SOMETHING FISHY

“Planning is something your do as you go along”, a colleague said to me recently. I smiled politely, not quite sure if he was serious, and not really wanting to know either if I am honest! After all I would have a reputation for being highly organized and for planning things out to the nth degree. My areas of expertise are project planning and software design, strategic management and high level planning. And yet, with respect to the project we had just recently brought to fruition planning was indeed something we did as we went along – or was it? In fact the project was planned, then it was re-planned and then it was re-planned again. Why, I hear you ask?What was wrong with the original plan? And isn’t that the problem with planning - you need to be highly expert in the relevant area, you need to have done similar projects many times, you need to be a little bit psychic, very religious and it still probably won’t go according to plan! The best laid plans of mice and men etc.

The popular perception is that if something didn’t go according to plan then something went wrong. Why don’t we ever look at deviations from the plan as points of evolution or opportunity? Could the end result actually be better than what had been envisaged in the first place? Might there be more opportunities? Why don’t we lay plans loosely enough to allow for evolution and changes rather than to minimize them? In this age of accountability, transparency and auditability where is the scope for gut instinct, intuition and the belief that this thread is worth following?

I pose these questions because they are the questions I am asking myself as a result of Something Fishy. What started out for me as a low key way of honing my skills in a Virtual Learning Environment, has turned into something quite unique and significant.

In June 2002, not long after I had joined the Management Committee of Blackrock Education Centre(BEC) as the IADT representative, myself and Seamus Cannon (Director BEC) were discussing the potential for eLearning. At the time I had recently returned from an eLearning visit to Memorial UniversityNewfoundland. I was also chairing the eLearning interest group at IADT. Paradoxically, the more I learned about the area the more enthusiastic but depressed I became. It was clear early on that to develop good eLearning content in-house was time-consuming, costly and required specialized skills such as instructional design, graphic design and a wide range of digital media expertise. Even though IADT was ideally placed with respect to having all of these skills in house, the effort associated with using them for content development in addition to the existing teaching, research and development activities would be prohibitive. It was also clear that buying packaged content (e-packs) was an option but this content was mainly American and was very much of it of the “text book on the web” variety.

In chatting with Seamus he mentioned an educational pack which BEC were developing for the Central Fisheries Board. The CFB had approached BEC to produce a poster for primary school classes which would publicise the work of the board. Upon further discussion it had been decided that a classroom pack consisting of workcards and teachers notes would be developed with an emphasis on fish and habitat management which would in fact highlight the core remit of the CFB. The pack would be appropriate for 5th and 6th class primary children. Seamus and I discussed the merits of doing the teacher training component of the project as an online course.

At this point I had had basic training in WebCt and felt that a short course would be an ideal way for me to produce a complete online course without having to develop one for a 30 week module (which would be the duration of one of my own modules). The fact that the material was being produced by someone else for the hard copy of the teachers notes, also meant that theinstructional design work was being done by someone else and by someone who knew how to write for the target audience. We discussed the type of online content and while there was fantastic scope for video, voice and animation we resisted going that route as broadband was merely a spec on the horizon at that time. What we didn’t want to produce was a set of resources that few could use and many could be frustrated in attempting to access.

When I received the material for the teachers notes and started to add simple illustrations in the form of pictures and cartoons it became immediately apparent that this material could be made into a classroom resource relatively easily. By removing the detailed text, highlighting the key points and using lots of colour, cartoons, graphics and photos a set of lessons to accompany the teachers notes could be made available.

The benefits of such a resource were intuitively obvious. Firstly in my experience many people attend training courses which are run in the abstract i.e. new technology is presented in terms of features and functionality rather than applications. Participants enthusiasm is usually tempered by the enormous job of actually creating an application (or in the case of teachers a set of lessons) from an introduction to the technology. As a technologist I expect to be introduced to technology and then go away and make something of it myself. After all I am now teaching concepts which hadn’t been invented when I went to university. But if I studied to be a primary teacher or a Geography, History, or English teacher should I be expected to have to learn the ins and outs of different software and hardware environments in order to give a lesson which I do quite successfully without technology? It has long been my belief that teaching technology for its own sake will only ever engage a small number of people – the enthusiasts who want to “dabble”. But this approach will always side line those people who for reasons of time constraints, confidence, computer literacy or a myriad other reasons simply don’t take on board the “technology shell” and fill it with content. At this point I should say that I don’t believe that providing teachers with glossy, complete content in the form of classroom-ready lessons is necessarily the answer either. Teachers like to customize, tailor and generally fit topics to drivers such as the local environment, the school ethos, the type of students etc. However giving them a starting point, showing them what could be done and then letting them decide whether to take it further would be an interesting approach.

Over time, more time than we anticipated, the system evolved. Periodic meetings were held to discuss current issues or directions. The system was demonstrated at early points and feedback taken and incorporated. As the participants from BEC and the CFB started to see the online course emerge they were able to add suggestions and content such as the superb photos the CFB supplied. The teachers notes were also evolving for the print format and this was taken into account as well.

From a personal perspective I leaned the WebCt environment in a laborious, painstaking way and have since discovered many shortcuts and efficiencies which would have significantly reduced time. It should also be remembered that all participants were doing this in addition to their full-time jobs and while it was integral it was also additional and hence the elapsed time was significant.

The Launch

In September 2003 crunch time came. The printed pack was in its final proofing stage and was almost ready to go to print. We had to decide to launch the project and we took some time to consider how to do it. The Blackrock and Monaghan Education Centres had been involved in writing the original material so we felt they would have a natural interest in including their teachers. The Wexford Education Centre was also invited to participate. It was decided that we would ask 5 teachers from each of the three centres catchment areas, the ICT advisors from each and the directors of each to participate. The plan was to have a face-to-face session in BEC on a Saturday morning, introduce everyone to the online course and then let them follow the course themselves with 2 hours online with myself each week. The idea of the online facilitation session was primarily so that I could resolve any technical difficulties the teachers might have.

On Saturday November 22nd2003, 14 teachers, 3 ICT advisors, 3 Education Centre Directors, a representative of the CFB and myself got together at IADT. The participants managed to log on to the system quite easily and navigate around with no problems at all. After the initial course introduction we retired to BEC to discuss how we would proceed. The teachers were interested and enthusiastic but also expressed concern about finding the time to actually use the material in an already packed curriculum. The first of my assumptions had been dispelled when the teachers had managed to access the system and work around it with no problems – so much for the assumption that they would have low technical skills. My next assumption was blown out when they opted to have the online sessions from 9:00 to 10:00pm Mondays and Wednesdays! I had been expecting them to suggest 3:00-4:00pm when school finished!

The online sessions started on November 24th and were, for me, the most enjoyable aspect of the pilot. It became very obvious very quickly that I had little role to play as a facilitator or moderator. The participants had little or no technical difficulties and no problems accessing or using the course. The sessions became a collaborative exchange of ideas and suggestions as to how to use the course in the classroom and how to improve the course in general. The teachers were full of suggestions as to how the course content could be added to but also about how the pedagogical model could be extended using the VLE. Ideas such as virtual project teams, showcasing pupils work and adding their own (localized) content featured among the suggestions.

Post Pilot Feedback

While the online course is still available and accessible the online facilitation was piloted over 6 weeks. In February the teachers came together to discuss their experiences and see where we go from here. A number of teachers had taken the course into the classroom but didn’t partake in the online sessions. Feedback was generally positive but there was some constructive criticism which was the purpose of the pilot! The following points emerged:

  • A separate course for the children should be available where the teacher’s notes are not accessible. This is the intention going forward- the pilot was not intended to be used in the classroom at this juncture.
  • There was mixed feeling about the level of complexity of the text with some teachers feeling it was far too difficult and some feeling it was too simplistic. This reflects the varying abilities among the pupils and suggests teachers need to be able to adapt content themselves.
  • There was a certain sense of the Lifecycle of the Salmon being done to death and something different would have been better.
  • More multi-media content
  • One consequence of providing the ready-made content was that in some cases the teachers may not have done enough preparation before doing the lessons and were caught off-guard.

The next stage

Something Fishy has opened up all sorts of possibilities which we would not have anticipated and certainly did not plan for! The Hard Copy teachers notes and the workcards are currently in print and will go to all schools. It is anticipated that the hard copy will generate a demand for the online course. A proposal is being put together to commission multimedia content to be developed to be ready by September 2004

Something Fishier…………

The original group of teachers certainly have an appetite to develop it further and can see the possibilities now that they have used it a little. It is desirable to run a further course to give the teachers the skills to add their own content, showcase students work, localize the material etc. There is a need to have hands-on lab sessions but it is not practical to bring the teachers from 3 different regions for a week in July. In the context of blended learning the following model has been devised:

  • Teachers will go to their local education centre (Blackrock, Monaghan or Dundalk)
  • There will be local ICT and WebCT support in each centre
  • I will give the course but it will be video-conferenced to each of the 3 centres.The VLE will be used to provide a computer conferencing resource, sharing of material and ideas etc.

Once again this will be pushing the boundaries of teacher professional development by using a model never tried before so the outcomes of this will be eagerly awaited!

Conclusions

So what went wrong? We deviated from the plan – so there must have been a problem! In fact I continually ask myself what went right? As Something Fishy became more concrete, as we started to see the actual resource, more and more opportunities started to emerge and present themselves. In many scenarios this would have resulted in responses such as “We can’t do that, its not in the plan” or “ We don’t have the time/budget/resources”. In fact we didn’t actually have a budget to deviate from and our plan was high level, fluid and flexible enough to embrace the opportunities presented. Most importantly we actually see ourselves at the beginning rather than the end of a process.

And it is that word “process” which is of paramount importance in a project like this. Initially we set out to produce a product. We have now templated a process (and produced a product!). When I look at the project I think of it more like a research project than the production of a resource. We did use good project management practice, we did have deliverables and time frames. But because we were based on a win-win collaborative model where all participants saw gain for their own communities there was a dynamic which could not have been achieved had this been a commercially based development of online resources. The result has been a low cost, mutually beneficial, indigenous process which could be replicated for many different educational purposes with many different interested parties. But please, no more fish!!!!