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Asian Proverb — 'Better to see something once than to hear about it a thousand times.' 

Here is a video about the online course which was created for WIUT interns, so they are supposed to accomplish this course while doing their internship at office.

This post is a suplement or attachment to the post from Friday, February 10, 2023 ‘Short online course reflection’ and the demonstration of course content. 

 

Article review

I would like to introduce an article that I have found particularly interesting and helpful. The title is “Knowledge Management and Action Learning in Blended Training Activities.” (Chandavimol, Natakuatoong and Tantrarungroj, 2013). Whereas authors Pattama Chandavimol, Onjaree Natakuatoong and Pornsook Tantrarungroj from the Faculty of Education, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand described how blended trainings which combines online and action learning activities could be applicable and productive while holding staff training in the companies or organizations. Since it is very similar to the innovative internship or/ and mentorships that I would like to implement in the WIUT international office this article have attracted my attention for several reasons:

• First and foremost is that the authors recommended the Blended Training Activities by applying the knowledge management techniques and action learning into the training process.

• The investigation covered 261 respondents who are personnel development staffs experienced in designing training courses were involved so that different practices and outcomes could be compared and analyzed.

• Moreover, considering the educational aspects that crucially  important in training (internship in my case) also, the whole process was reviewed by 5 field experts in distance learning, training, instructional design and curriculum development, Educational Technology and Communication, and organization development areas.  

• and  finally they suggested using digital technology to enhance learning processes such as blogging, chat, discussion boards, e-mail, E-learning courseware, and learning management systems(Chandavimol, Natakuatoong and Tantrarungroj, 2013)

There is no need to explain how staff professional development could influence the companies or organizations’ interests and success. Considering the specific circumstances and particulars that should be taken into account while designing the training (or internship) I particularly liked that the authors fulfilled three-stage training: pre-training, training, end-of-training, which they belief, is the most efficient to implement the process. I found it helpful and worth to use while organizing the whole process of internship which should combine online learning and action learning in office. Alhamdulillah and thanks to ILT Module, I managed to design a short online course. As per interns, they are typically actively involved into the office work, so all I need now is to combine both activities, synchronize and harmonize the accomplishments. 

Being back to paper, although the article provided plenty of empirical data, which analyzed the level of accessibility to relevant learning IT technologies, experiences, application of knowledge management planning and quality of flexible/blended trainings, I appreciated most that it identified the level of digital technologies literacy and IT habits of participants during the trainings. The research showed less familiarity with Web Blogging -10.0%, Chat - 7.6% and Discussion Board - 7.3%. Still the needs and expectations of learners were mostly focused on work-related issues as: advice of an expert -13.5%, action learning-13.2%, practice - 12.3%, and self-directed learning (readings) - 11.3%. It is also identified that formatted knowledge could be found in charts - 28.9%, 25.8% reported Intranet, 16.9% - knowledge portal. 

Resuming I need to admit that digital technologies have penetrated our life so deeply and deliberately transformed our attitude and perceptions as well as modified the values and criteria of contemporary learning and training approving the fact of its essentiality, purposefulness and efficiency. The article for my view touched the most critical aspects of contemporary professional education, so it could also allow me to settle key points, navigate and plan the actions accordingly to be more focused on particular learners’(interns) needs and provide overall productive internship in WIUT international office.  

Reference 

Chandavimol, P., Natakuatoong, O. and Tantrarungroj, P. (2013). Knowledge Management and Action Learning in Blended Training Activities. Creative Education, 04 (09), 51–55. Available from https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2013.49b010 [Accessed 8 April 2020].

https://www.scirp.org/pdf/CE_2013093015282181.pdf

Attachment 

Table 1. Technology enhanced knowledge management and action learning in blended training activities. (Chandavimol, Natakuatoong and Tantrarungroj, 2013)

	Group of  Technology	Tools
1.	Communication Technology	Internet Intranet e-mail Learning management systems Chat rooms
2.	Collaboration Technology	Web boards Web blog Discussion boards Data warehouses
3.	Storage Technology	Document management systems Knowledge repositories e-Learning courseware e-books
4.	Learning Technology	Video Clips Experts yellow pages Knowledge maps Internet search engines

Short online course reflection

 

I have found myself as a trainer for interns in WIUT and have been doing it for the period of last 10 month continuously. The difficulty is that which theory of teaching to choose, how to be effective, what and how to teach to let interns adopt easily, integrate to office community as well as be competitive employees in future.

The training interns or/and coaching fresh staff at working place is individual and time-consuming engagement, still there is no determined methodology or/and approaches elaborated, adopted and put into practice. The main difference in teaching and training interns is about the specific and unique knowledge and experience which is need to be taught about, another issue is although the trainer is supposed to be professional and expert in the certain field it does not necessarily mean that he/she would manage to teach or train properly in order to provide the main goals of internships in a certain working place. 

Thanks to the course of PGCert in Teaching and Learning in WIUT, I started to sort out many important aspects, which should be cultivated and improved first and foremost within myself. That journey pushes me leave the “zone of comfort”, although I hardly can state that I was in super comfort before, constantly facing and solving a bunch of problems and tasks, keeping short deadlines within tough circumstances. As per my astonishment this course has become unpredictably challenging, so I almost lost ground from under my feet, trying to hide my hesitation and trembling, not showing the absence of self-confidence and extreme shyness. 

By the end of semester I and almost all my classmates have become familiar with different learning theories such as behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivist (social constructivism) and connectivism. Considering the contemporary influential power of connectivism, which is unavoidably combined in some extend with other learning theories, majorly with social constructivism rather than behaviorism or/and cognitivism, some authors claim that there is no connectivism without elements of constructivism, so that connectivism should not be treated as a separate theory rather than a symbiosis of these two practices. In fact, the connectivism is based on constructivism (Mattar, 2018), moreover, it is a sort of updated version that can act in a same way as constructivism. Once in class we debated over the theories that is represented in class, or whether our sessions are fully expresses the connectivism model, so we agreed that there is no white and black in classes, so same relates to courses that we are creating for CW. As per my it could seem as a traditional providing material (information) combined with assignment for just to fix information, however in office the tasks and operations are more authentic due to specification of our work. In the office for instance the interns face different situation, and they ultimately are supposed to solve them timely.

So, as a trainer I developed the conviction that there is a transformation that occurred in the mentors or/and teachers’ roles and as well as in teaching technologies. Along with the theoretical information my short-course is more focused on developing the soft skills among interns, such adaptation, creativity, critical thinking, analytical thinking, problem solving, communication, discipline, patience and multiple tasks management, independence in making decisions and many others. Coming again to mentoring technology due to W. Brian Arthur, who indicates the Nature of Technology itself as a sort of a tool or/and process, which enables attaining certain objectives (W Brian Arthur, 2010), whether it is “soft” or “hard” technology, Jon Dron extended this idea upon the learning technologies and social media (Dron, 2013) claiming that soft technologies in teaching and learning could be adjusted and applied in order to  contribute education, i.e. by encouraging learners’ centeredness, authenticity and effective interaction of teachers and students with more freedom or/and autonomy along the process of getting information and specific knowledge. The author mentions the importance of relevant skills in teaching, which are demanded for softening pedagogical technologies, since softness in technology does not mean easiness or disengagement, paradoxically, it is even harder to find this gold balance in approaches, that would be too much, or too less for being effective in teaching, especially in mentoring and teaching interns or/ and new-staff members within a very specific area or profession. 

Currently teachers’ roles have shifted from authorized manner of total control, dominance and ruling everything to less dominant style yet more effective fashion of education where teachers’ activities are supposed to be performed as a leader, instructor, guider, navigator, encourager, motivator, inspirator and role model. In the world of connectivism that drives teachers/mentors to develop, accomplish and teach followings:  masterminding, aggregation, filtering, and persistence. (Zhang et al., 2022). Here are pictures that illustrates the mentioned processes in an explicit manner, so that it could make a sense for how it could be understood and then undertaken.

Pic 1. Masterminding (O’Sullivan, 2017)

Pic 2. Data aggregation is the process of collecting data to present it in summary form. (Mena, 2022)

Pic 3. Best Filtering Techniques in Data Mining for 2023 (Jain, 2022)

• Data Mining

• Tracking Patterns

• Classification

• Clustering

• Visualization

• Association

• Regression

• Prediction

• Neural Network

• Decision Tree

• K-Nearest Neighbour (KNN)

Pic 4. The Productive Persistence Practical Framework (Marum, 2020)

Pic 5. Authentic Learning (Mcmillan, 2017)

The authenticity in teaching and learning has been obtaining the special meaning over the last decade, so that ten characteristics of authentic activities which were presented by Reeves, Herrington, and Oliver (Herrington et al., 2004) could be addressed and implemented especially while training the interns. However, the main idea is not about authentic activities itself rather than the impact that it could have upon the learners’, how it motivates them and encourages their enthusiasm, abilities to decide on their learning strategy and processes. It also allows particularly while implementing the projects in office to execute non-traditional approaches to achieving the learning outcomes. 

In academies it is more explicit how to indicate and evaluate the learning outcomes, what if you need to identify the learning outcomes for interns or new staff member, or for a learner that needed to be trained with in the scope of workloads of a certain department in company/ organization. And here we have the absolute authenticity of learning and authenticity of approaches that could be applied. For instance, what we can combine while mentoring are theoretical parts that could be introduced as a short online training and practical follow-ups (ad hoc activities), as I did. The online training, which could be elaborated by using variety of contemporary tools as Word TEAM, Padlet, Edpuzzle, Quizlet, Quizziz, WordWall, H5P and others, allows to attract the interns.  I preferred to use Google Classroom for creating a short training module for interns in international office. 

I hardly have been using any learning and teaching platforms. That was until the recent time. Thank to this module and amazing idea of creating the blog now I have this chance to create something new and useful for our intern-students that are having internships in WIUT International office. I have found Google Classroom as a very helpful and easy-go tool for creating the teaching or/and training and learning space, since here all needed materials such textual, video, visual and others can be embedded or linked or attached, including word, PDF and other format files could be enclosed effortlessly.  Typically, there are 3 stages in lunching training courses such as pretraining, training, post-training. I-stage is more about identifying the needs of organization, which qualities and qualifications, skills or whatever else they need to develop in employees. I recognized the need for this course from the very beginning of internships in WIUT offices and undertook the chance of creating this by firstly applying to PG Cert, which consequently allowed me to start appropriately with the support of professionals in the field of education. II-stage is more about organizational support and facilitation, providing needed tools, equipment and premises as per training needs. Since we have all facilities to undertake the practical Intern’s involvement, while theoretical information should be delivered in the most convenient way, the blended or/and online learning  course for training interns and new staff members was a perfect solution. III-stage is evaluating the success through getting feedback, evaluating the results, measuring the impact and undertaking survey after the course completion. This work needs to be done later once course is lunched and piloted. It requires the allocation of time, efforts, and budget. The efficiency depends on relevant inputs from organization, trainers (training providers) and employees themselves. Blended learning training course is appropriate once it concretely serves to certain needs of employees, and demands from them also enough dedication, allocation of time and taking the responsibility for the results (Chandavimol, Natakuatoong and Tantrarungroj, 2013). In this regard, it is very important to motivate the trainees and encourage them for continuous professional development and growth by implementing variety policies and programs. As per my experience, even within this short period of preliminary observation, I identified that this short-term training module is more appropriate for interns as well as just recruited staff rather than those who are already have the experience in the WIUT International office. However, the permanent staff demonstrated a lot of curiosity and interest rather than intend or/and motivation in taking this course. 
Nevertheless, I am convinced that since the online training course allows to integrate and embed latest web tool, apps, and other ICT capacities into educational process at least it unavoidably develops their (staff and students) IT and communication skills.      
At first there was a dilemma which platform to choose, and I was thinking and comparing between CANVAS and Google Classroom. So, I developed this table below to analyst the advantages of both LMS.

Table 1. Google Classroom vs CANVAS. (Petreus, 2020)

#	Categories	Google classroom (GC)	CANVAS
1.	Interface	Very plain and strait forward	More professional and complexed
2.	Video	No video recording or editing possibility	Possibility for video and multimedia material creation and editing
3.	Assessment	The assessment could be created through additional web tools or/and google forms	Assessment tools are available within the platform
4.	Mobile version (Apps)	Allows to create assessment task (integrate it or embed)	Using App does not allow to create an assignment
5.	Enrollment	Mobile version (Apps)Allows students to unenroll only via App	Managed by the teacher
6.	Dashboard	Hidden	All is on screen
7.	Scheduling	With due dates only for assignments	Can be adjust by the teacher more accurately (next after completion of previous, or to be seen later via published or unpublished options, which are unavailable in GC)
8.	Name of sessions	Classwork	Module
9.	Parents	No options for parents to observe the lessons	Possibility to invite the observers (parents, evaluators)
10.	Assessment submission	Single attempt	Multiple attempts
11.	Student preview	Do not have the option for students’ view	Has an option to view as for students

Finally, I tended more to employ Google Classroom for several reasons such as:

- despite of some disadvantages of Google Classroom, the most important reason was that as per CW requirement there should be other tools, such as WordWall, Padlet and other web tools implemented while designing the course, so it was very easy to integrate it to Google classroom.

- Google Classroom is available for free and accessible for everyone.

- Due to very user-friendly interface, it is very easy to navigate and apply is either for students or trainer.

- High accessibility will allow to some of my colleagues from other universities or other organizations that need a guidance in professional aspects, to join this module and benefit too.

-          Secure educational space.

The short-term training module consists of four units with theoretical and assignment sessions in each. There are Google Quiz form, Padlet map form, WordWall interactive quizzes, Google course evaluation form integrated to the online course.

There is a streaming option available in Google Classroom that allows you to place announcement or share information among learners. 

The platform allows creating assignments, quiz assignments, questions, materials, and topics as well as changing the sequences of sessions.The sessions can contain not only texture information however others: web links, video, audio, attached documents (Word, PDF, Excel, PPP and etc.) and beyond. The IT tools as Padled, WordWall, Google forms can be also embaded into the course content. I also appreciate that the platform allowes learners to draft Word documents. 

The platform has grading sheet, which is also one of advantages of online learning tools. There is an evaluation form provided at the end of the course in order to get feedback from interns. 

 https://classroom.google.com/c/NTg2ODc0MTQ2NjM0  

Reference list

Dron, J. (2013). Soft is hard and hard is easy: learning technologies and social media. Form@re - Open Journal per la formazione in rete, 13 (1), 32–43. Available from https://doi.org/10.13128/formare-12613 [Accessed 2 February 2023].

Jain, O. (2022). 10 Best Filtering Techniques in Data Mining for 2023. HIVO. Available from https://hevodata.com/learn/filtering-techniques-in-data-mining/ [Accessed 13 March 2023].

Marum, T. (2020). RIMTA - From Tim Marum...A New COVID-19 Era of Learning Mathematics: PrepareRI Summer Readiness. rimta.wildapricot.org. Available from https://rimta.wildapricot.org/9093825 [Accessed 2 February 2023].

Herrington, J. et al. (2004). Designing authentic activities in web-based courses. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 16 (1), 3–29. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02960280 [Accessed 20 January 2020].

Mattar, J. (2018). Constructivism and connectivism in education technology: Active, situated, authentic, experiential, and anchored learning. RIED. Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, 21 (2), 201. Available from https://doi.org/10.5944/ried.21.2.20055.

Mcmillan, A. (2017). Ten Design Elements of Authentic Learning | ConnectED Portal | University of Nebraska Medical Center. connected.unmc.edu. Available from https://connected.unmc.edu/blog/2017/08/11/authentic-learning/ [Accessed 2 February 2023].

Mena, P. (2022). Data Aggregation: Definition, Benefits, and Examples. coresignal.com. Available from https://coresignal.com/blog/data-aggregation/.

O’Sullivan, M.T. (2017). When One Brain isn’t Enough, You Can Join a Mastermind. Encore Executive Coaching. Available from https://www.encoreexecutivecoaching.com/is-a-mastermind-group-right-for-you/ [Accessed 2 February 2023].

Petreus, S. (2020). Canvas Vs Google Classroom. www.youtube.com. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ5TnVSuOUE [Accessed 1 March 2023].

W Brian Arthur. (2010). The nature of technology : what it is and how it evolves. London: Penguin Books.

Zhang, H. et al. (2022). Construction and Application of Online ‘Golden Course’ Teaching Performance Evaluation Index System from the Perspective of Connectivism. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 10 (11), 113–118. Available from https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2022.1011009.