Getting+it+Together+Case+Study

=Getting it Together, Together = = = =Executive Summary =

Through this project we will increase the continuity of experience and support from Year 10 into the Polytechnic.

Teachers working with at-risk students have been grappling with the dilemma of providing an engaging life skills and futures oriented curriculum, personalised to students’ interest and circumstances. In 2010 Distance Education Tasmania (merged into Tasmanian eSchool from 2011) developed the Getting it Together (GIT) framework for disengaged year 9/10 students focussed on real life skills. The Getting it Together framework has been designed to assist in addressing these needs while connecting with curriculum and reporting frameworks.

Getting it Together supports a blended approach to learning by using the online environment to assist students to stay organised, to enable them to store evidence of their learning in a simple e-portfolio, and provide access to short courses and other learning materials. Students are supported in a variety of ways.

In 2011 the Tasmanian eSchool will provide copies of GIT short courses to other schools for use at the local level. Based on 2010 experiences, it is desirable that these learners can continue with e-learning in familiar ways when transitioning to the Polytechnic. Currently, the majority of programs offered by the Polytechnic, for disengaged youth do not incorporate online or e-learning elements.

The existing Polytechnic Connect Courses focus on campus, or alternate-location-based face to face programs with little e-learning integration.

In this project, the Polytechnic have piloted a local implementation of the Getting it Together program with a target group of learners and their teachers. Polytechnic staff have provided feedback and expertise to the eSchool to strengthen the vocational aspects of the program.

The outcomes of the project include an ongoing commitment by teachers to continue implementation in the Polytechnic, an informal continuation of the partnership that has been established through this project as both parties continue to have similar needs and the benefits of sharing experiences and resources are valued by both.

Two short courses (Car Maintenance and Introduction to Hairdressing) are available as outputs and have been reworked as a result of this project.

=Background=

Both the Tasmanian Polytechnic (Polytechnic) and Distance Education Tasmania (DET) independently noticed a need to consider the role of e-learning in better addressing the needs of disengaged learners. In the Polytechnic, in particular, there was a low level use of e-learning approaches as part of the blend of supports for learners. Learners have responded well to the Getting it Together short course materials trialled by Distance Education Tasmania in a number of settings.

Through existing professional networks, some formed through past Framework involvement, it was apparent that there were synergies for both organisations in working together to address the needs of a learner group as they transition from one educational setting to another i.e. from high school to post year 10. Both parties were seeking critical friends, shared expertise, access to facilities and specialist environments.

The opportunity to access Innovation funding enabled them to focus on a project to progress this agenda.

=What was done=

The project was kick-started with an initial workshop with the Polytechnic Foundations teachers exploring the Getting it Together framework and materials. A Distance Education instance of Getting it Together was used for this workshop with Polytechnic staff.

A second workshop was held in early 2011 to explore Moodle, discuss graphics and capture subject matter expertise was held with teachers from the eSchool and Polytechnic in attendance. At this point, the Polytechnic teachers had sufficient familiarity to begin to see how they might adapt the program to their local setting. It was important to explore lots of real scenarios and workshop how the various elements of Getting it Together could be used to assist. Describing the environment as “semi-furnished rooms” assisted in conveying the idea that while some tools and learning activities are in place, there is plenty of scope for teachers to do their own thing. It is however, important to know which parts of the program are load bearing walls!

A strong connection was made between the Polytechnic Auto ‘subject experts’ and Tas eSchool curriculum writers resulting in some great sharing of both practical knowledge and e-learning strategies for this industry.

In the time between the two workshops, a copy of the Getting it Together framework was provided to the Polytechnic for local installation. This presented a number of technical and logistical issues, some of which were anticipated and others that were not. Technical instructions for creating a fresh instance were written together with an implementation guide for teachers and presentation materials for introducing Getting it Together.

The extent of manual configuration required to establish a new instance of the Getting it Together framework and the transfer of this course into a Moodle 2.0 installation was underestimated.

Following the second workshop, some tweaking of materials for Polytechnic Connect students took place. We developed new customised graphics for the Polytechnic installation & worked on uploading the new graphics. The design concept for these graphics came out of discussions about the need for more colour, graphics targeted for an older audience and a colour theme for each unit which would easily identify sections of the course for those with very low literacy.


 * [[image:GIT_Screenshot_eSchool.jpg]] || [[image:GIT_Screenshot_Poly.png]] ||
 * = Tas eSchool interface ||= Tasmanian Polytechnic interface ||

The course was trialled with two Polytechnic learner groups. This trial consisted of two phases; the first being students logging in to the Polytechnic instance of GIT and completing some organisational tasks and the second being a ‘guided tour’ of the complete Tas eSchool GIT program. This enabled feedback from these groups on a large number of the activities and overall workings of the program. A decision was made to take this approach as the number of ‘broken links’ and missing elements of the Polytechnic instance of GIT provided a risk that the students would become frustrated and bored if they came across areas that just did not seem to ‘do’ anything. Rather than risk a bad first experience tarnishing their willingness to participate in the future, we provided the orientation in a group setting on a projector screen with open discussion.

While enthusiasm was low among the students as a group, overall some interesting comments came out at these sessions. Probably the most surprising was that the students seemed to like the Tas eSchool graphics better. One student stated that **“....it is about more than just words and it shows you what you can get together”**. Some students believed a few activities were below their age group and would be of no use to them. Others said that they would like to do the activities, but not in their own time and only if they got something out of it (like not having to do a traditional comprehension task if they completed one on GIT) This highlighted the need for teachers to completely assess the contents of the course and understand it’s application before using it as a teaching tool. Reflection on this point from project participant feedback at our wrap up session again supports this need. It is essential that teachers understand where GIT would be most appropriately added to a course so it is not seen as a waste of the student’s time – especially for those already within the realm of disengagement.

In early April, a student group from Tasmanian eSchool attended a ‘hands on’ session in the Polytechnic Auto Workshops allowing them to see first hand what taking the next step into this training would mean for them. Dion Quin provided a great introduction and orientation for these students. As development of the Auto element of GIT continues, an emphasis on skills to get ready for this transition will allow any barriers and misconceptions among their students to be lowered.


 * [[image:IMG_7833-16.jpg width="235" height="159"]] || [[image:IMG_7833-19.jpg width="249" height="163"]] || [[image:IMG_7833-17.jpg width="233" height="165"]] ||
 * = Tas eSchool students get shown the ropes at the first Auto workshop with Tasmanian Polytechnic Teacher Dion Quinn ||

A final workshop to wrap up the project was held in which Polytechnic teachers provided feedback through a discussion and a survey. It was great to sit and talk about what we had achieved and what we felt we could still improve.

Generally the group felt that the project had progressed well and that the overall concept was solid. Problem areas of IT capability (both organisational hardware and personal competence) and lack of time to address these issues were highlighted, as well as a need to plan more where the GIT activities would support or improve what is done already.

=Benefits experienced by=

Two new groups of teachers new to Moodle (and in some cases new to e-learning), were introduced to this approach to using e-learning. They showed that there are layers of concepts and approaches that they need to become comfortable with before they can move to controlling the Moodle environment, rather than letting the technology control and dictate what can be done.

This influences the nature and timing of the induction to Moodle, or any online learning environment. As teachers experience different online classroom setups, their ideas about what is possible are expanded. The GIT program supports many different approaches to the design and presentation of courses, and through evaluating the materials, the teachers now have a broader understanding of the possibilities. The staff who support the uptake of e-learning within the Tasmanian Polytechnic also have a much more meaningful understanding of the different ways a “course” can function and the design processes needed for each.

Tasmanian eSchool has benefited by having another opportunity to analyse how a new instance of Getting it Together will function. This is invaluable for planning and ongoing development. The strategies used to make Moodle cater for the flexibility needed when working with learners with diverse needs has tested boundaries and limitations again expanding knowledge in this area. These include extensive use of graphical elements, using linked multiple courses and internal links within the courses.

=Lessons learnt=

With people being on leave over the Christmas and Summer break, we effectively lost six weeks from the project. Staff changes meant that some initial project members are no longer in the Polytechnic and it was difficult to get started again in 2011 due to waiting for people to get back from leave, start-of-year processes and changes of responsibilities. Similar changes occurred with Distance Education Tasmania and other parts of the Department of Education becoming the Tasmanian eSchool during the project. This was probably the most significant lesson learnt and has provided a realistic experience for future project planning.

Getting it Together is not a single course but rather, a web of courses linked to a base course. Manual configuration of the links that create the connections between courses are unavoidable. There is some tension between what we believe works better for the learner and what is technically easier when creating a new instance of the GIT framework. Providing direct hyperlinks to activities rather than relying on written directions or user knowledge of the system, gives a better experience for the user. However it results in the need to manually update some of these links whenever copies are made of the course. Good documentation and consistent labelling practices are essential. This is a general issue regardless of which Learning Management System is involved.

The learnings from this and other trials have informed ongoing practices when developing new courses, and in making decisions about when the additional overhead of using direct links is justified. As a result, the two short courses supplied as project outputs have been reworked without internal links.

Also, copying courses from Moodle 1.9 to 2.0 is not a smooth ride. Moodle 2.0 does not readily accept a course by a simple ‘restore’ action as when copying courses from 1.9 to 1.9. Until further Moodle development is done, we feel it is necessary to build courses from scratch in Moodle 2.0. This 1.9 course conversion functionality is scoped for the release of Moodle 2.1 (Mid 2011).

=The results=

Having such a short project timeframe and losing a significant amount of time to summer leave left many of us feeling that we hadn’t achieved what we wanted at each stage. However, the simple act of getting together and discussing our concerns it became apparent that we were actually achieving far more than we realised. Often face to face contact and discussion is overlooked at a way of gathering evidence and feedback on outcomes.

Gathering written feedback at the conclusion of the project further cemented our belief that it was the Proof of Concept in that the 3 key aspects of the GIT framework are sound and resonate for people working with this cohort of learners.

Further to this teachers new to e-learning are now switched on to the possibilities for disengaged learners and realise that this is a real way to connect with them and connect them to learning.

We now have a real commitment to ongoing use and local development by Polytechnic of the GIT program with local adaptations as required and to sustain an ongoing relationship/partnership between eSchool and Polytechnic particularly in areas of Literacy and numeracy and Vocational subject expertise.

=Project Outputs=


 * Car Maintenance short course (as Moodle zipped course)
 * Introduction to Hairdressing (as Moodle zipped course)
 * Getting it Together short courses Implementation Guide

=Framework connection=

The Getting it Together Project provides a case study in the provision of e-learning resources to support the transition of students from high school into post-year 10 vocational education. It shows how complex issues associated with ICT, different educational institutions, professional learning and e-learning design can be negotiated to engage disaffected learners with personalised courses.

The development of partnerships between educational institutions that involves specialist teachers, e-learning designers and ICT staff improves the chances of embedding the desired e-learning in a way that is sustainable in the long term.

Lessons learned in sharing instances of entire courses within a learning management system from one organisation to another will be invaluable to the Tasmanian Polytechnic and to the national training system as a whole as it increasingly addresses the needs of students transitioning from the compulsory years of schooling.

Opportunities to share the outcomes from this project include within our state-wide organisations and also through professional networks and seminar presentations including the Skills Tas Conference to be held in May 2011.

=Acknowledgement=

This is a Tasmania E-learning Innovations project output, developed by the Tasmanian Polytechnic and Tasmanian eSchool (formerly Distance Education), with seed funding from the Framework.



=For more information=

For more information on the Australian Flexible Learning Framework: Phone: 07 3307 4700 Email: enquiries@flexiblelearning.net.au Website: flexiblelearning.net.au