The following programme is a final draft. We will be adding more information in th next few weeks
Day 1 – 5 November 2008 – The changing role of trainers in learning
10.00 – 10.30 am (all times Central European Time – click on the times to check your local time)
Venue: Elluminate. To enter click here. (no password required. Simply type your name)
Introduction to Conference - Simone Kirpal, Graham Attwell and Cristina Costa
10.30 – 12.30 – The changing role of trainers in learning and work based learning
Introduction to theme
Lorna Unwin, Institute of Education, London, Professor Alan Felstead and Nick Jewson, Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University; Professor Alison Fuller, School of Education, University of Southampton.
Can anyone be a trainer?: towards a more embedded role for vocational trainers
This contribution will discuss the implications of workplace learning for the trainer’s role. It will argue that many people in the workplace, including apprentices and trainees, help other people to learn through the sharing of skills and knowledge as part of everyday workplace practice. This suggests that the concept of the ‘trainer’ needs to be extended so that learning in the workplace can be more effectively supported and expanded. The contribution will draw on recent research in a software engineering company and two automotive plants in the UK. The case study sites formed part of a multi-sector project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.”
Professor Alan Brown, Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick
Employees supporting the learning, training and development of other employees while working in groups: examples drawn from aerospace, health and accountancy
This contribution will discuss how organisations formally support arrangements where employees learn from each other while working in groups, with some team members explicitly encouraged to support the learning and development of others. The accountancy case study draws on the work of the Early Career Learning project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP). Alan Brown is Associate Director of TLRP with responsibility for workplace learning.
George Roberts, Oxford Brooks University
Education, training and employment
The training and skills agenda in the UK and the challenges of using education as a means (inappropriate, largely) of addressing persistent unemployment.
Barry Nyhan, Ireland
Lifelong learning and the role of trainers
Lifelong Learning has become synonymous with gaining more and more qualifications throughout one’s life and the role of the trainer is to ensure that these qualifications are acquired ( produced ) – mass qualification. However, it is argued that this represents an inward, overly academic and ‘paper-qualification’ perspective on LLL and the role of the trainer. Instead the challenge for the modern trainer is to develop people who can continuously learn to be innovative ( in an action- LLL context) in their social and work contexts – mass innovation.
14.30 – 16.30 – Support for the professional development of trainers
Venue: Elluminate. To enter click here. (no password required. Simply type your name)
Introduction to theme
Seija Mahlamäki-Kultanen and Anita Eskola-Kronqvist, HAMK, Finland
New Innovations into trainers’ training: Documenting and analyzing work processes with digital photos.
The presentation will demonstrate a case of the changing role of the vocational teacher in enhancing the learning of workplace tutors. Work processes are documented with digital photos for later analysis and reflection together among groups of learners.
Eduardo Figueira, Portugal
Developing competence for trainers in Portugal
Eduardo Figueira will present the results of a recent work by the TTPlus project in developing a framework for professional development in Portugal.
Simone Kirpal, Germany
The Eurotrainer network survey
Simone Kirpal will present the results of the Eurotrainer survey.
Eileen Luebcke, Germany
A framework for continuing professional development of trainers
Eileen Luebcke will present a framework for continuing professional development for trainers, resulting from the work of the TT-Plus project.
16.30 – 16.45 Summary of Day 1
Day 2 - 6 November 2008 -E-learning for trainers
Venue: Elluminate. To enter click here. (no password required. Simply type your name)
Session 1 – 10.30 – 12.30
Introduction to theme
Nick Kearney, Spain
You can lead a horse to water….
Much has been written about the changing role of the teacher and the trainer, especially in the context of new technologies. However it is less clear whether learners and work place administrators have read any of it. Though teachers and trainers may be implementing new methodologies, and in this sense changing their roles, it is less clear that there are substantial ways in the ways in which their role is viewed by learners, and this may adversely affect how the methodology is implemented. The persistence of Bruner’s “folk pedagogies”, and related views of the role of the trainer, suggests that there may be some distance between the rhetoric of early adopters of new technologies and methodologies, and current realities. “It is harder to crack a prejudice than an atom”, as Einstein perhaps said, but perhaps finding ways to effect this deeper attitudinal change is becoming one of the key roles of the progressive trainer.
Cristina Costa, UK
Using social software tools for supporting the online training of trainers
Doris Beer, Germany
e-learning for medical healthcare assisstants in Germany
I have co-ordinated training projects, where we assessed the training needs and the potential for e-learning with these group (see for example: www.fachprax.de).
In Germany health care assistants are working in small shops (between one and four doctors as a rule, between two and ten assistants). The restructuring of the health sector leads to growing standards of IT proficiency, quality management and communication skills. The training offer for health care assistants is in General poor. The low mobility of the most female staff and low wages build barriers for the participation in training.
Particularly for the medicine, there is a great offer of high-quality information in the world wide web, which can be used for training. But trainers need themselves experience with e-learning (in the role as learners), and to make use of this potential needs a rethinking of didactical approaches
John Pallister, UK
The ePortfolio process, supporting the Trainer and Training
This presentation will describe the ePortfolio process and explore its relationship with learning. It will relate the process to a range of different training situations and explore the potential of the ePortfolio process to support Training and the Trainer.
Vance Stevens – Abu Dubai
Teacher professional development in groups, communities, and networks
At the second WiAOC conference, Etienne Wenger (2007) gave one of our keynotes and I asked him if his ideas on CoPs had changed at all as a result of his interactions with Webheads. Surprisingly, he said that they had, especially regarding the nature of space occupied by the community. He said that we knew who we were in terms of domain and practice but that we had freed ourselves from constraints on space in spanning so many available spaces in distributing ourselves, and that this was a revelation to him in that we were clearly a CoP, but with very loosely defined boundaries. At that same online conference, Stephen Downes (2007) spoke to us about the distinction between groups, communities, and networks. A YahooGroup characterizes that first level of interaction, where a group forms to disseminate information, but might not necessarily be a community. A community implies greater interaction where members
Session 2 – 14.30 – 1630
Venue: Elluminate. To enter click here. (no password required. Simply type your name)
Carla Arena and Mary Hillis- United States, Brazil, and Japan,
Professional Development in Online Circles of Learning
New and emergent technologies enable trainers all over the globe to pursue professional development out of their institutional settings. Connections are now possible in new dimensions of the online world. In this session, presenters will show some possibilities of informal learning through the participation in Communities of Practice, online sessions an spaces that can impact positively on the way trainers learn and enhance their professional development.
Anne Fox, Denmark
VITAE – introducing 21st century skills through mentoring
Is it a good idea to include mentor training in a Web 2.0 pedagogy course? The VITAE project is piloting this approach in order to overcome the problem that individual VET practitioners lack the confidence to start using these tools on their own. Preliminary results will be presented.
Regina Lamscheck Nielsen, DEL, Denmark
TrainerGuide – made in Denmark
The Multidisciplinary University College of Copenhagen, will present the pre-version of an international TrainerGuide, a digital handbook for trainers. Inspired by German practise, developed and implemented in Denmark, within the next 2 years to be further developed and transferred to 5 countries: Finland, Holland, Slovenia, Germany, and Turkey. The TrainerGuide’s main target groups are skilled workers as in-company trainers and the companies’ education planners.
Linda Castañeda, GITE Educational Technology Research Group, University of Murcia, Spain
On-line Collaboration to teach and learn with each other
“Learning Together” is probably one of the most “fashionable phrases” used in educational literature in recent years. Work collaboration is also one of the most important processes for developing new knowledge. Yet, the relevancy of such processes is often unvalued. The vast possibilities for collaboration available online are still frequently overlooked by both trainers and students, in spite of the recent web (2.0) explosion.
In this day and age, information is not necessarily confined to private or hidden spaces. On the contrary, information has never been easier to access and add to. Indeed, the real power of the web is not merely the access to data, but especially the opportunity to transform such information in new knowledge, and the chance to do it in a collaborative way. The web is particularly relevant as a form to overcome circles of isolation and empower joint learning. However, collaboration is still not a given in course curricula, and learners and trainers often do not regard collaboration as an efficient way of learning.
In this talk I will analyse the benefits of online collaboration in teaching and learning.
16.30 – 16.45 Summary of Day 2
