Guiding E-Learning: Introducing Online Informal Learning to a Global Voluntary Organisation

Author(s):

Yota Dimitriadi(presenting / submitting)Shirley Williams Clare Spiret Rachel McCrindle

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

16. ICT in Education and Training

Format:

Paper

Session Information

16 SES 09, E-learning

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-12

11:00-12:30

Room:

DSC03 (Smart Class III)

Chair:

Philippe Gabriel

Contribution

The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) is the umbrella organisation for Member Organisations from 145 countries around the world, with a total membership of 10 million. While Member Organisations offer training and development within their own countries, WAGGGS offers international opportunities. For example, WAGGGS offers opportunities for leadership development at international locations where a group of facilitators (typically five) facilitate the learning of a group of 30 participants during a week-long event; when possible, interpreters are provided. These events are widely lauded but are only available to a few; many potential participants cannot afford to travel or get the necessary permissions. In addition, the volunteer facilitators have limited time for travel and attending events.

This project seeks to explore how technology can be used to offer similar opportunities to those provided by the face-to-face courses to a much wider audience while retaining the community and interactive learning aspects of the existing programmes. The study aims to contribute to understanding how individuals within a global voluntary organisation react and interact with online informal learning.

Technology changes the way in which communities come together (Wenger, White & Smith, 2009); however, not everyone is at ease with technology and degrees of digital literacy vary (Hargittai, 2005). Technology was expected to create a revolution in education by providing access across the globe (Friedman, 2005; Liyanagunawardena, Adams, Rassool & Williams, 2011). The reality is that introducing technology into education is always challenging (Collins & Halverson, 2010). There are concerns that this may further marginalise the deprived (Carr-Chellman, 2005); many factors impact on participant’s ability to persevere with an online course (Lee, Choi & Kim, 2012). With the international prevalence of social network sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, people are becoming comfortable contributing in online places; however, in pedagogic situation, there continues to be a “lurker” role (Arnold & Paulus, 2010; Dennen, 2008).

In this paper, the authors report their experiences of the trial run of an international online leadership and discuss the issues as they prepare for the next run.

Initial research (Williams, Spiret, Dimitriadi & McCrindle, 2012) had indicated that there is a high use and appreciation of technology within the organisation, across ages, cultures and languages. However, there is not equal access to technologies, technological capabilities of members vary around the world and within neighbourhoods, and for some obtaining connectivity to the Internet is challenging.

Method

For the prototype online course: • the platform Moodle™ was used for delivery; • the course was 3 weeks, with 3 days pre-activities; • the course was run in English, removing translation overheads; • participants should reflect the spread and diversity of WAGGGS; • there should be around 20 participants; • the facilitation was undertaken by staff associated with the project. The course itself was designed to require participants to engage in individual and group tasks, with support from discussion forums. The participants were all over the age of 18, with 11 under 30 and five over 40 (none between 30 -40). Most considered that they are good or fluent in English. The participants had not met face-to-face and the collaboration was entirely online. The five international regions of WAGGGS were asked to identify four participants each and included: Australia (2), Bahamas, Denmark (2), Egypt, Kenya (2), Mexico, Singapore (2), Slovenia (2), South Africa (2), Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela and USA. Participants completed a survey at the start and the end of the course; engagement was observed and tasks were accessed; qualitative- as well as quantitative-based reflections were drawn from these data.

Expected Outcomes

In face-to-face events, cohort sizes are dictated by accommodation and costs, as well as pedagogic needs. Participants are disengaged from their day-to-day lives and fully committed to the course. There was no discernable pattern of engagement linked to age group. At the end of the course, participants reported a variety of work patterns, with different working practices at weekends compared with weekdays. Some reported that they had experienced difficulties accessing the Internet during the course due to both short-term and longer-term issues. Group working suffered as a result of temporal (time difference or change) and access challenges, with the week allocated for a task hardly allowing some groups time to exchange messages agreeing roles. Some non-native English speakers indicated that during the course, they used a variety of approaches to overcome language difficulties including the use of online translators, although there was some scepticism about the quality of translations. The majority of the participants who completed the course reported that they had enjoyed the experience and learnt about leadership as well as technology uses that they would sign up for another; only one participant rated the course below satisfactory, and this participant also indicated language difficulties.

References

Arnold, N. & Paulus, T. (2010). Using a social networking site for experiential learning: appropriating, lurking, modeling and community building. The Internet and Higher Education, 13, 4, 188–196. Carr-Chellman, A. A. (2005). Introduction. In A. A. Carr-Chellman (Ed.), Global perspectives on e-learning: rhetoric and reality (pp. 1–13). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Collins, A. & Halverson, R. (2010). The second educational revolution: rethinking education in the age of technology. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26, 1, 18–27. Dennen, V. (2008). Pedagogical lurking: student engagement in non-posting discussion behavior. Computers in Human Behavior, 24, 4, 1624–1633. Friedman, T. L. (2005). The world is flat: a brief history of the 21st century. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Hargittai, E. (2005). Survey measures of web-oriented digital literacy. Social Science Computer Review, 23, 3, 371–379. Lee, Y., Choi, J. & Kim, T. (2012). Discriminating factors between completers of and dropouts from online learning courses. British Journal of Educational Technology, Online: doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8535. 2012.01306.x. Liyanagunawardena, T. R., Adams, A. A., Rassool, N. & Williams, S. (2011). Extending higher educational opportunities through e-learning: a case study from Sri Lanka. In: 1st International Australasian Conference on Enabling Access to Higher Education Adelaide, South Australia 2011: 291–301. Wenger, E., White, N. & Smith, J. D. (2009). Digital habitats. Portland: CPsquare. Williams, S., Spiret, C., Dimitriadi, Y. & McCrindle, R. (2012). Auditing technology uses within a global voluntary organisation. In: Global TIME: Global Conference on Technology, Innovation, Media & Education. Online: AAEC; 2012: 104–109.

Author Information

Yota Dimitriadi (presenting / submitting)

UNIVERSITY OF READING

INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

READING

Shirley Williams

University of Reading, United Kingdom

Clare Spiret

W.A.G.G.G.S., London

Rachel McCrindle