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Learning (2006)  

 

Pre Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning
2006 virtual conference

THEME 2: LEARNING FOR DEVELOPMENT
31 July-18 August 2006 

Report of the Moderator
Dr. Som Naidu

 

In the position paper on this topic, I raised three main points:

  • The role of context, culture and community in promoting meaningful learning;
  • The role of open, flexible and distance learning in promoting meaningful learning and in building knowledge that engages the context, culture, and the community; and
  • The role of information and communications technology in building knowledge that engages the context and culture of the community.

In the ensuing online discussion forum on this theme, that I moderated, at the start of each week I posed one of these questions inviting participants to respond to it as many times as they liked during that week.

Question 1: What is your interest in this topic? What are you most concerned about in relation to learning? Briefly outline an experience that you have had (or you know about) in promoting "meaningful learning" that was grounded in the context, culture and the community. What was the learning context, what were the goals of the initiative, what were the opportunities and some of the challenges?

Question 2: What contribution can open, flexible and distance learning make in promoting meaningful learning and in building knowledge that engages the context, culture, and the community? Do open, flexible and distance learning offer particular advantages over other modes of learning and teaching? Relate an experience that you may have had or know about.

Question 3: Relate an experience that you have had or know about that highlights the opportunities and challenges that ICTs have for building knowledge that engages the context and culture of the community?

These questions sought to extract relevant experiences from the participants on the subject. In this brief preliminary report I will use these questions to capture some of their notable experiences.


Interest and concerns about "Learning"

Foremost, I sought to establish participants' interest in this topic and what they were most concerned about?

The following selection captures some of this interest.

  • How well e-learning systems work with differing groups of learners in different environments, and in particular how important the social aspect is and how to implement it with differing groups.
  • How do we develop programs and courses that engage the participants in ways that make sense to them within the contexts in which they live and work?
  • What has to be done to put the "social constructivism" back into community courses and programs?

The following selection captures some of their concerns.

  • Relevance, appropriate delivery mechanisms, effective use of ICTs and social networking.
  • Finding suitable models for effectively integrating ODL and ICT for enabling learning for community development.
  • The design of the learning experiences, in order for the learners to interact meaningfully with the content, to make the learning of facts, principles, and procedures more meaningful.
  • Providing challenging activities, enhancing critical reflection, encouraging collaboration leading to formation of a community of learners, ultimately moving towards the same learning culture, resulting in a meaningful learning.


Experiences in promoting meaningful learning

I asked participants to briefly outline any experience they had with promoting meaningful learning that was grounded in the context, culture and the community. They were urged to describe the learning context, the goals of the initiative, what were the opportunities and some of its challenges?

The following comprised some of the notable experiences:

  1. Master of Arts in Teacher Education. The Master of Arts in Teacher Education (International) program of the OUSL is a COL sponsored project designed to upgrade the skills of practicing teacher educators. A unique feature of the program is its pedagogical design in which the learning and teaching activities are situated around authentic learning scenarios drawn from the field. This is an example of a very hands-on, and a learner-centered design in which there is a very strong emphasis on learning by doing that is grounded in the learning context.
  2. Applied Academics Program. The "applied academics" program in British Columbia, Canada was an effort to integrate academic and occupational education. The idea was to learn about math or physics in the context of problems that arose in the workplace. It sought to engage students who wouldn't normally think of going on to post-secondary because school subjects for them didn't usually make much sense.
  3. Sustainability: Step by Natural Step. The "Sustainability: Step by Natural Step" program provides an interactive overview of sustainability and The Natural Step Framework, which is a practical, science-based approach used by organizations and communities around the world for sustainability planning and decision-making. The best successes with this course have been with communities who tightly integrate it with the use of the planning and decision-making framework.
  4. French Language Learning. This is project of the Government of Québec in Canada for French language instructions to prospective immigrants. To make this learning meaningful, all learning activities are situated in contexts that matter very much to prospective immigrants, such as finding shelter, finding employment, exploring educational options for children, etc., and "flavored" with the mores, values, artifacts and idiosyncrasies of Québec culture.
  5. Life long learning for farmers. This is a project that seeks to raise information awareness among farmers in rural communities of southern India. A COL initiative, that seeks to give farmers easier access to the information and knowledge that could improve the productivity and improve their livelihoods in turn. This project is a prime example of grounding in the context and culture of the community.


 
Experiences in the use of ODL for promoting meaningful learning

Question 2 in the second week directed this discussion on the unique contributions of open, flexible and distance learning in promoting meaningful learning and in building knowledge that engages the context, culture, and the community. I was interested in seeing if participants thought that open, flexible and distance learning offered particular advantages over other modes of learning and teaching. What were their experiences in this regard?

The following were some of the notable experiences.

  1. Master of Arts in Teacher Education. This program is only offered in the distance mode. It seeks to place the learners in a resourceful environment with instructor facilitation and learner support, in order for them to complete the challenging tasks required. The flexibility afforded by distance education methods is particularly suitable for a program such as this which requires students to engage with the context within which they live and work.
  2. Training of Armed Forces at IGNOU. IGNOU provides educational opportunities to variety of groups of people, via distance education, who would otherwise have no access to further education and training. These groups include the armed forces, and prisoners.
  3. InCharge -- Institute and Adoption Learning Partners. InCharge provides debt counseling and financial education to individuals in financial distress. This is an example of how distance learning and ICT's encourage meaningful learning by allowing learners the flexibility to learn critical knowledge in private.
  4. Adoption Learning Partners. This is a program which offers web-based educational resources for adoptive parents, adopted individuals, birth parents and others touched by adoption. Many suggest that it does a better job than classroom-based workshops or online discussion groups of allowing them to "dig deeply" into the complex issues surrounding adoption.
  5. Mobile-Internet Educational Units on Boats (MIEUB). This is a COL supported initiative which makes use of open and flexible education strategies to promote learning in rural communities. The "Mobile-Internet Educational Units are boats with all sorts of educational resources (including ICTs) that are anchored at riversides in local communities in support of evening-night educational programs, using river mela (festival with dance and drama features) as a theme. See   Access Learning Award

 

Experiences in the use of ICTs for building knowledge that engages the context and culture of the community

The final question in the series asked participants to relate experiences that they may have had or knew about which highlighted the opportunities and challenges that ICTs had for building knowledge that engages the context and culture of the community.

Some of the following comprised the notable experiences.

  1. Effective Writing for UN filed staff. This is another one of the COL sponsored programs which uses e-learning to support employees of UN organizations stationed around the world. This is a global enterprise, with administration based in Canada and Geneva; tutors in Canada, the UK and Australia; and course advisors in Hong Kong all communicating via e-mail. Students enter the courses in this program as a cohort of learners, and there is a defined end date but learners are able to negotiate assignment submission dates with their assigned tutor.
  2. Staff Orientation of UNAID staff. I have been involved with a New Staff Orientation kit that I contributed to recently at UNAIDS. This is a CD-ROM-based toolkit that is entirely stand-alone and self-paced. It attempts to familiarize the learner (a recent hire, either in Geneva or field based, at any job level from administrative to technical to managerial) with the most important aspects of UNAIDS mission and ways of working, from administrative procedures to global policy decisions.  It also provides links to key reference documents both where they are stored on the CD-ROM, and where the most up-to-date version should be located on the WWW. The technology is an opportunity to store a large quantity of information in an easily retrievable format that is also easily distributed at low cost either in its CD format, or a web-based equivalent. The CD-ROM format seemed to be the best way to reach those staff with limited connectivity, but even the CD-ROM requires a relatively high-speed CPU and plug-ins to recognize Flash and Shockwave technology.
  3. Professional development of teachers using ICT in Jamaica. This project is about helping teachers use computer software to develop writing skills with their students.  For many of the students this was their first opportunity to use a computer and the majority of the teachers only had limited computer skills.  Students and teachers learned together throughout the project, gaining both literacy and ICT skills.  The opportunities afforded through ICT are great, but we need to provide opportunities for learners to have access to the technology and the skills to use it effectively.
  4. Distance learning for agricultural education in Southern Africa. This is a COL sponsored project for in-service training of agricultural frontline extension officers in Zambia. If extension officers cannot go to university, the university has to come to them through ODL, ICT (see ).
  5. Regional Agricultural Information Network. In sub-Saharan Africa, the digital gap is closing rapidly, but human capacities are lagging behind. The RAIN project conducted an assessment of ICT related training needs in the context of agricultural research for development, and identified many areas and opportunities for training. These included ODL for researchers, technicians, administrators, etc.  The program is going on (see www.tropentag.de/2005/abstracts/posters/276.pdf). 
  6. Technology-mediated open and distance education in Kenya. In Western Kenya, several NGOs, concerned about food security, health (HIV/AIDS), and environment, are presently forming a consortium to improve communication among themselves and within local rural (farming) communities through ODL, ICT.
  7. Mobile phone use at the National Open University of Nigeria. At the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), virtually all our students have mobile phones. This is being used to reach students by broadcast text messages, sending the same info to all of them via a single text message. Furthermore, the mobile phone has become another source of ensuring that the student is not neglected and isolated. Student counselors use mobile phones to ensure that each student is reached at least once in two months.  
  8. Media-rich Urban Shared Experience (MUSE). MUSE stands for Media-rich Urban Shared Experience. One project (Metrocode) allows people to interact through their phones with historical and cultural aspects or their environment as they move around the city. It was first tried at the World Urban Forum last June in Vancouver.

Concluding remarks

Over the three weeks we heard some powerful experiences of people doing extremely interesting work in trying to promote learning that is both learner and learning centered and learning that is grounded in the context and culture of the community it serves. We also heard concerns about and challenges related to the promotion of such a goal.

It has been fascinating reading those powerful stories from participants showing how open, flexible, and distance learning strategies have been especially useful in promoting meaningful learning and teaching activities that is grounded in the learning context.

For me, one of the most powerful of these stories was the one contributed by Krishna Aluri -Innovation at the Riverbanks. Another significant experience in this regard was captured by Vijayalakshmi Pandit. She described a large project (The Life Long Learning for Farmers - L3 Farmers) that brought together educational institutions and commercial banks into a partnership to support and empower farmers with ODL methods and ICT - a project she suggests is closely aligned with the life of people and how ODL methods and simple technologies are fundamentally improving their livelihoods.

There were similarly powerful stories which had to do with using ODL for teachers of Spanish (Cindy Cooper), debt counseling and financial education and the adoption of children (Jacques LeCavalier). Along with ODL methods, these stories also illustrate the particular advantages of ICTs for promoting and pursuing similar goals.

 

Som Naidu