Future scenarios in FE
1. Working and learning at a distance in Business Studies:
College students on placement are set a variety of tasks e.g. describe the recruitment and retention process in an organisation. This course, currently described by students as ‘boring’ and resulting in lots of written work, will be radically revised though students’ use of mobile devices, always-on connectivity and multi-media. Mobile devices (handhelds or micro-laptops) will enable contact with distant experts, peers and college tutors through audio, video, texting and email. This could include multi-way ‘question time’ video conferencing. At the teaching base, the students would be able to store the assets they have created, such as video, audio, text inputs and other research notes. GPS would not only allow the teacher to know where all of the students are located, but also to let the students know where each other were. By sharing their work, students would know where the gaps were in their knowledge/skills and identify someone to fill those needs. GPS would then enable them to find out who was geographically nearest to the person identified and direct him/her to their location. Students could also share their work while ‘out in the field’, so as to learn how each other is tackling the same problems. They don’t have to wait until they get back to their teaching base before comparing notes. Outcomes include not only meeting course assessment requirements but also the development of inter-personal skills such as collaboration skills, learning how to reconcile different information from different sources and communication with people of different ages, social groups and skill sets.
2. Recording experiential learning in Leisure and Tourism:
A leisure and tourism student moves between several different trendy venues on a work placement day release scheme. She has been asked to create a portfolio to link conceptual ideas with her experiential learning in leisure and tourism. The actual technology used would all be online. There would be no excuses such as 'I forgot my laptop', as everything would be based in an online e-portfolio system including VLE / blog / wiki, with inbuilt and integrated social networking tools. It can be updated by handheld camera phones and netbooks and assumes high speed mobile broadband through wi-fi or the cell network. The system would have both private and public spaces, so that as she goes around recording her work, she can keep that in a private space. She can then develop it from college or home and transfer it to the public space when finished, to be viewed by her tutor, supervisor, mentor and others as required. She would also have access to online tutorials while out in the field, to provide conceptual principles and pointers for her to link them to her practice. Outcomes for the student would include: an industry recognised credit from the Institution or FE College; new skills relevant to leisure and tourism and in managing new mobile technologies to support learning. She could keep the e-portfolio as something to build upon in the future.
3. Sharing Audio in Music Technology
Music technology students spend time out and about in the community recording sounds, tracks and swapping information with each other. Ubiquitous connectivity and handhelds with 80Gb files stores like the latest IPod will enable uploading and downloading of music anywhere. They will use a system for swapping all this information and samples that will be rather like the current 'Diigo' system; this is a social networking site where a group of people can share knowledge through comments on web pages of interest to their community(ies). This new system will allow people leave comments on audio (and maybe video) files in the same way as StudioCode is currently used by some college PE students to combine recorded video and field notes made at the time of the recording (on a PDA) back at the teaching base but, in this future scenario, with everyone collaborating from outside colllege. The tutor would also be able to comment on the student's work, which would be in a multimedia format. Outcomes will include greater collaboration amongst students, a shift in the relationship between lecturers and students and increased learner self esteem through creating resources for and with others.
4. Problem Based Learning in Building or Engineering
Students on an environmental building course work together in groups to complete a whole variety of tasks within problem based learning scenarios such as the design of environmentally friendly, wind-proof or energy efficient buildings. This will involve members of the group in different roles, with designers and modellers at a teaching base equipped with high spec. computers for the necessary engineering maths and modelling and others in the field assessing buildings and discussing with their designers about the environmental features seen and why they were designed in a certain way. These testers out in the field will use mobile devices to gather data on buildings of interest such as GPS location, environmental features and images and to make notes on (and to report) their discussions with the builders/designers. The mobile devices will also be used for collaboration between testers in the field and modellers/designers who remain back at base processing the data received. The modelling and design group will suggest different scenarios and ideas and questions who the testers will try out on the designers and buildings in the real world. Outcomes will include authentic learning shown in researched ‘proof of concept’ papers that can be assessed, looking at various environmental features and what could potentially happen in high winds, freezing conditions or even earthquakes. Also improved collaboration, as students would be working in a bigger team as would happen out in the real world.