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.