Rather than see them as lecture tools, trainers can create rich interactions between learners that make use of their experience in the workplace by posing problems, sharing case studies, working through a workplace scenario, polling, student presentations and assesment and peer review. These are great ways for keeping learners engaged if you are relying less and less on face to face.
Virtual Classrooms
· Software applications for remote live teacher instruction and feedback online with learners that enables real-time voice interaction, whiteboard sharing, and breakout sessions to enhance a student's learning experience. This provides students an opportunity to interact with the trainer as well as classmates by oral and written communication. While Blackboard Collaborate is the de facto tool of choice for most VET providers, a range of other products are available including Adobe Connect and Go-To-Meeting. An open source product gaining attention in VET Big Blue Button is currently the focus of a New Technology trial. Most virtual classroom products include:
o live audio and text communication between trainers and learners. Participants use headsets to communicate through audio
o graphic material like PowerPoint slides which is broadcast to all participants.
o Capacity to run polls to gain input or feedback from them
o Capacity for the presenter share an application (e.g. Word or Excel) running on their desktop so that the group can work together collaboratively on a document or other resource. The presenter can often hand over application sharing to another member of the group
o a shared whiteboard space for text and drawing
o can browse the Web and conduct web tours
o Ability to share files with the participants.
o Capacity for all users to display live video from a web cam
o Potential to bring in an online guest presenter from anywhere in the world
o A “break out” rooms that enable small group work online
o Tools to archive or record to enable later reviewing of a trainer led session.
o can be integrated into a learning management to automate sessions set ups, links and recording play back access by learners (for example Blackboard, Moodle).
Rapid eLearning Software
Typical learning activities that can be created with rapid elearning software include templates to create Problem Based Learning, Case Studies, Simulations, Decision making Trees Quizzing, Multimedia (Video, Audio, Flash etc) presentations
Current popular rapid elearning software used by RTOs include:
- iSpring - Based on PowerPoint, iSpring e-Learning authoring tool enhances PowerPoint features with advanced e-Learning authoring capabilities like creating quizzes and video narrations. With iSpring eLearnng authoring software, you can rapidly create, reuse, distribute and track e-Learning and online training courses. There is also a free version for rapid conversion of existing PowerPoint’s in a flash presentation embedded into a webpage for easy upload to an LMS.
- Articulate Studio 09 – Supports non-technical users to create professional, interactive e-learning courses easily and quickly. Users can insert selected quiz slides into a course, interactive content, and set options for how participants navigate based on their assessment results. With the supplied video encoder users can import any video and convert it to Flash.
- Captivate - eLearning authoring software for rapidly creating and maintaining interactive eLearning content. Users can import existing Microsoft PowerPoint content and make it more engaging with rich media, application simulations, branching scenarios, and quizzes. In addition, users can create software simulations to demonstrate and assess software skills.
- Udutu - online learning software to produce media rich, engaging online courseware at minimal cost and without having to rely on programmers or multimedia experts. Users can build branching simulations and case-studies, interactive quizzes, and complex assessments Flexible templates allow users to present material to learners, engaging them with interactions, and immersing them in branching scenarios. All major types of graphic, sound, and video formats optimize automatically for web delivery. The authoring tool also extracts a .zip file that integrates seamlessly with any SCORM compliant LMS. Courses can be delivered from Facebook pages.
Industry Knowledge
In face to face courses, learners in most courses (and especially apprenticeships and traineeships) interact formally and informally around their experiences in applying VET course knowledge and skills to their workplace context. In addition, we know that learners learn through a variety of informal methods:
o when they teach someone else/use immediately.
o when they practice what they learned.
o when engaged in a group discussion.
o when they see a demonstration.
o from audio-visual presentation
o from reading.
o from lecture.
Much of this opportunity (to make this knowledge explicit) is lost when an elearning approach is applied to a VET course. RTO’s need to be aware of complimenting E Learning approaches to ensure learners have access to industry knowledge sharing and building. Industry knowledge can be shared with learners through:
o Discussions about workplace experiences in the context of problems or case studies
o Guest Presenters from Industry, including ex students
o Audio/Video Recordings with Industry leaders, including ex students
o Group projects and presentations to share workplace knowledge
o Video Demonstrations of workplace processes
Problem Solving/Group engagement with scenarios
Blogs (as an alternative to using a LMS like Moodle)
Wordpress, which can be either installed as an application on an organisation’s server to generate any number of Blogs for training, marketing and other purposes or hosted “in the cloud”, i.e. on the WordPress server. Blogs can also be created for education as the edublog site which also offers great ideas for using blogs in educaton. Free student and trainer blogs can also be created using Blogger, Google’s free blog tool.
Google apps and Google Education Apps
With Google, when learners set up an email account (also called Gmail) they also get attached to their profile a calender, online Office suite. You can share calenders and documents with learners - useful for keeping timelines and retrieving assessments. This is especially good for low language learners giving them a gateway to personal productivity. Mobile apps allow users to access all services from their phones. These services are free and are set up by the student.
Google Education (http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/edu/) takes this concept a step further by enabling the RTO to set up Google accounts for their learners.
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