction
between work (thought of as doing) and learning (mastering new knowledge and
skills) and between paid work and leisure is predicted to become much more
fluid in the future (Steele 1996). With the
advent of online learning, this notion becomes real and the role of training to
work in new ways and in new online environments becomes of critical
importance. There is broadening
acceptance and understanding of learning as a socially mediated and constructed
process (Billett 1996) and of knowledge as no longer "fixed"(Hendry 1996). Therefore
supporting training and education through work-based networks, especially
exploiting the interactive benefits of online working, needs to take account of
a much wider variety of factors than learning to use appropriate software.
However,
as Schreiber and Berge point out:
“It
is a daunting task to maintain an educated, high performance workforce in
today’s global economy. Increased
competition, regulatory bodies, changing technology and process re-engineering
conspire to disrupt traditional employee practice and capability.”
(Schreiber and Berge 1998) p.xv
At
this stage, we do not have clear pathways to translate our knowledge and practice
of well-structured distance learning courses (which increasingly include some
online working), to the requirements of organisational learning and the
individuals within them. I believe we
have some of the stepping stones in place- but early projects and innovations
are not reporting a smooth ride. Our
project, KLASS, is researching and developing concepts and practice in this
field.
This pilot project is in the automotive component
sector, and is being prepared in partnership with four HE/FE institutions and
two industry training bodies. The course will provide learning within industry
based networks. It has four primary aims:
1) To attract to distance learning individuals and groups
that tend to be under-represented within the adult learner population (people
working within manufacturing in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), using an
appropriate mix of media.
2) To develop motivations for learning among
individuals and within the companies that employ them.
3) To identify, through an initial focus on the
development of work capabilities, the potential for improvements in
performance, thereby contributing to improved employment security in a sector
that faces intense economic and technological pressures.
4) To stimulate collaborative learning in supply
chains.
The pilot is intended to establish the basis for
wider provision in manufacturing and other sectors.
The
pilot is an R&D project. It is developing 4 to 6 learning networks, each of
which includes some 5 to 7 SMEs. Development of the networks is based upon
established buying/supplying relationships between the companies in the
networks. The pilot aims to establish
how individual learning development and potential for accreditation is shaped
by involvement in teams with mixed characteristics, and whether such
development can be combined with improvements in the capabilities of companies
across supply chain network. The pilot
sector faces particularly acute technological and economic pressures.
The
course is built around a guided project with integral engineering support as
well as learning support. Students in
the learning networks will be grouped in teams of up to 8 people within each
participating company, drawn from different areas of skill and
responsibility. The course provides 220
hours of study. It is undertaken within
learning groups that are initially located within companies but that extend, in
later stages, to inter-company (network) levels. Establishment of the in-company and inter-company learning groups
will be founded upon firm commitments by the companies involved to support the
learning objectives and processes. The
approach develops from initial, extensive work that been supported by DTI and
by the automotive industry.
The
course includes a higher than average level of tutorial support for students,
through four routes:
i)
Preliminary
induction, via day schools/workshops and support materials, for key role
holders: Change Facilitators and Team Leaders.
ii)
Day schools held in
the start-up and mid-project stages.
iii)
Learning support
from highly experienced tutors, which is provided face-to-face, and via
synchronous and asynchronous conferencing (FirstClass plus Lyceum).
iv)
Support from
professional engineers who have extensive experience of the analytical tools
and approaches being used in the course and of support for industry based
learners.
The course consists of three main modules.
Module
One: Working Smarter?
Module
Two: Analysing Your Workplace
Module
Three: Developing a Learning
Network
The overall objective for the assessment strategy
is to guide, sustain and support the combination of individual and group
learning. It also provides interdependent group and individual responsibilities
for assignment submission, and ensures that tutor feedback contributes to the
reformulation of task objectives where appropriate and to the next stage of
project investigation and trials.
Since
the KLASS programme is currently at implementation, I report here underlying
ideas and immediate plans for supporting the learning rather than
outcomes. The first stage of
implementation is the development of materials and the training of key staff. I focus in this paper on preparation for the
more innovative aspects of working online, through asynchronous and synchronous
media.
My
work has focussed on the building of online learning and working communities of
practice. Though content analysis of
voluntary use by MBA students and tutors of early online conferencing systems,
I developed an understanding of the stages that users go through before
becoming competent and comfortable (Salmon
2000).
Stage
1 Gaining Access To and Use of the CMC System
This stage involves the learner getting to know about the availability and the benefits of the system, setting up his or her own system of hardware, software and password, dialling up the system if necessary and getting in to the point that the conferences are available on screen. At the first stage of use, the learner needs information and technical support to get online, and motivation to take the necessary time and effort. High motivation is a prime factor at this stage in encouraging participants to tackle the technical aspects, especially if they are dialling in from remote sites. Access to support needs to be available at the times at which the learner is likely to be struggling to get on-line on his or her own. This problem can be overcome by providing continuing encouragement and support. Where the supply chain online networking is concerned this critical “set up” stage cannot be ignored and will need to be repeated at any point that access or software is changed.
Stage 2 Becoming Familiar with
the On-line Environment
A century ago, Durkheim began exploring issues and consequences of socialisation and the implications of shared customs, beliefs and heritage for human behaviour and welfare. He showed that a sense of security and progress depends on a broad agreement both on the ends to be pursued and on the accepted means for attaining them. Every grouping of people develops its own culture - formal and informal rules, norms of behaviour, ways of operating and of sanctioning those who fail to understand or conform. Durkheim used the term anomie to describe the feeling of lack of identification and adjustment with the social environment. An individual cannot easily replace a familiar culture or values with those of a new community - he or she is more likely to selectively adapt or modify features of a new group that seem attractive or useful.
Working online is a new and potentially alien world for many
participants (Rowntree 1995). From the
first research on Computer Mediated Conferencing (CMC) an influential discovery
was the lack of expressive (i.e. non-verbal and visual) behavioural cues (Paulsen 1996). Some users
regard this as an inadequacy that can result in a “sense of depersonalisation” (Hiltz 1986) p.100).
Others considered the lack of face to face elements to be a freedom,
since participants However, such depth and power appears not to be inevitable
but to be dependent on the early experiences associated with access and then
integration into the virtual community.
This stage is critical for the establishment of effective online working
for the supply chain community, which already has strong cultural norms and
resistance to disruption.
Stage
3 Asking For and Giving Information
After comfort in logging on and feeling part of an online community, users start to appreciate the broad range of information about the topics available to them online. Information flows very freely and the “cost” of responding to a request for information is low. However, the messiness of computer mediated communication is a stark contrast to well structured and logical books, and it makes demands on the participants to find what they “really want”. As a result, the learners look to the conference e-moderators (i.e. online facilitators) to provide direction through the mass of data and encouragement to start using the most relevant material. The support skills related to the task focus of the group become important for e-moderators as well as their taking part in the processes of discovery. The interaction occurring at this stage is largely around content and/or sharing of information. For supply chains, this implies constant appropriate structuring of online material and the development of online search skills. In the supply chain context, we are seeking to have well presented and filtered information available, especially in the early stages.
Stage 4 Knowledge
construction- group and community interaction
At this stage the participant start to interact with each other, often
in highly exposed and participative ways.
The act of formulating and writing down an idea or understanding and
reading and responding to peers is a collaborative act. Once this begins, it had its own momentum
and power and collaborative learning can be seen to happen in very visible and
often exciting ways (McConnell 1994). At this
stage, very active learning, especially the widening and appreciation of
differing perspectives, sharing of information and understanding of application
of concepts and theories happens very obviously as conferences unfold and
develop.
It is at
this point in the development of learning to work on line that embryonic
“communities of practice” can be established.
If interactive conferencing and the building of
shared practice is desired through online working, the role of the conference
e-moderator became important at this stage.
The most successful e-moderators demonstrate the high levels of
facilitation skills related to group building and maintenance. In the KLASS project, we seek to involve all
participants, in whatever role but especially those holding tacit and
experiential knowledge. The key is
enabling sharing and availability of knowledge through the on and off line
environments.
Stage
5 Looking for Additional Benefits
At this stage, participants become responsible for
their own learning through the online opportunities and need little support
beyond what is already available.
Learners often become most helpful as guides to newcomers to the system. This phenomenon was observed from the
earliest days of large-scale conferencing (Mason
1990). It is at
this point that closed Intranets and conferences can be linked to wider online
systems such as the Internet with confidence that users can make appropriate
use of the benefits. This is a critical
stage for the KLASS project where we seek to tap into existing and established
networks and leverage their power and influence through the online environment.
It is “by experiencing the learning that the meaning is constructed”
and the best way to learn or teach online is through the environment itself. (Wild 1996 p.139).
Training to work online should take place through the medium itself and
this has the advantage of being much lower cost and effective than face to face
training alone.
Engaging in reflective and interactive activities, especially those
leading to explaining, justifying and evaluating problem solutions are very important
to learning processes (Baker and
Lund 1997). From the
situated learning literature, comes the notion that providing the training in
context, i.e. on-line and within a community of practice, enables learning to
develop as an intrinsic part of the ongoing activity (Chaiklin and Lave 1993).
Training Structures
The metaphor of “scaffolding” has been applied to notions of tutorial
interactions between learners and teacher (Wood,
Brunber et al. 1976), linked to Vygotsky’s “Zone of Proximal Development”.
This refers to the gap between what learners can achieve alone and what they
can achieve through problem solving under guidance from a teacher or in
collaboration with peers (Lave and
Wenger 1991). The paradox
of interactive media is that they should give greater control to the user, and
yet the learner does not know enough about it to be given full control (Laurillard 1995). Scaffolding
suggests a way of structuring this interaction and collaboration, starting with
“recruitment” of interest, establishing and maintaining an orientation towards
task relevant goals, highlighting critical features that might be overlooked,
demonstrating how to achieve those goals and helping to control frustration (Wood and Wood 1996). The notion
of scaffolding provides an overall framework for training and learning on the
KLASS project.
Throughout the design processes, it is essential to stay alert to the
notion of training for practice, given that it would be very easy to reduce the
experience of preparing for online working to one of teaching software
skills. Rasmussen agrees:
“to learn how to use a new media is one matter, to learn how to
integrate it into day to day practices is quite another.” (Rasmussen, Bang et al. 1991 p. 5).
It is therefore important to build in mechanisms and activities to
ensure that users actually take part
at each level of the online opportunities.
Schon pointed out that people influence their everyday practice by
having reflective conversations, frame their understanding of a situation in
the light of experience, try out actions and then reinterpret or reframe the
situation in the light of the consequences of that action (Marsick and Watkins 1992).
This seems to me to be a most accurate description of what occurs “naturally” in supply chains. Through
reflection the practitioner can surface and critique understandings that have
grown up around a specialised practice and make sense of a situation for him or
herself (Schon 1983). To enable
this to happen productively in the online environment is extremely important
for supply chains since much of the informal knowledge of workers will be
generated and transmitted in this way. In that sense the action research
embedded in KLASS training will attempt to spot key devices enabling
translation from off line reflection to online reflective practice.
The vision is for a process to “wrap around” the learning
system (on and off line) so that every participant is quickly enabled to keep
his or her focus on sharing and applying knowledge, and the learning provision
becomes as natural as reading a book or listening to a lecture.
Key premises:
·
The
technology must enable planned and purposeful activities.
·
Participants
make use of online facilities if there is a very good reason for them to do so,
and continue to do so (i.e. no matter how attractive the technology).
·
The
benefit come from interaction with others (towards learning communities,
relevance, group identification), not from huge amounts of online resources- these should be used as
stimuli for the interaction between people.
·
Working
in groups is different online, requires certain (additional) skills of
participants and somewhat different facilitation (e-moderating) - these need to be trained
for, they don’t happen by chance.
·
Existing
resources and processes can be adapted to the new systems.
·
Learning
model is one of constructivism and reflective practice.
Implications:
·
Support
resources are available at the point of need and at the level required for each
participant.
·
Induction
for participants and training for e-moderators takes place in the environment
itself.
|
5 Stages |
What?
|
|
|
|
|
1. Getting in/Getting Started |
|
|
1.1
Technical supporting for logging in and setting up |
Documentation,
discs and helplines |
|
1.2
Motivation to take part |
Provided by overall programme and integration in offline
activities |
|
1.3
Welcome by online persona |
Individual
welcome and support online |
|
|
|
|
2. Getting used/effective/comfortable/ socialised online |
|
|
2.1 Ability
to send and receive and messages |
From
prior experience or through local handholding, |
|
2.3 Facilitation to support |
Ready-made
conferences Encourage, support, moderate “social conferences” |
|
|
|
|
3. Giving and Receiving information |
|
|
3.1 How to
search, find and give relevant and useful
information, how to post messages, files
and links |
Online
help, offline training, online training and induction programmes |
|
3.2 Take part in
information exchange activities |
Meaningful and relevant (small-scale) activities pre and post
face to face |
|
|
|
|
4. Generate New Knowledge, collaborate |
|
|
4.1 Technical
support for setting up private small group
conferences |
Collaborative
and co-operative activities |
|
4.2 Leadership
of small group |
|
|
4.3
Support and provision of resources |
|
|
|
|
|
5. External links |
|
|
5.1 Support
access to Internet |
Online
databases, libraries and Web links |
|
5.2 Participants
ask for relevant resources |
|
|
5.3 Point
towards available online resources |
|
The
KLASS project’s first actions are based on the table above. This includes two days face to face training
for key staff and facilitators in May 2000, followed by a 6 week online
training programme intended to achieve competence to stage 5 of the model
before work commences with the student participants at the end of the summer.
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