Received after I asked for some feedback on my web page.

Hi Matt,

Had a quick look at your great website and I am very impressed, but I will need to have a more detailed look in the next few days.

One thing I have noticed is that your link to stakeholder support is for the existing programme. Would stakeholders think that your proposed changes would improve student learning? How do you know? I don’t need letters of support, just a reflection from you that shows you have thought about it, and maybe talked to a few people about it, especially some students.

I’ll get back to you asap – but it looks as though you have addressed most of the requirements of assessments 3 and 4.

Cheers, Terry

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hello Matt

good on you trying out a web page. For the work involved do you see advantages in using the website over your blog?

I see you have asked for feedback on your website. I see Matt that while I prefer a pale, clear design, you are obviously a fan of a dark background and bright colours. Whatever you decide on, the ultimate goal is to please the target audience and make it easy for them to navigate and read as well as interesting and presented in a way which captures their attention. There has been quite a lot written about web design and best practice and there are some good books in the library on this.

You might like to check out the web style guide at: http://webstyleguide.com/page/hierarchy.html

this outfit also mention a preference for subtle colours:
“Subtle pastel shades of colors typically found in nature make the best choices for background or minor elements. Avoid bold, highly saturated primary colors except in regions of maximum emphasis, and even there use them cautiously. “

Also see general design considerations at: http://webstyleguide.com/page/general.html

What I have found useful when deciding on web design is to look at a few websites and evaluate the features I like or don’t like. That way you can establish a checklist about the design features such as: interface, navigation, clarity, readability, ease of understanding, etc.

It is important to have consistent styles as too many colours and different fonts can distract when what you want to do is attract the readers eye to the elements on the site.

Some examples of what I regard as best practice design:
http://marica.ako.net.nz/ – clean looking, eye drawn to graphics and text. good use of fonts to gain attention and wide range of media.
http://www.ewenger.com/ – some use of bright colours to gain attention, overall clean and easy to read, good use of text ‘chunking’.
http://lits.ilamsunset.com/ – busier, but still clean, good use of graphics, use of italics draws the eye but sometimes if too much it detracts.
http://www.downes.ca/ – a bit of scrolling and this works here. really like the layout of this one.

I have a feedback sheet I use to evaluate online materials on Blackboard which yoo may find useful. I will make it available to the class.
Bronwyn

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Hi Matt

Very impressive. Is this your final plan the one that we are meant to see. One of our final assignments? It looks like you have put a lot of work into it and thought it out. What you need to do, who you need to ask, moderation and timeline as well as the cost of everything.

Lyn

Lyn Blair

Facilitator

Community Learning Centre

Forth Street

Dunedin

Phone: (03) 479 6987

Fax:      (03) 479 6988

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Learning outcomes.

After students have finished this course they will have built on prior knowledge to produce more advanced outcomes. They will provide the building industry with people that can read and interpret drawings. They will be able to make decisions based on sound knowledge and having the ability to communicate at another level. 

1. control and enhance the quality of building and related projects.
2. ensure projects achieve technical objectives.
3. They will be able to establish the basic character of the building representing the requirements of the client.

Elements From NZQA

Why it isn’t working and how to make it work.

These are two simple elements but have been so badly over assessed by the BCITO in the past the students have been left dazed and confused for some time afterwards. The current BCITO assessment activity takes about 10 -14 hours. This time frame is ridiculous and it doesn’t allow any time for teaching along the way.To criticize more, the questions in the assessment are often open ended and need a lot of defining for the student to correctly answer them.

The students that we a teaching are apprentices that have been in the industry for over three years. The type of prior knowledge that they bring to the class is very good but still they find the assessment very difficult.

So I have established that the current system does not work and the reason is that it is complex, the assessment takes too long and the questions are not clear in their wording. To fix the course I want to-

1. Sharpen up the teaching material by adding in some hands on examples and trying to use actual real situations.
2. Include some video of classes that we are already teaching live to apprentices.
3. Videos on how to sketch assembly details. (article about open poly)
4. Have some narrated power point presentations of examples of drawings, symbols, examples of scale, line-work and how to read and reference working drawings.
5. Have a set of house plan to complete the assessment.
6. Re write an assessment that could be used by distance and face to face students.
7. Resources required for the assessment.

Ways to market the course to others outside carpentry 

Terry explained to me the benefits of breaking the unit standard down into usable parts that could be sold to other institutes or polytechs. The advantage of this is that for example a polytech in Australia may wish to use the part of the package to teach students about architectural symbols. Australia and New Zealand like in many things share the same symbols and even have to conform to the same standard, so it makes sense to use the same teaching material.On this advice I think that the CD ROM files could be  separated in the teaching resource so it could be broken down into smaller subjects. Another use for this is that the architectural draughting department might like to use the same teaching resource. There could be a data base of teaching material for many subjects and then the teaching material for each course could then be put together for each course.

Article about qualifications that meet industry needs

Learner analysis.

At the present time in the building industry changes are happening in the way that the public will perceive a qualified builder. Currently the public sees builders as ‘trade qualified’ and sometimes members of a professional organization e.g. master builders or certified builders. That will all change in November 2009 when buildings that require consent to build will need a licensed person to carry out that work.  With the extra responsibility of holding a professional license there will be recognition of qualifications and prior knowledge. There is to be changes to the National certificate and one of them is to move a unit standard that we currently teach to another qualification.  

a)      I am going to teach this unit standard about reading plans and specifications to qualified carpenters.

b)      These students want to go on from the national certificate and get the leading hand site   supervisor qualification.

c)      In three years no one coming out of the qualification will be credited with this unit standard.

d)      I teach this unit standard currently

e)      I will be teaching nearly all young men.

f)       Age group to be 21 years old – approx 30 years old.

g)      Prerequisite National Certificate in Carpentry. (level 4)

h)      Geographically spread out through out NZ

i)        Motivated go getters. (foreman potential)

j)        Hard workers e.g. long hours and not a lot of time to read or concentrate for long times.

k)      Young family or about to start having kids.

l)        Knowledge to be from either a residential, light commercial or commercial background.

m)    Usually not a mixture as firms aim at specializing in a field to save on setting up costs

n)      Excellent for the polytechnic to be recognized as experts teaching expert builders in the industry.

(this is from my Blackboard entry it is a pity I just couldn’t link it)

Learner context

The type of learner that we will be teaching are already familiar with the construction industry and will already hold a national certificate in carpentry. They may not be familiar with online learning or using a CD ROM. Face to face tutorials and an availability of a lecturer by phone and or email will be available during office hours. An orientation session to the use of the CD ROM will be timetabled  in the first face to face session. Learning support for the CD ROM and the material will be available after that.

 

 Balance of face to face and flexible learning content.

With the same teaching material we are going to teach two separate groups of students. The full time students that attend the course live currently will still be here but we want to be able to deliver this course to others at a distance. I expect there to be a lot of live students that would also tend to want to take up the opportunity to do some distance learning.

There will be lectures of a serious nature that will deliver information about the course and how the students could partake in it.

Most of the course will be delivered using the material on the CD ROM and then working through assessment by them selves on in a group. It suit some students to do it in their own way in their own space. We encourage students to partake in group work for there own developmental benefit. Because a lot of the students doing the course will be in employment they tend to work very well in a group just as a building site works. The group dynamics are just the same and team leaders seem to naturally take control and divide up work loads and organise.

Course intro – live or distance

Plan reading, symbol identification, scale drawing, working drawing, projections and views, aabreviations – flexible delivery

Assessment – group work

I have jumped past the third assessment activity to have a go at making a web page while I was on leave. It back fired a bit because I spent all my leave building at home, so now I am back at work again slotting in time between classes building a web page.

I googled web pages and at the top of the list was the google page creater. It is easy to use and I didn’t have too many blunders along the way. I did think that it was short of options to make my pages look semi professional  so I went with loud and colourful.

The links were easy to put in only because I have ben doing them all year. Pictures were easy to upload and edit while in the page itself.

All together a good learning experience but very time consuming.

If I get the subject and break it down into skill set’s we can later on break these down into stand alone courses. As stand alone courses like the ones on the ausy toolboxes they can be chopped up rather than one full unit.

The idea of this is to have the option to deliver the courses in smaller packages. For example a client may well only want to learn how to interpret symbols on working drawings. The NZ national cert. may mean nothing to them so they won’t care if they get a qualification from it or not from it. 

Potentialy later we can sell these smaller courses more easily to other poly’s or overseas organisations.

Unit Standard – 13035 Level 4, Credit 4Demonstrate Knowledge of Working Drawings, Specifications and Quantity Lists 

Seven guiding Principles

Some More Guiding Principles

1.      Carefully choose what type of technology to use to suit the learner and their context.

2.      Have a back up system if the one you were going to use goes horribly wrong.  

3.      Choose technologies that are widely used, reliable and well supported.

4.      Use systems that give the maximum time for students to get feedback

My plan is to take this unit and make the students that use it pleased that they had. Using the theories above I want to make the assessment activity easier to follow and give the students help to find learning material.

 Learner outcomes   

   http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/nqfdocs/units/doc/13035.doc) 

People credited with this unit standard are, for a building of two storeys, able to: determine work to be done from given working drawings; and determine required materials from given working drawings and specifications.

  Competence in this unit standard indicates compliance with current trade practice.      Current trade practice refers to the ability to work unsupervised, demonstrating knowledge and skills that reflect the productivity, uniformity, finish quality and material economies currently accepted within industry.

The red bits I have highlighted are the bits that I want to focus on. Current trade practice is what builders that are good enough to train an apprentice are supposed to be doing.  So if the builders are practicing good trade practice let the apprentice see what he is doing as far as plan and specification reading and explain that to the assessor. The working drawings and specifications are in laymen’s terms the plans that builders use to build a house.

What I want to do with that is develop it into a set of questions that the apprentice has to answer based on what he is doing on site. The outcomes will then be matched by what real life situations the apprentice will be experiencing. The unit standard its self will be learnt over a longer period of time but with less paper based learning.

Learning activities

Principle idea 3: Encouraging Active Learning &

Principle idea 5: Spend More Time on Task and Reduce Wasted Time

I want to get the student to spend more time answering questions about the current job he is working on or a job that the student has recently worked on. This way the student is almost thinking about working it out during work time rather that his own time. They can also start to think about possible effects of drawn communication breaking down and not following a standard drawing procedure.  

Content

The content of the material that I want to put together is a simple explanation of what the trainee notes currently explain. At the moment the notes are great but they need to get the student to think about what they are doing at work rather than adding an extra work space into their busy lives. Using a CD rom and hard copy of material I want to get the students some examples of:1.      Things that don’t work and why2.      Confusing drawings3.      Help with answering questions4.      Places to find out more E.g. References, web sites, books and videos5.      Video footage of parts of classes that we run.6.      Other explanations in drawing format, spoken word and written.   

Assessment

There is currently an assessment which is a good set of questions based on a set of working drawing of a fictitious house. The questions are puzzling and cause students currently to cause brain haemorrhages during classes. They are too complex and require full and proper explanations to the students. What I want to do is create a set of questions including some of the current ones for students to work through in conjunction with the current project that they are working on.

Reading, writing, speaking, listening, numeracy, critical thinking and technology.

Read Report

The hardest part the way I was left to my own devices and had virtually no help with deciding on how I should be doing anything. At the start of the course I was lost in the system some where and I was not shown where the information was going to be put for me to explore. I had a self directed approach to the learning and I was given some good feedback from Leigh when ever I posted stuff on my blog. There wasn’t much stuff put on there though as I was never told about what I should be learning about. 

The thing I did learn was that I could learn by myself but that I am a very social person who craves the company of others to learn with. That company should be live and real and not something where I can’t see people and their reactions. I don’t have a good enough grasp of the written language to properly show people via the internet what I am trying to say. I prefer conversation that has a flow and a direction, that way questions can be answered and responded to get the point across.  

The one class I did find out about was really helpful and showed me the process of putting together a project scope and what you were looking for in it. Once I had the idea in my head I was away and racing.  I found out about learner contexts and how we should be addressing them. That was also in a class I did the other day with Terry M. I have a post on Blackboard about that. 

On reflection the project scope does take into account the learning styles of the apprentices but maybe doesn’t look enough about what I could do about desperately social learners like me. 

The way I decided on the best ways I could help the students was by  asking the students that I teach currently exactly what they had access to as far as space, internet, skills and a computer. It surprised me in the general enthusiasm of the classes I asked as how keen they were to use computers to learn. The other surprising thing was the amount of them that didn’t have access in their homes or flats to the internet. They nearly all had access to a computer and all could put a CD in a computer and make it work.  

From the conversations I had, I got the general idea of creating a CD ROM that would have the extra information that they needed to understand the learning resource material better. I believe in making things as simple as possible for them to access the learning material. The material could be as interesting or boring as you made it but it must be simple for them to get at.

The problem still occurs about assessments. Online at the polytechnic centres around the region could be an option. I wanted to get more of the students from around the country though.  I still am not sure which way would be best to do this. 

The last thing Bronwyn asked about was if the learners you work with and/or the subject which makes it challenging?The answer for me is the learners make it challenging. The material is easy to understand mostly because they are already dealing with it in their daily routines. All I have to do is to create an environment for them to learn why structures are built the way that they are. The getting all your students to learn together does not always happen. Getting them together to learn is more important.

Ø      Existing learning activities critically reviewed – what works and what doesn’t.

Ø      Proposed learning objects, media and activities are described, as well as the way in which they will be used.

Ø      Reflection on resourcing, including any new technologies, staffing and training provided.

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