Day 1: Adult Learning Symposium 2014

Here I am attending the biennial Adult Learning Symposium 2014. This year's theme " Innovation in Workplace Practices and Learning" places emphasis leveraging technology to innovate local CET practices. The Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) had also announced plans to insitute technology platforms and pro-technology learning initiatives to cement and sustain the growth of the overall CET landscape and to keep abreast of disruptive technology or like what my colleague says, "To be ahead of the curve". Some key initiatives in the pipeline include the Learning Space - an online repository which supposedly houses e-elarning content made accessible to the public; a national-level Learning Management System (LMS) [Think Moodle, Blackboard etc.] I thought that this was a good attempt to emulate the success (or failure - some may argue) of the Massic Online Open Courses (MOOC) that took the education scene by storm. To date, close to 40 e-learning courseware have been developed and uploaded to the "e-CET LMS" rendering it operational. Another initiative which I find was rather similar to that of MOE's EduLab was the Innovation Lab (In. Lab) where practitioners, researchers could congregate to ideate, share best practices and to innovate and sustain adult learning best practices and pedagogical models.

I can't help but to draw a parallel between the application of technology in the education sector and in adult workplace learning. As a former school teacher, my embodiment and experiences have always prompted me to redefine my understanding, perceptions and perspectives in learning in the world of adult learning. To begin with, different camps exist, arguing for and against the universal relevance of pedagogy - the art and science of teaching and learning - to both PET (pre-employment) and CET (continuing education) learning. A relative well-known advocate on adult learning principles, Malcolm Knowles (Andragogy) argued that adults learn differently from that of school children, citing that adults need compelling reasons to learn; require learning to be situated to meet their immediate needs and for transference of competencies and that they assimilate new knowledge/skills best when prior experiences are being built on.

Having said all these, the question would really be "Can similar learning technology practices and initiatives that have exhibited some form of success in schools be adopted by the CET to reap the same benefits?". Yes and no, depending on the intent, educator, coupled with the affordances of these tools. Notice I deliberately ranked the enablers in order beginning with the intent or rather the purpose of innovating the way educators design instructions, follow by the pedagogical capability of the educator and lastly, the technology tool as a static piece of, tool. To delve a little deeper, I think many have conjured a technology-biased connotation on what "innovation" means. According to Dictionary.com, "innovation" refers to "something new or introduced". Nowhere can you see the word "technology". To me, "innovation" can even simply refer to revising or transforming current processes or even reinvent an existing model and situate it to current context. It's about adaptation and evolution, not necessary creation.

Back to the earlier question, I definitely welcome the slew of new initatives in the pipeline to scale the CET landscape. However, I thought we would probably need to approach the subject of applying e-learning in adult learning setting with caution. At the very least, I think as adult educators, we need to be fully aware of whether there's a need to do something differently and not just having another novelty. 

iCTLT: Day 2 - To Flip or not to Flip? That is the Question.

First, I would like to qualify that I'm not an existing practitioner. Back in those days when I was teaching, I could vividly remembered the mad rush to complete the syllabus in time for the 'O' levels Cambridge. Countless nights were spent drilling content and concepts into the students who survived the sessions by subsisting on a meagre diet of khong Guan biscuits (proudly sponsored by moi). 

Looking back, Web 2.0 social media tools were in existence then and I had also humbly attempted to use the Facebook to create a class community to augment formal class lessons as well. A selection of carefully curated Youtube videos delivering content and 3D modelling of human organs were uploaded to the social learning space. Furthermore, I also remembered using Camtasia, a presentation recording software to record my lectures and Powerpoint sequence flow. These videos, coupled with scaffolding e-worksheets were bundled and delivered via our ver own FB community. Suddenly, there's this deja vu feeling that starts to swell from within - Am I not "flipping" my classroom?

Flipped Classroom, or as Mr Aaron Sams - one of the most dedicated and innovative teacher I've every seen- prefers, Flipped Learning is not an ingenius creation. It's intriguing to know that we've all been practising it or have done it at a moment in time. The astonishing thing is that, flipped learning could be dated back as far as 200 years back - at Westpoint (USMA). Officer cadets at Wespoint undergo a rigorous learning path devised based on the Thayer's method. The Thayer's method stipulates the dissemination of course learning objectives and supplementary reading materials to cadets prior to them attending face-to-face lessons. Keller's Personalised System of Instruction (PSI) in the 1960s also emphasises self-paced learning and mastery of units i.e. progress to the next level when one has master the current set of contents. Keller further suggests that lectures are means of motivational devices that help to augment learning. Flipped learning works along similar principles articulated by these earlier theories. 

I was particularly drawn to Sams' use of the Universal Design Learning (UDL) guidelines to further reinforce flipped learning. One of the objectives of flipping is to hopefully provide opportunities for differentiated learning and UDL has articulated a set of guidelines to enable educators to explore means and ways in delivering the knowledge, accept students' variety of ways in demonstrating competence in a subject matter and in motivating students' learning. Another team of teachers from Bowen Secondary School also presented refreshing idea of using gamification of game-based rules to define their flipped lessons. As opposed to popular conception of gamification, the term doesn't necessary refer to a gaming e-courseware for learning. It just simply means the employment of game-based rules and mechanics i.e. scoreboard, points, badges, levels, tokens etc. to augment a lesson.

"To flip or not to flip?" I guess the motivation behind flipping varies with different educators. One thing is consistent though - flipping a lesson requires tremendous amount of hard work, dedication and conviction by the educator and of course - flipping doesn't guarantee good results or outcomes, but one thing for sure, it could almost certainly guarantee an unforgettable learning process for the students.

iCTLT: Day 1 - Creativity & Entreprenuership? A New Paradigm for Education?

“Harnessing the power of technology tools to enhance pedagogy, enable action, empower learners and to engage learning” seems like a mouthful. In fact, we all know that the digital revolution has spared no one from the formidable effects of pervasive change. Change in almost every area. However, we must remain grounded and true to the way we perceive the core of education. Like how Dr. Yong Zhao aptly puts it, “Technology cannot replace paper, just like how it can’t replace your toilet roll!”. As educators or educationists, we are all guided by fundamental beliefs on the guiding principles of learning, regardless of the means to elicit the process. As long as the learner achieves deep and meaningful learning, we have fulfilled our mission.

I’m going to talk about Dr. Yong Zhao who not only has a wicked sense of humour but also has a creative and ingenious perspective of what education means to the digital natives. Dr. Yong Zhao from University of Oregon, likens the formal school system to a ‘sausage-making machine’ where homogeneous “sausages” or the learners are being “churned” out of the school system. The highly formalised structure was the order of the day back in the industrial revolution period where there was only a single outcome prescribed for school leavers – to enter into the workforce as employees. Back then, millions of jobs were created by a few powerful figures and hence, the nature and volume of jobs were pretty much predictable. Children were hence, whipped into shape to conform to a standard mould of delivering an exacted outcome with a known expectation in their life – basic survival.

In today’s context especially under the dominion of technology, conformity is nearing its demise. The much celebrated order of the day is creativity and entrepreneurship and for schools to be able to realign themselves to the new social trend is to first, stop killing and stifling creativity in our children. With the abundance of information comes the power of having choices. Whether a choice is good or bad, it is still a choice sought after by a group of consumers. A very good example provided was on the element of attraction exuded by a celebrity who in actual fact, has yet to do anything great or have any special talent. And yet, legions of fans celebrate the ‘nothingness’ of this person! The idea is, the fact that ‘nothingness’ i.e. no special talents, no exceptionally high intelligence could be even be worth celebrating simply tells us that choices are created by the creatives for the purpose of satisfying consumers' behaviours today. 

Contrasting the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom (the western powers) with East Asia countries such as Singapore, Japan and Hongkong, Dr. Yong Zhao pointedly 'rebuked' the western states for doing a 'bad job' in killing creativity and hence, their 'sausage-making machines' had inadvertently produced other kinds of 'hybridized meat products' other than the standardised 'sausages' prescribed by a certain receipe. The outcome is clear. These western powers are still economic powerhouses, driven by an incessant spirit of entrepreneurism of its people, despite the long history of poor performance in standardised test scoring. 

In Dr. Yong Zhao's lastest release, "World Class Learners", he had echoed the World Economic Forum's (2007, 2011) view to emphasise on the importance of entreprenuership as the key driver to grow and sustain the economic landscape in the coming century before the current system of employeeship stagnates. On this note, school systems should allow creativity space to blossom and sincerely embrace the concept of multiple intelligences of human. "To create and to engineer is human" (Zhao, 2012) and this is so true.

Reflections on Problem-based Learning: More than a Learning Methodology

I was particularly drawn to this year's PBL seminar organised by the Republic Polytechnic which places special emphasis on operationalising PBL in the context of the workplace. Apart from inviting Prof. Kolmos, who is the Unesco Chair for PBL from Aalsbrough University, another keynote speaker who touched specifically on workplace PBL was Ms Sabrina Koh from Jurong Health. I was pretty excited to hear from Ms Koh, who was a formal healthcare practitioner and is currently one of the faculty members implementing the PBL approach in healthcare simulation training. Educational and learning principles and practices could not be be purely derived from theories and researches; hence, nothing beats hearing from a practitioner-researcher who not only understands the theoretical groundings of learning and sees the application issues in actual implementation on the ground.

Of course, the first keynote which underscored  macro perspectives and trends of PBL on a global level could not be ignored totally. Typically, educators viewed PBL as yet another pedagogical approach or methodology that aims to accentuate the learning process in helping learners gain awareness of their cognitive dispositions, work effectively in teams and develop an epistemic appreciation that knowledge and or solution to the problem is not absolute and subjected to the pressure of groups opinions, changing contextual influences and governed by personal judgement and decision-making predispositions. 

I would like to agree with the general understanding to a certain extent. While PBL is indeed an approach coined earlier by Barrows (1980) in medical school training, I would purport that it has far reaching impacts on organisations' learning and development as a whole in terms of workplace learning. PBL, if implemented carefully at all the system levels within an organisation, not only changes the way learning takes place in he organisation, but collectively at an organisational level, it could radicalise the way organisations tackle and perform its core functions. All these are possible based on a simple condition: the use of problems as triggers to the learning process. How do we then define 'problems'? I will provide a simple answer to this - Any situation that arises could be a potential problem, be it a practical, theoretical or hypothetical problem. Hence, it follows that employees in organisations are trained to mitigate 'problems'. A problem need not necessary be linked with negative connotation; it could simply be a situation that disrupts the norm, or hypothetical issue that has yet to happen (in the case of strategic planning) etc. Henceforth, the effects of adopting PBL in fact, permeates all levels of functions and influences the organisational culture and beliefs as well. Scaling this hypothesis down a little, one could imagine how the attitudes and beliefs of employees could be shaped by PBL. Employees attuned to PBL would approach issues with a fundamental believe that there's more than one correct and absolute way to solivng an issue and that sometimes even the experts don't have the answers. They will be forced to thoroughly examine he situation, source for relevant information, make sense of them and apply the most plausible solution to the issue. Often times, a resolution could not even be reached. Employees are required then to deal with the tentative nature and fluidity and even complexity of the situation and adapt possible resolutions along the way.

In any case, I thought that PBL is the way forward to prepare learners to face the challenging and complex world and I am glad that RP has realise this.