LEARNING ONLINE WITH AND THROUGH SUPPLY CHAINS - CONCEPTS

Context

Interaction between work (thought of as doing) and learning (mastering new knowledge and skills) and between paid work and leisure is predicated 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 supply chains, 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.

Supporting Online Learning for Supply Chains

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 1998).

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 are undistracted by status and social games and can therefore "project their personalities in written texts" (Feenberg 1987 p.74). Phillips and Santaro found that students could disagree without excessive emotions or apparent clashes based on personalities and without shyer individuals having to "fight their way in" (Phillips and Santaro 1989).

Schrum comments that electronic connections have "the power to transmit great emotions" and that the potential for the building of communities goes beyond the original hopes of the first electronic networkers (Schrum 1993) p. 171). 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.

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 (ie online faciliators) 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 stucturing of online material and the development of online search skills. It is at this stage, that the role of the Knowledge Manager in the online environment becomes important.

Stage 4 Group and Community Interaction

At this stage the participant start to interact with each other, often in highly exposed and participative ways. The acts 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.

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.

Building an Interactive Online Training Programme for Supply Chains

The Principle of Training On-Line

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). I therefore believe that training to work online should take place through the medium itself and this has the huge advantage of being much lower cost and effective than face to face training.

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 et al. 1976), linked to Vygotsky's "Zone of Proximal Development", which 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).

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 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 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.

Building in Reflection

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.

Model of Teaching and Learning Online

LEARNING ONLINE WITH AND THROUGH SUPPLY CHAINS - TRANSLATION TO 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.
• The "human" interface is supplied by a Knowledge Manager and E-Moderator roles who are comfortable, clear and focussed through the induction, training and support provided.

Online programmes to be developed:

Induction (all)
E-moderating, e-mentoring (separate online programme focuses on communication and building learning community)

Roles: technical support (local, telephone helplines, and online e-mail, help resources online)
Knowledge Manager = KM (some needs technical and industry knowledge)
E-Mod (content and facilitation skills- needs training)
LM= local mentors

Requirements for Learning Support

References

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Billett, S. (1996). "Towards a model of workplace learning; the learning curriculum." Studies in Continuing Education, 15(1), p. 43-57.

Chaiklin, S., and Lave, J. (1993). Understanding practice:Perspectives on activity & context, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Feenberg, A. (1987). "Computer Conferencing and the humanities." Journal of Distance Education, 1(1), p. 59-70.

Hendry, G. (1996). "Constructivism & Educational Practice." Australian Journal of Education, 40(1), p. 19-45.

Hiltz, S. R. (1986). "The Virtual Classroom: using computer mediated communication for university teaching." Journal of Communication, 36(2), p. 95-104.

Laurillard, D. (1995). "Multimedia & the changing experience of the learner." British Journal of Educational Technology, 26(3), p. 179-189.

Lave, J., and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

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Mason, R. (1990). "Home Computing Evaluation: Use of Computing on DT 200, 1989." 99, Open University, Milton Keynes.

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Rasmussen, T., Bang, J., and Lundby, K. (1991). "A Social Experiment with Electronic Conferencing." DEOSNEWS, 1(24), .

Rowntree, D. (1995). "Teaching & learning online: a correspondence education for the 21st Century?" British Journal of Educational Technology, 26(3), p. 205-215.

Salmon, G. (1998). "Developing Learning Though Effective Online Moderation." Active Learning, December, p. 3-9.

Schon, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner; how professionals think in action, Basic Books, London.

Schrum, L. (1993). "Social Interaction Through Online Writing." Computer Conferencing The Last Word, R. Mason, ed., Beach Holme, Victoria.

Steele, L. W. (1996). "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down." Technology in Society, 18(3), p. 261-284.

Wild, M. (1996). "Technology refusal: Rationalising the failure of student and beginning teachers to use computers." British Journal of Educational Technology, 27(2), p. 134-143.

Wood, D., and Wood, H. (1996). "Vygotsky, Tutoring & Learning." Oxford Review of Education, 22(1), p. 5-15.

Wood, D. J., Brunber, J. S., and Ross, G. (1976). "The role of tutoring in problem solving." Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17(2), p. 89-100.

Gilly Salmon 15 June 1999