digital lifeboat

 CompendiumLD maps of the second stage course design.

Just wanting to capture a few notes on the twilight session by making some very generalised observations. I will be looking in detail at the avalanche of feedback over the next couple of weeks.

 I had two hours to introduce the course to the target group. Half worked in the ICT suite on computers the other half on laptops via a wireless connection in the room next door. We began the session with some introduction and explanation of the project for the benefit of new staff.

 The school has a 2Mb Internet connection.

Testing

I was not able to test with an inexperienced user before the training session. This would have highlighted some of the issues which arose on tne night. In effect the training session became a usability test by the target group. I now have data from a wide range of users in terms of ability, age and experience.

 Logistics

 The group of over 20 was too big to manage on the night working in two rooms, and I could not keep up with the number of issues that were going on simultaneously.

One new laptop was missing software needed for the activity. 

One person attended unexpectedly and did not have a log in.

 Bandwidth

It is not clear if the Moodle server is correctly setup for streaming video. Testing prior to the training night revealed widely varying download results. With multiple downloads on the night the alternative smaller flash movie was needed. More info needed to follow up further.

 Moodle

Found an unexpected (untested) aspect of the chat room that the participants were identified by initial not name, leading to confusion.

Course Content

I had way too much material for the 2 hour session and did not need any of the extension exercises I built in. I think there is scope for dividing the material up in to a beginners and advanced course.

 On the whole the group worked much more slowly than I had anticipated. Over familiarity with the content had led to an underestimate of the time needed to complete different topics. Failure to achieve the first assignment objective, was mainly due to lack of time.

The journaling reflective activity seems to have been useful.

There was positive feedback about the interactive tutorial which was a novel learning experience for the group. The group saw the benefit of active learning in that activity.

More basic instructions were required on navigation and orientation in the Moodle environment. (too much for the 2hr training but to be developed further for the course ongoing.)

 It is too soon to make any judgements about how the training went overall until the data is analysed. There is a wide mixture of experiences and feedback. There were bugs or technical hitches in almost every area of the course on the night and the materials were thoroughly tested, pretty much to destruction!

It was an exhausting experience, and not an easy one for the subjects, but I do belive that I can see ways to solve most if not all of the issues which arose. 

I think a number of principles were tested in the different activities in the course and many proved useful for further development. The discussion acitivy was the least sucessful on the night. There were too many unknowns for the participants to deal with for them to properly engage with the task I set, but hopefully an experience to build on in the future.

 More to follow… 

Week 4  was working on the research design. It’s been slow going and I felt bogged down and wanting to start work on the course building before I run out of time.

In the middle of all that took a few days “out” by way of a diversion to do a bit more family history research. Inspired by the 90th anniversary of the ending of WW1 and spent some late nights unravelling the amazing story of a Great- Great- Uncle who died at the Somme.

Anyway as sometime happens, when busy at work and study, a ”mental break”  renews one’s energy to get back to the task at hand.

So to week 5 and a bit of excitement the first tangiable object resulting from the project, the results of my training needs survey are in.

Here the beauty of using Moodle comes into its own. The survey was done on line and the built in reporting tool has already done all the analysis work for me and provides the results in graphical and numeric form.

Comparing this with the effort of the last piece of research I did on the pupils on paper I recall the hassle and inaccuracy, double checking, inputting all the data into excell and then figuring out the correct equations to get a meaningful result.

Granted it took me several hours to build the questionairre, but it was a fraction of the time I spent on other recent paper based surveys. The last time this survey was issued the results were looked at briefly but never analised at all statistically.

All I had to do this time was observe the number of participents entries rising until after a couple of e-mail reminders all but one of my study group complied. I deliberately did not look at the results until they were all in having learned from my previous research that the full picture often looks different from the interim result.

Here is an example showing the way the results are presented for a rating question.

I found that by scanning through the 16 questions I could quickly identify the gaps in knowledge, and those areas where a whole topic was not well understood. For a busy teacher with several hundred pupils this must be of great benefit.

Terry King highlights an issue which affects my project in her paper “Some Ethical Issues Arising in Educational Research”. Here she describes a problem of researching in the field of education where the research subjects may only be accessible for a ‘one-shot’ opportunity to sample the target group.

The “one shot” I am mindful of is the next INSET day in January 2009. This will be my only opportunity to use some of the schools directed training time to get subjects to access and evaluate a course in Moodle.

The short lead time to this deadline means I have to look at ways of accelerating the design process in order to have some material ready for evaluation. A timely blog post by Michael Hanley leads me to The Rapid Guide- How to Rapidly Identify Training needs, by Stephen Walsh of Kineo. Here I have a perspective from industry from which I can extract some tools.

The guide outlines three methods of speedily gathering initial information, surveys, focused interviews and virtual workshops. 

I already have an assessment of training needs survey in progress. Interviews with key staff could be arranged. Virtual workshops would not be an option for me as staff are not yet in a culture of working on-line.

Having gathered my initial data I need to work out what my criteria will be for deciding which courses to implement first.

Using the survey I expect to discover a wide range of potential topics for course material, and give lower priority to those which are not of immediate use to my sample group. Some topics will obviously stand out by being relevant to a higher percentage of potential users.

The Rapid Guide identifies a number of criteria for ranking training opportunities which would be relevant to my study. These include, alignment with strategic objectives of the organisation, external deadlines, return on investment, compliance driven requirements.

I will be returning to the “Rapid Guides” again to see what perspectives inform the different stages of design and implementation.

Huge bank of free resources available at

http://www.kineo.com/elearning-reports.html

Week 2 a bit of a blow out due to illness. A lot on at work managed to hold things together there but had to drop the study ball. Have half term week 3 to move forwards again.

Have more or less finalised my informed consent letter, hope to get this delivered and signed during the inset day at the beginning of term. Lots of discussion and thought about all the info that the study subjects need to have to give informed consent.