Engineering Technology is and always will be a growing field. It is what sparks innovation in the manufacturing industry and drives economic success. Eastern Iowa Community Colleges recognized this and sought a Department of Labor grant that aimed to teach engineering concepts in an innovative way. Enter Lucid Way; an online training and elearning company in Moline, IL.
Owner at Lucid Way, Tim Hunter explained that “It’s a capstone project of everything we do as a company. Projects like this are challenging, creative, fun, and rewarding. By helping a person or school with these hard to understand topics in engineering, we are in a lot of ways helping our own future.” Lucid Way was an integral part of designing the online instructional delivery at the college.
The project takes simple STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) subjects that are normally taught with a chalkboard or a book, and transforms them into an interactive 3D model that explains the inner workings of various engineering technology topics. The website http://engineertech.org has over 150 simulations that can be downloaded or embedded into a learning management system, website, or be viewed on a classroom project. Everything is free and is available under a Creative Commons license.
The Associate in Applied Science Degree at EICC is designed so that roughly the first three semesters are identical and students can take courses at any of the three colleges. In the final semester, the student has the choice of specializing in four different areas: Automation, Electro/Mechanical, Process Control or Renewable Energy. These courses are delivered with a hybrid approach that works for both people in the workforce and full time students. The courses are offered through the online platform of the Iowa Community College Online Consortium (ICCOC), and a classroom/hands-on lab environment. Students can enter the course at any given time throughout the year and instructors are available every day and night to help the students with their lab work. This unique approach allows students to complete the courses around their own schedules, but also get the personal face-to-face contact with instructors that is often lacking in fully online courses.
The engineer technology website offers over 150 engineering simulations and is free to use and distribute.
If your students know what needs to be learned in order to master a particular objective, they will know what areas to focus on the most.
In online and distance learning in general, learning objectives are key. Students will often experience problems if there are not clear objectives and instructions in order to achieve mastery of that particular objective. Remember that you cannot take a real-time formative assessment of your students understanding of the material (the look in their eyes) , so writing clear objectives helps to guide your students and your quizzes, assignments, and discussions will help you know if they mastered that objective.
The question we must ask is “What will the learner know, be able to do, demonstrate, feel, etc. when these tasks have been completed?” Then how do you evaluate or assess that indeed they did learn it? This can be accomplished by designing your evaluation tool based on your objectives. We call this instructional alignment.
Let’s talk about a few key reasons writing objectives should be important to you – and your students.
Instructional objectives offer a means for the instructor to design appropriate instruction that will facilitate effective learning.
Instructional objectives provide a framework for devising ways to evaluate student learning.
Thirdly, objectives guide the learner. The rationale is that students will use the objectives to identify the skills and knowledge they must master.
The preceding points taken from “Designing Effective Instruction” 2nd Edition Kemp, Jerrold; Morrison, Gary; Moss, Steven).
In 1956, Benjamin Bloom led a group of educational psychologists who identified 3 levels of intellectual behavior important to learning. His taxonomy, “Blooms Taxonomy” is still widely used in education today.
Instructional Objectives are categorized into 3 domains according to Bloom’s Taxonomy:
Cognitive Domain – (Mental Skills and Knowledge)
Psychomotor Domain- (Manual or Physical Skills)
Affective Domain – (Growth in Feelings or Emotional Areas – Attitudes)
We’ve been busy working on some new projects. One thing we strive for always is our user interface and usability. It cannot be underestimated. Unfortunately, you find many online courses and e-learning training doing the wrong things which ultimately shuts the learner down and puts them into the “just get this done” mode – rather than “I want to learn more” mode.
A few things we always keep in mind when designing our e-learning interfaces:
Audience – Are they computer savvy? Are they an older demographic? Are they kids? It all matters. Do not underestimate the importance of this.
Colors – Again, look at your audience. Get a book such as Pantone’s Guide for Communicating with Color or find some other resources for how color affects the psychology of people who see your designs. Ever wonder why banks almost always have the color blue in their logos? It’s because blue is associated with water and the sky which are considered constant and dependable.
Buttons – we like simple buttons for custom e-learning apps – Exit, Help, Continue, Go Back. Keep it simple. Don’t overthink things and make sure the user can navigate effectively. For online courses, don’t overcomplicate your LMS – keep things simple and concentrate on the content you provide – be a facilitator, not a complicator.
Content – keep the content engaging and on the screen. If you just provide PDF files or PPT files for learners to download and post to a discussion, it’s OK but aren’t there better ways of engaging your learners?
Multimedia – Just because “you can” doesn’t mean you should. Drag and Drop interactions and multimedia interactions look cool, but often times are unnecessary. If there is a particular concept that is difficult to teach through the written word or a lecture, consider developing a multimedia interaction that helps to illustrate the concept. We’ve seen time and time again where e-learning developers spend too much time on multimedia and forget about the entire instructional design. Work on your instructional design first, then build it out.
Get a wire diagramming tool to help you develop, test, and get approval of your design prior to development.
Develop your e-learning and get approval along the way. Nothing hurts more than building out the entire e-learning and then showing it off only to find that you have to redo the interface because the buttons are confusing to the target audience test group.
Following this simple advice will help you develop some pretty good training. Simplicity is always best, focus on content and facilitation.
Well it’s finally here. A new Learning Management System (LMS) plugin for WordPress made by Woothemes.com. There is a demo there that you can play around with as the role of “student.” It looks a bit jumbled right now, but before we pre-judge Sensei, we’ll be buying it and testing it out – We’ll report the results back here after some thorough testing.
Face value from we see now is that it’s cool – really cool. I especially like how it is integrated with the shopping cart plugin WooCommerce so you can sell courses that you develop. As with all V1 releases, it needs to be refined based on user feedback. I would also assume that Woothemes.com will open up the floodgates to developers who can offer additional functionality to the LMS.
Definitely one to keep an eye on. The next thing we need to look at is server load testing which we will also be reporting back here.
Competency-based training models allow learners to demonstrate what they know and move on if they already know the material. I’m sure you’ve sat in a class before thinking to yourself “I know this stuff already!” Many organizations allow you to test out of certain courses but, in most cases you have to take the whole course even if you know it. So the idea of competency-based training models is viable – and even more-so in the current educational and training landscape.
How Competency-based Training Models Work
The short answer is, it depends. I say this because some subjects lend themselves better to competency-based testing than others. Of course there are some politics involved as well such as standards, articulation to colleges or certifications, butts in seats, and of course money. Generally, though there is no subject matter that someone could not “test out” of if the test is developed correctly. This is easier said than done. We’ll look at some of the obvious coursework that lends itself to competency-based testing.
Programming (computer science)
Micro-computer applications (MS Office)
Skills based (forklift operations, overhead crane operation)
Electro-Mechanical (knowledge of electrical systems, mechanical operations, hydraulics)
etc.
You should get the idea from the list above. The student who can demonstrate they already know the material can test out and move on without taking the class. They are also performance based subjects and it is very easy to distinguish if the student does not know the material. You simply give them a task to complete, a scenario, or a project and perhaps a written test to demonstrate competency.
The Test
The test has to be based on the main objectives or the certification standards that the course is trying to achieve. In the actual classroom, the instructor should be basing everything they do on their goals and objectives of the course. So for competency-based models, the test could be the same test that is given in the classroom. If the student passes that test, they are demonstrating they know the material and should not need to go through the entire classroom course. If the test is not designed correctly, it renders the competency-based model unreliable. This is why test design is crucial to “testing out.”
Conclusion
For companies, it reduces training costs if they hired a skilled worker who says they already know the material, and that company could validate the fact that they do. In terms of workforce development for a college or vocational school, competency based training models get unemployed workers back into the workforce faster.
Online teaching should really be called online facilitation.
I’ve seen it time and time again; traditional classroom instructors are told they have to teach online. The problem is, many of them don’t know how. They are used to lecturing with a PowerPoint, going on field trips, or doing a lab – they TEACH. But in online environments, “teaching” is not as necessary. Some may argue this, but the fact remains that a clear majority of online courses out there are facilitated courses. Some may site some great innovators who do live lecture sessions, recorded lessons, and more; but the beauty of online learning is that it puts the student in the driver seat and the teacher in the navigational passenger seat.
So I ran across a great article today regarding online facilitation, and I thought it to be pretty simple and accurate tips for online educators.
