Year: 2018

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Flipped Adult Education

Europaeische Bildungsinitiative Flipped Adult Education, Project
Flipped Adult Education
Adult Education
(Source: PixaBay)

This is the title of the new Erasmus+ project of the EBI/EIE. As the coordinator in this project we will initiate the development of an eBook as a guide to flipped learning in the field of Adult Education.

The objectives of the FADE-in project are to develop a course concepts to adult learning using a flipped approach. This means active and self-directed learning, to “flip” the roles (Trainer ⇒ Facilitater, Learner ⇒ Self-Determining Adult with self-responsibility for their learning (heutagogical approach). The Global Flipped Learning Initiative (GFLI) with Jon Bergman (the developer of Flipped
Learning) will be an associated partner in the project and impact with the state-of-the-art knowledge and experience of “flipping the
learning”.

The consortium consists of four AE organisations with a complementary field of action well-distributed in Europe (Greece, Spain, Norway, Austria). This will ensure a wide scope of experience and impact to the project as well as a versatile result addressing all groups of adult learners. The consortium in detail consist of

  • EBI (Austria), a AE institution with an own research and technics
    department focusing on elderly adults.
  • EDRASE (Greece) is specialist in courses held on remote places addressing adults with geographical obstacles.
  • Intermezzo Ungdomsorganisasjon (Norway), an AE organization with a focus on younger adults, including people with migration background and refugees, will focus on language learning and inclusion.
  • Asociación Juvance (Spain) is involved in the work with younger adults, many of them with fewer opportunities, and focuses on intercultural, critical learning to endorse the learners to act as active, creative, responsive and supportive citizens.

The developed eBook will enable other AE providers also to change their teaching. Courses for trainers of AE organisations will pass the project’s results to them. The project’s findings will bring an impact of renewal to AE organisations. This impact will be enabled by the professional and intensive dissemination of the project to the target groups.

Official Erasmus+ Project Partner

Europaeische Bildungsinitiative Flipped Adult Education, Project
Official Erasmus+ Project Partner

We got the official Erasmus+ Partner Plate for our new project “Flipped Adult Education”.

The project will start with November 1, 2018 and run until October 31, 2020. The “Flipped Adult Education” project FADE-in takes a look at the horizon of educational developments and takes in account the innovation of the last ten years. This causes to shift the training methods and training activities. Simple onsite teaching courses or technology enhanced blended learning courses must be brought to the state of the art.
Thought to its very end this should be active teaching, a heutagogical approach with self-determining learners, the use of multimedia and a change of the roles of trainer and learner. The trainer will act more as a facilitator of the learning, the learners will use technology to create self-directed learning. The consortium calls this a flipping of learning following the ideas on Jon Bergmann, published in his book Flipped Learning 2.0 (addressing Vocational Education and Training).
For Adult Education (EA) flipped concepts do not exist and are not yet published. Therefore, the consortium of 4 completely different AE providers is going to develop these concepts in a versatile way and to publish the findings in an eBook (as OER to contribute to open education).
The objectives of the FADE-in project are to develop a course concepts to adult learning using a flipped approach. This means active and self-directed learning, to “flip” the roles (Trainer => Facilitater, Learner => Self-determining adult with self-responsibility for their learning (heutagogical approach). The Global Flipped Learning Initiative (GFLI) with Jon Bergman (the developer of Flipped
Learning) will be an associated partner in the project and impact with the state-of-the-art knowledge and experience of “flipping the learning”.

Project presented at the EDEN Conference 2018 (Genoa)

Europaeische Bildungsinitiative Project, Technology Enhanced Teaching, VTT-Box project
Project presented at the EDEN Conference 2018 (Genoa)

Peter Mazohl will present the European Erasmus+ project the “Virtual Teachers Toolbox” (VTT-Box) at the EDEN conference in Genoa (in June 2018). This 2-year project aims to create a special virtual toolbox for teachers as a sophisticated tool for developing Open Online Distance Learning (OODL) courses which means open, online, flexible and technology enhanced education (OOFAT).

Example of a self evaluation mandala (taken from the VTT-Box pilot course about electric circuits)

As a complete innovation, the self-evaluation mandala is implemented as a motivating tool. It is a graphical pattern to collect the pre-competence of the learners and to compare it with the learning outcomes. Another innovative tool is the toolbox which helps the teachers to create correct mandalas and supplies the teachers with information and knowledge to create the courses easily. A specific pedagogical approach is developed in the frame of the project.

Several frameworks developed by the European Commission (EC) in the frame of former projects are also part of the project and used in the toolbox. In particular, the DigiCompEdu2.0 framework is used as well as the E-xellence quality framework developed by the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) for course development, course creation and implementation and the course evaluation. The used learning platform is Moodle 3.X.

This project uses a strategic cooperation between formal and non-formal/informal educational providers using ICT based teaching and the enhancement of digital integration in learning. It will be enhancing teachers’ professional development and support students‘ acquisition of values, skills and competences.

The partners in Erasmus + project VTT-Box 2017-1-ES01-KA201-028199 are:

  • Colegio Internacional Costa Adeje (Spain), coordinador
  • Europäische Bildungsinitiative (Austria)
  • T.S Vittorio Veneto Salvemini (Italy)
  • University of Crete (Greece)
  • Swedish Association for Distance Education (Sweden)

Tutorial Support – how to Contact the Trainer?

PeterMaz Technology Enhanced Teaching
Tutorial Support – how to Contact the Trainer?

As an organization intensively involved in eLearning we permanently check the quality of our courses and try to amend the quality. One issue is the communication – here mainly the contact between the learners and the tutor.

In fact, we were sure that the best method is a forum where learners can ask the trainer. The result of a questionnaire (conducted in the frame of a Grundtvig Multilateral Project) the results prove our current opinion – but not fully.

Do women prefer to talk?

In an eLearning course, there is always the problem of the support of the learners. Sometimes, learners want to contact their tutor or the have a problem and need help from their trainer or teacher. Which method – do you think – is the best one?

There are several methods available and you have to select the best one. Here is the list of possibilities:

  • Telephone
  • Skype
  • Forum
  • Chat

Here are two synchronous and two asynchronous methods mentioned.

Chat

Forum

Skype

Telephone
Female

15 %

63,2 %

17 %

5 %
Male

12 %

72,0 %

13 %

3 %

The behavior is similar: the majority prefers forums. Here the preference of male participants is about 10 percent higher as the female answers.

Female participants in the opposite show a higher percentage of skype preferences – they prefere to talk.

If you check the differences between synchronous and asynchronous communication you will find a six percent higher level of preferences for synchronous methods at the female users.

eLearning Quality Fields

PeterMaz Miscellaneous, Quality, Technology Enhanced Teaching
eLearning Quality Fields

The use of eLearning and Distance Learning is increasing and plays a more and more important role in the teaching environment. Here are some quality characteristics of eLearning (focusing on the learner):

Sorting some images instead of contribution to the learning.
  • Learning goal: What does the learner want to learn?
  • Learning motivation: Why does the learner want to learn?
  • Learning setting: Activities surrounding the learning object
  • Time: How much time does the learner have to learn?
  • Culture and language: Learners are in a multi-cultural context as well in a multilingual environment (especial in Europe)
  • Educational level: Age and learning background of the learners
  • Accessibility: Access for all (also disabled of handicapped people; in Germany called barrier-free access).

The images show a teaching situation where the motivation of the students is not-existing and the eLearning (in a face to face environment) fails …

No motivation: facebook is more interesting!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Key Areas for Quality definition in eLearning

PeterMaz Quality, Technology Enhanced Teaching
Key Areas for Quality definition in eLearning
To be successful in eLearning several key areas of quality should be fulfilled.

2002 the “Council for Higher Education” CHEA published the following seven key areas as criteria for measure eLearning quality:

  1. Institutional Mission
  2. Institutional Organization Structure
  3. Institutional resources
  4. Curriculum and instruction
  5. Faculty support
  6. Student support
  7. Student learning outcomes

In the same paper, three key areas are mentioned as challenges for quality assurance of distance education:

  • An alternative design of instructions (dealing with curriculum, student support etc.
  • Alternative providers of higher education (focus on all seven key areas mentioned before)
  • Expanded focus on training

You may download this interesting document from the CHEA-Website

http://www.chea.org/pdf/mono_1_accred_distance_02.pdf

eLearning and Blended Learning Materials

PeterMaz Blended Learning, Miscellaneous, Technology Enhanced Teaching
eLearning and Blended Learning Materials
Books were a source for learning hundreds of years. Today, they still play a role – but often in an electronical version (ebook)

To plan and develop an eLearning course covers many aspects. To ensure the necessary quality you have to consider the institutional mission, the organizational structure and the available resources. Furthermore, you have to care for a well-fitting curriculum and design, the support from faculty (or similar internal structure) as well as the students’ support and to define the competence oriented learning outcomes.

Create the content

For the content of such a well-designed course, you have to develop the best-fitting material. Content in eLearning should cover different activities and learning content in a well-defined mixture (that depends in most cases from the taught subject). The following issues must be included:

  • Content to gain knowledge
  • Activities to interact with other learners. To promote group work and to develop the skills defined in the competence oriented learning outcomes
  • Content to develop the learners’ attitudes (as defined in the learning outcomes)
  • Assessments and test environment to check the learning progress

Reuse the content

The created content should be reusable – that means, that – as a start developed – content can be used easily also in other courses. The costs of content development for one single course ar too high to create high quality eLearning courses economically.

Where to take content?

There are different types of content based on the used media. Specialists in the subject can do writing a text easily. To provide the necessary graphics or high-quality multimedia material is more difficult and in the most cases cost extensive: You have to buy the material from companies specialized in that field of multimedia or expansive internal or external specialist create it.

Images and graphics

In spite of paying a lot of money for external specialists or image agencies, you may use content from sources under the Creative Commons (or similar environments).

This chapter of the webpage will supply you with information about “open resources”.

Animations

The same situation as mentioned above is in the field animations. There are many applications available either to create animations or ready-to-use animations that can be used without copyright violation.

You will also find here some information about free material and the legal conditions for their use.

Advantages of eLearning

PeterMaz Miscellaneous, Technology Enhanced Teaching
Advantages of eLearning
Technology is a fact in learning. Multiple devices varying in size, power, and functionality can be found frequently used by learners.

Here is an overview about eLearning advantages (we always compare eLearning with pure face-to-face classroom teaching). The list is split into three parts respecting the different target groups involved in eLearning. The summary is based on modern eLearning courses using an optimized platform (that does not really exist) and well done courses using a lot or multimedia elements and interactivity.

Advantages of eLearning (learner’s view)

  • Learner actively involved in his/her e-learning
  • Interactivity and attractiveness of eLearning content
  • Flexibility and adaptability according to availability (time, location)
  • Training at own pace, independently of other learners
  • Self-assessment during and at end of course
  • Personal progress monitoring during eLearning course and appraisal of results obtained thanks to tracking
  • Tutorial support on demand (if necessary)
  • Contact to other learners (if planned and necessary)
  • No travel costs

Advantages of eLearning (company’s view)

  • “Mass” training (big number of learners)
  • Savings relative to classroom-based training indirect costs (travel, accommodation, etc.)
  • Flexibility and adaptability according to learner availability (time, location)
  • Customization and adjustment of training courses to predefined skills and teaching goals
  • Low logistical constraints (no room booking, employee travel, accommodation, etc.)
  • Precise course reporting and automated results analysis thanks to tracking (based on the eLearning platform)
  • Durable and updatable teaching materials (often reuseable)

Advantages of eLearning (trainer’s view)

  • Prerequisites for assessing learner levels
  • Training performed on interactive and attractive tools for both trainer and learners
  • Flexibility and adaptability according to availability (time, location) especial for the tutorial support
  • Learner monitoring from the platform (tracking)