Investigating online training in government agencies: designing adaptive web-based instructional programmes to reskill the workforce.

AuthorMcKay, Elspeth
PositionSurvey
  1. INTRODUCTION

    Globally, government agencies employ a wide range of people with diverse skills across their provider network. Therefore we are interested to investigate current government workforce reskilling/training practice; although it is nearly impossible to locate published metrics on such data. Instead, we refer to the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2003 Survey, which identified that in 2001-02, 41% of employers provided structured training programmes. Yet it has been reported elsewhere that 79.2% of employers provide unstructured training in the workplace (Cully, 2005). The development of high-level skills across the workforce is expensive and requires major investment. Nevertheless the costing of workplace training is very difficult to quantify and access to current information is problematic. The Australian National Training Authority combined vocational and structured training to estimate the 1996 cost to employers was $6.186 billion. However, this only reflects 57% of the total Australian training cost of $10.845 billion (Richardson, 2004). Even so, in 2001-02 the cost of structured training was estimated at $4.018 billion, an increase of almost 60% on the 1996 value of $2.518 billion (ABS, 2003)..

    The purpose of this journal paper is to describe a three year research project (2009-2012) that has been funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) involving two collaborative industry partners (see Acknowledgement) and academic researchers from RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. The primary aim of the project is to evaluate the effectiveness of emerging information and communications technology (ICT) tools as intelligent AGENT-based adaptive training aids; by direct contrast with existing methods currently being used by several Australian state government agencies. Upon completion of the project the researchers will disseminate their understanding and insight into how Australian government agencies function with respect to their adoption of online training for their workforce reskilling programmes and the hurdles that will need to be overcome to shift the current negative perceptions towards eLearning solutions. The terms online-learning/online training and eLearning are interchanged throughout this paper to reflect the common understanding by most training practitioners that they mean the same thing.

    The following background section of the paper highlights adult learning to set the context for the discussion on web-based government training practice; while the next section provides the rationale for the ARC project, where we note the importance of taking account of the human-dimensions of human-computer interaction (HCI) when designing online reskilling/training programmes. The research design and methodology section then describes the research framework and evaluation techniques that were used to investigate the online training practice in Australian government agencies. The final parts of the paper involve the discussion of the preliminary results where the practice of social networking emerges as a powerful online training resource.

  2. BACKGROUND

    Evidence of the social context of learning is all around us. History shows us that since the early days BC, people listened to the great Greek philosophers espousing their knowledge in public forums of the day. At times there would be robust argument; disagreement would be common place. It is only natural that arguments arose as people gained new knowledge by listening and comparing their thoughts with others. Following the advent of computers, Gordon Pask's conversation theory explains how people learn by adding new concepts to what they already know (Scott, 2000). In the conversation theory, social networking systems are regarded as symbolic, language-oriented systems that model how human-beings communication with one another (Glanville and Muller, 2007). This phenomenon occurs when two or more people reach a state of (implied) agreement based upon their individual understandings; even when elements of their interactions with other people change. As they recreate meaning from their individual understandings, new agreements often replace the older ones. Unfortunately stability of these (learning) transactions may occur without being dependent on the correctness of the original details.

    Our response to another's speaking will depend upon how one person interprets the other's behaviour. This is how we derive (or internalise) our own meaning of what was said, through these agreement checking conversations (Scott, 2000). In typical business law schools of today, the social context of learning reverts to the classic Greek philosophers' Socratic learning environment. For example: in a typical business meeting setting to promote a learning opportunity, a business manager may ask a question, then either calls on an employee who may or may not volunteer an answer. The manager may then ask the employee more questions or move on to another person in the meeting room. This interaction resembles a type of instructional strategy that does not necessarily promote better learning outcomes. Instead, research reveals this practice is mostly for the worse; this type of Socratic instructional method is also common in many eLearning programmes (McKay, Lenarcic and Richardson, 2008).

    2.1 Adult Learning

    Knowing how to learn new skills is something that improves as we grow older. For the most part, as we travel along our lifelong learning path, it becomes easier to differentiate which instructional strategies are likely to suit us best. The difficulties we are likely to face, especially when learning in Web-mediated instructional environments, will depend on whether there are any fast-tracking options for the learning tasks. This means taking account of prior domain knowledge. We propose this is where social networks may provide the missing link. It is well known that novice-learners lacking the prior domain knowledge of the task require the full range of rules and information to be given to them, so they can understand something new, whereas an experienced-learner might only require a quick revision (McKay, 2008). Novice-learners will therefore respond best to measured amounts of guidance through progressively more complex instructional content when there are strategic opportunities for interactive practice examples along the way (Tennyson and Bagley, 1991). Alternatively, a person possessing the required prior domain knowledge--and hence a more complete grasp of the task--will likely want to experiment first, preferring to refer to the rules and basic information only when they need to.

    Unfortunately there are many online instructional strategies that do not cater for both modes of learning. When instructional systems cannot adapt to this important requirement, they run the risk of demotivating both groups of learners (Tennyson et al., 1991).

    The result may be confusion for the novices when the primary rules and examples are not sufficiently explicit, and boredom and frustration for the experienced learner who is forced into following the complete instructional strategy. The design of online instructional materials must therefore include consideration of the level of a learner's expertise, ie: their prior domain knowledge. Our research shows that adults have relevant experiences that either drive them or demotivate them to learn, and that when the content and design of instructional materials do not challenge or interest them, they can become demotivated.

    3 PROJECT RATIONALE

    3.1 The Human-Dimensions of HCI

    While many organisations have eLearning Websites that include courseware and other online-learning artefacts, they often lack a coherent and effective broad-based eLearning strategy (Rosenberg, 2001). We are suggesting that the human-dimensions of HCI (defined here as social networking) offer the strategic Web 2.0 glue for successful adaptive online training which Rosenberg notes is lacking. The human-dimensions of HCI are but one piece of the complicated computer-usability or techno-puzzle that involves two distinct contexts. One relates to the human-dimension or social context of computing, while the other relates to the machine-side, with people's perspectives being shaped by the performance of the technical computing components. The literature deals more often with the latter. It is only in recent times that a voice has been given to computer-usability issues that involve the human-dimensions (McKay, 2008).

    Considering the social networking opportunities afforded by the human-dimensions of HCI provides a useful framework for understanding how adult learners prefer to participate in their online training. As we have seen in the government focus groups that were conducted in phase-1 of this project (see Appendix), attention to their shared prior knowledge increases learners' willingness to participate. Yet there is little evidence here that instructional design in the government sector includes recognition of the factors that encourage a positive attitude towards such participation in an online community.

    3.2 Timely Innovation

    Traditionally, employers view training as an expensive solution that is implemented to fix problems. In the current climate of changing work practices, every time a new ICT-tool enters the work-environment, employers seem to pour endless amounts of money into upgrading their employees' skill-base. The dilemma of this continual investment in work-place training begs the question of what we know about the impact of these emerging ICT-tools on institutional effectiveness. Furthermore, we believe that many of the eLearning solutions that have been implemented to date have been poorly designed and inadequately tested. Often, paper-based training materials are simply loaded into a learning management system (LMS) or courseware shell; without including adequate knowledge navigation or consideration for the principles of...

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