On Online Facilitator Skills
If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish…
I am in the business of creating CONTENT for e-learning programmes and STRUCTURING a blended learning delivery approach. I usually (but not uniquely) use Moodle as my platform for this (in my experience it is the best VLE out there). Blended-learning CONTENT, however, really needs to be consolidated by simultaneous delivery of an online facilitator capacity-building objective.
The large majority of the most important learning facilitation skills transfer readily from one delivery medium to another. A trainer who can design effective learning programmes, engender learner motivation, deal empathetically with learner difficulties, etc. can transfer competencies to their delivery of e-learning which they have developed when delivering a face-to-face learning programme.
There are, however, a number of course design and learning facilitation skills which are specific to online / distance learning. These facilitation skills include:
On Blended Learning Programme Design
I am in the business of creating blended learning programmes. The driving question behind each and every blended learning programme I create will invariably be:
“What will people be able to DO as a result of
working through this learning programme?”
e-learning design is not just about producing an attractive graphic user interface. I will design learning programmes which are completely focussed on producing performance improvements in your target groups of learners.
What’s wrong with selling your software?
Why bother with Open Source Code?
Both the political/philosophical and the practical engineer’s arguments underpinning the importance of the growth in Free Open Source Software are frequently posited:
A business model for supporting WBL
My business model for supporting Work-Based Learning Providers rests on the following principles:
- I want to make Free, Open Source Software sing for people and I have a strong background in education, specifically WBL. I can help a provider make the most of the enterprise-class free software out there in way which ties in your ILT development strategy very logically with your Business Development Plan, SAR and QiP. I can also help you to tender for grants and government funding to support your organisation’s ILT and general business growth.
- I will cut costs and increase revenue for your training provider services (fact) at the same time as making you look cool and modern for when the new Ofsted inspectors turn up. Get in touch if you want me to detail a few of the ways I can make this sort of thing possible for you.
- I can corporate brand, integrate and tailor a wide range of different software applications to make them match your actual need. If you buy software out of the box, it will only do what the software you have bought does. I, on the other hand, because I access Open Source Code, can make the software you use do exactly what you want the software you use to do. Make sense? PLEASE ask me to explain more, if you wish me to.
- I am a teacher, a tender-writer for government funding and a project manager as well as being a bit of a computer geek. Not only will I widen a providers’ sights re: the free, enterprise-class software available at no cost, I will actually plan a software implementation programme for you AND I will then regularly, physically turn up at your premises (Once a fortnight? / Once a month?) to get your people using the new applications successfully. No other software providers are offering this sort of service at my sort of prices - nor do they have my level of familiarity with the everyday workings of the WBL delivery sector.
- I’m more than happy to train any member of your staff to do anything and everything I know how to do as quickly and as efficiently as I can, if you should judge that to be a sensible investment on your part.
- I’ll do a pretty impressive software implementation and support job for you for a fee less than an average administrator’s monthly wage draw. As I am a subcontractor, you will remain completely free to stop contracting me as soon as you feel I am no longer adding value.
- There is no vendor lock-in with me - If you buy a proprietary e-portfolio, for example, you are “locked in” to that software vendor. Should you decide to change software vendor (because they have hiked up their prices, for example) you will lose all of your data (without a fairly major (and expensive) data-dumping exercise) because it is stored in their own proprietary format. All providers will be buying from me is a service. If you ever get “fed-up” with me, your data is completely yours (stored on free, open data formats) and you can simply pass the data on to your new, preferred software service provider.
My job for you, then, will be to provide high enough a service quality to ensure I don’t lose you as my client. That is the way things should be…. but, don’t get me started on the politics behind all this. If you’re interestedin learning more about Open Source, check out these links to get you started:
1. The shadow chancellor said this in March 2007:
http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=135394
2. The UK’s new National Open Centre has just been launched:
http://www.nationalopencentre.org.uk/about-us