Supervising online learning

When a college switches to e-learning, and when this was never part of its strategic plan but an abrupt reaction to the COVID disruption, one big problem  may hinder the successful roll-out of e-learning: the failure by supervsiors to monitor online training. 

The failure to monitor online training can happen when supervisors (heads of departments or heads of sections) are caught up in the confusion of not having the knowledge or requisite skills to monitor online training activities. This gets excerbated when the supervisors lack basic skills for using learning management systems. This problem is often characterised or caused by the follwoing factors:

1. Mistaking the management of e-learning to be a work of IT specialists. This can cause serious harm to the training process. IT specialists should provide technical support (e.g. ensuring that the system is accessible by users, tweaking the system to make it more user friendly, performing system updates, etc),  but managing online training (e.g. ensuring that online content meets e-learning quality standards) should be the work of heads of training. They need to be as conversant with usability issues of the system as lecturers and students. Simply put, you can't manage what you don't understand! 
2. The absense of a checklist and schedule which stipulates tasks to be completed by each lecturer on the e-learning platform will leave each lecturer to do their work in their own style, at their own pace, and many will end up posting scans of bookish notes which have little or no interactive content. As an example, a simple checklist may list notes, forum disccussions, a YouTube video on a given topic, and five multiple choice questions for each topic covered in the week.
3. The lack of knowledge by supervisors concerning what constitutes e-learning pedagogies. It is important to note that effective e-learning uses tools that (a) encourage interactivity between a lecturer and a learner, and  between a learner and another learner, (b) give visual appeal to learners (e.g. videos, games, or simulations). The Internet is replete with free videos and apps one  can use to achieve this. As part of a Quality Assurance checklist, supervisors should check that learning materials satisfy these e-learning requirements.
4. Absense of an information help desk. When students are in college, they read what is on the notice board to check for announcements. And incase they have a challenge of not knowing what to do or where to go, or where to find a certain resource, there is an information desk or reception at a physcial campus to provide such assistance. Likewise, a virtual campus should have a platform which should work as a central point for students to access announcments or to post inquiries. This is not complicated, a simple Whatsapp group can be created and professionally managed to achieve this.

What all this means is that managers of training institutions need to aquiant with e-learning systems, e-learning pedagogies, and e-learning quality assurance. A good starting point would be to have strategic meetings and workshops where this has to be discussed and planned.

COVID Third Wave, This far what's the efficacy of the E-learning Vaccine?

The COVID-19 Third Wave has again disrupted schools, this time the scourge is proving more devatsting as it continues to claim an average of 50 people every day. How are colleges coping with this situation? Were any lessons learnt from the experience of the previous wave? At the time, many colleges panicked to switch to e-learning. Many of them did not have learning management systems in place. Others improvised and used the most easily accesible one, Google Classroom (you may wish to know that this year, 2021, Google has enhanced this platform to now include many LMS features that have transformed it into a serious learning management system). Now, from the time of the earlier COVID-19 waves  to-date, it will be interesting to know if: 

• Colleges were able to transform the then impromptu decisions into formal strategic plans.
• Colleges were able to incorporate e-learning into their standard operating procedures.
• TEVETA  now accepts, and has formally incorporated and communicated, e-learning pedagogies and  online forms of academic assessment.

The last item should be of foremost concern. This time we ought to be ahead of COVID-19, and instead of discussing e-learning implementations, stakeholders should have been strategising on the integration and use of proctored-exam applications into learning management systems.  A proctored exam app enables an institution to conduct an online exam securely; it has electronic tools that monitors a student's conduct, wherever he or she could be. For example, any attempt to open a new browser window during an exam will terminate a session. These systems are used by universities around the world. The systems are also used in certification exams provided by well known tech firms such as CISCO, Oracle, and Microsoft Corporation.

If you are a head of a training institution please be admonished: 

1. Experts have said COVID-19 could be an endemic, that is, it will linger for years to come. You have no option but to take e-learning seriously. When I say "seriously" I don't mean raising your voice or keeping on talking about it  during your staff meetings; this is what I mean: Be proactive and invest in resources, training, and development of standard operating procedures and quality assurance plans for e-learning at your institution.

2. Do not succumb to 'resistance to change'. Many factors can hinder adoption of e-learning. "Some students have no access to Internet", "Lecturers do not have equipment for teaching" - are these sentiments familiar? There is no problem if they come from your operational workers or your followers, but if you are a leader, be informed that when the world changed from the Hunter-gatherer age to Agrarian, it was because some people rose above the challenge of the scarcity of animals by innovating to start domesticating and repopulating them in their residential places, whilst a few others were too conservative to give up on hunting. Later,  industrialisation mechanised equipment leading to quicker methods of production; some nations were quick to adapt but many lagged behind and are still called Third World today! Simply put, change is always inevitable and it is your work, as a leader, to help your workforce adapt or they will become irrelevant to economic forces in their environment.

3. Take on a leading role. Always remember that strategic change can never successfully take course in an organisation if it is being propelled by low-ranking workers, no matter how innovative they could be. If there is no strong will from senior management to take the lead, 'Talk' instead of 'Action' is what will succeed. Secondly,  do not foolishly retreat with the excuse of being a 'BBC' (Born Before Computers); don't be naive! As long as your brain, eyes, and ears are still working, you still have the ability to learn or you risk becoming irrelevant in this fast-changing world. Take interest to understand what an e-learning system is, how it works, what products are available on the market, and what competitive benefits e-learning brings to a college. You do not need to be a computer expert to aquaint with e-learning; it is now a necessary tool that senior management at a training institution ought to aquaint with.

It is my hope and prayer that phobia for the e-learning vaccine can subside, and that managers of training institutions can provide the much needed lead for their staff to take the jab. We will overcome, take care!

No going back, e-Learning is the Future!

COVID-19 is leap-frogging Zambia's TEVET sector into the future of education. What "future"? The future of learning away from the distant walls of a classroom, the future of giving equal access to training opportunities to everyone regardless of their financial status or where they live in Zambia, and the future of equipping trainers with requisite resources - the Internet, learning management systems, computers, and power backup systems -  for a cost-effective and efficient delivery of e-learning. The just ended Digitization Capacity Assessment (DCA) workshop, which started on 10th November and ended on 13th November, comprising technical officers from GIZ, the Ministry of Higher Education, and Vocational Training Institutions (VTIs), was an important step closer to this prospect.

DCA Core Team

It was heaps and clusters of completed questionnaires whose data had to be aggregated and analyzed. Respondents were lecturers and students at three VTIs and three non-VTIs. VTIs included Lusaka Business and Technical College, Mansa Trades Training Institute, and Mwense Trades Training Institute. Non-VTIs included the University of Zambia, Chalimbana University and the Natural Resources Development College.

DCA team members working in groups

The questionnaires sought to gather information on various aspects of digitization and key among these were respondents' views on what they felt about the importance and effectiveness of e-learning and what challenges if any restrained them from effectively participating in e-learning during this advent of COVID-19. Various responses indicated a desire to pursue e-learning but coupled with frustrations of the lack of capacity to effectively implement systems that would not disadvantage the many students who lack Internet-enabled gadgets and many who may have the gadgets but yet cannot afford expensive data plans offered by Internet Service Providers.

A more challenging problem involves those who come from rural places with no access to electricity.

Many rural areas in Zambia are not connected to the national power grid

However, the power-problem now affects all institutions:  in colleges where significant efforts have been made towards implementing e-learning, load shedding has been quite disruptive. Most of the colleges cannot afford buying uninterruptible power supplies or gensets. But it is now exciting to see the e-learning conversation taking center-stage and being given utmost priority by the Ministry of Higher Education. There is hope that soon these troubles will lie behind us. However, as serious efforts are being made to respond to e-learning resource challenges, two most important ingredients to e-learning strategies must never lie in the boondocks of conversations -  Policy and Quality Assurance and Audit procedures!  Lusaka Business and Technical College (LBTC) has an interesting experience of this.

When colleges abruptly closed in March in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Open Distance and Flexible Learning unit at LBTC was caught up in a predicament. The following month, April, had already been scheduled for residential school for distance learners and the only way to proceed with training was through the college's learning management system which at that time was hardly in use. Only a handful of about three lecturers occasionally used the LMS. To proceed with what the ODFL team dubbed 'e-residential', there were a myriad (nearly impossible) tasks to be accomplished within a short time -  creating many short videos to guide lecturers on all aspects of using the system, creating a directory of different user-guide videos for students, defining quality assurance procedures and audit plans to ensure a satisfactory learning experience for students, establishing a rotational schedule of ICT lecturers who would be available on campus to assist lecturers who could not manage following the user-guide videos, among many other things! This was quite an ambitious plan but against all odds it worked just as was planned! The ODFL team worked through the nights to create easy-to-follow videos  and to coordinate various preparatory works. 

Following the successful transition to e-campus, the ODFL team was elevated to oversee the transition of all departments to Blended Learning. That transition, however, hasn't been a success story. The ODFL team had foreseen the failure: whereas the transition for the ODFL unit was strongly guided by policy (which had stiff penalties for any abrogation of a given guideline), the transition to Blended Learning by all departments was never enforced by policy or any elaborate Quality Assurance procedure. The formalities and red-tape that stood in the way of developing and getting such a policy approved was simply demotivating.

An LMS Content Audit document used at LBTC

Even so, the ODFL unit has continued making remarkable progress in the use of the LMS. As VTIs are now in the process to integrate e-learning in their training programmes it is imperative for stakeholders to know that a more important piece of a learning management system is not hardware, software, a power-backup plan or the Internet but policy and quality assurance procedures! The red tape that would hinder a quick development and subsequent implementation of these policies should be taken out of the way. For a start, the ministry should let colleges develope in-house e-learning policies and quality assurance procedures. However, if the Ministry and TEVETA can be quick enough, much desired would be a centalised policy.

Another critical issue, requiring the attention of TEVETA, involves the need to review assessment criterion vis-a-vis the transition to blended and electronic forms of learning in VTIs. The transition to e-learning will require accommodating new pedagogical and assessment approaches. For example, a common method used to continuously enthuse and engage learners via LMS platforms involve giving weekly topical assessments in form of objective (multiple choice) questions. Such assessments should ultimately build into a block of marks that add up to the Continuous Assessment score. Many (if not all) universities around the world which offer online or blended learning use such forms of assessments. This conversation on accommodating online forms of assessments MUST begin now!

As this author perused through one questionnaire completed by a professor at UNZA, on the question of whether e-learning is a viable form of learning, the respondent stated that "there is no going back, e-learning is the future!" One cannot agree more. And, with or without COVID-19, e-learning should continue being emphasized; it should not be taken merely as a safeguard against COVID-19 but as a tool that enhances students' learning experience and increases their accessibility to tertiary education regardless of where one could be.

The author, Andrew C. Phiri, is leader of the ODFL team at LBTC and is a member of the 

DCA team.

E-learning is not ZOOM or Skype! Here is a tip if you struggle with connection problems.

"What learning management system do you use at your school?" This question was asked during a meeting of different heads of schools. Different responses were given - "ZOOM", "Whatsapp", "e-mail", etc. There was clearly much ignorance about what constitutes a learning management system (LMS).

Last month I had the priviledge to facilitate a workshop at a school which desired to implement an LMS. As I always do, my first task was to make the audience understand that LMS is not just an application or an item of hardware but a well planned system which consists of standard operating procedures, people, and equipment. Software or hardware is only a component of equipment. 

To be successfully implemented focus should not just be on the equipment part of the LMS; all elements - standard operating procedures, people and equipment - ought to be well defined.

1. Standard operating procedures

Before your teachers or lecturers can start using a system there should be procedures in place that should ensure:

• Uploads of learning materials are regulated by deadlines and a quality assurance policy.
• Learning materials (content on the system) conforms to a specified standard.
• Accountability for abrogations of rules. If a system is to be successful there should be rules that compel everyone to correctly use the system and there should be penalties for those who don't adhere to rules. 

2. People

Introducing a new information system often comes with creating new roles. For the school I mentioned earlier we recommended having a Content Editor who would ensure all notes and other learning materials have a standardised format and are free of typos or formatting erros; E-learning Support Officer, a person who will be available to assist users whenever they encounter a technical or usability challenge, and Production Room Officer to maintain a schedule of 'who produces content and at what time'; he or she should manage the room selected for content production. 

3. Equipment

Under "people" above I mentioned a production room. This room can be equipped with basic facilities such as an Internet router for unlimited Internet connection (I recommend ZAMTEL's Velocity), a video camera or phone with a good camera, and a white board! It should be understood that ZOOM, SKype, or Email are not e-learning systems. These are simply minor tools that can be used in a learning management system. An LMS is bigger than any of these apps. A learning management system has extensive features that enables lecturers to deliver training, carry out assessments, manage student records, and monitor each learner's progress. A well known LMS equipped with all these facilities is Moodle. It is used by about 65% of universities around the world. Guess what, it is open source and can be used for free! Another platform you may consider using which is readily accessible is Google Classroom. 

Tip if you Struggle with Connection problems

May I share an experience I had some two months ago. I hired a teacher of IT to teach computer lessons to my son via an e-learning platform. The lessons didn't go very well because of intermittent internet connections. Much of the time was getting wasted on "Can you hear me now? Hello... are you there?" Such experiences waste time and they demotivate the learner. 

Here is my suggestion: You dont have to do live recordings for it to be e-learning. A more effective approach is to take your whiteboard and marker and make short videos of your lessons. Such a video will be far more effective and reusable than a live session. Yes, you can use live sessions if your connection is reliable and more importantly when giving feedback on certain tasks you gave your student. But if it is delivering a lesson, a more effective approach is uploading pre-recorded videos. Such videos enable a learner to rewind, pause, and play again for full comprehension of a concept. Many universities use this approach; live sessions are reserved for taking questions from students over items they may never have fully understood.

I hope you found this useful. Enjoy your day.

The digital era has dawned in Zambia!

I just realised that  my car insurance, road tax, and fitness test of my car would expire the following day! A busy day awaited me and I constantly feared the horror of those long exasperating queues at RTSA. I  immediately stopped what I was doing to rush to any nearby RTSA outlet. 

I went to a mobile insurance seller where I found a conversation about the option of buying road tax online. The lady selling insurance answered, "Dont try, it takes a month to be ready!" 

After buying the insurance I rushed to RTSA for the road tax. Arriving at the  RTSA Ridgeway offices I found a long snake of a queue, but more worrying was the congestion which completely disregarded the COVID-19 rules of social distancing. There were quite folks, loud talkers, and laughers. I spotted a number of people with facemasks but which were pulled over the chin area. The horror began for me: the queue was moving at a snail rate of about one hour for a distance of not more than 30 centimetres! There were intermittent episodes of outbursts of anger and shouting at officers manning the door: "Why is the queue not moving? You are letting in some people who never stood on the queue". I cannot tell the total number of saliva droplets that would splash out on the different people around.

I simply wasn't ready for this nightmare. Words of that man asking about buying the tax online echoed into my mind. I grabbed my phone and looked up RTSA using Google and there it came. Its a user-friendly and intuitive interface I must say.

I quickly entered details of my car. When I tried to enter my insurance details the system couldn't confirm them but advised me to contact my insurance provider. I pulled the insurance receipt and located the company's mobile number. It was quick and efficient: the lady on the phone requested for my receipt number and car details and within a short time she uploaded my details. I went back to the RTSA page, entered the insurance details and all was set! I transacted using my visa card details and hooray, my disk was ready! I gracefully excused myself from the long queue, rushed to the office and printed my disc. Next I transacted for the fitness test and printed the required document. I again rushed to RTSA's Makeni Mall test centre. I found another long noisy queue! "Sir, you've already done the work online , you dont have to be on this queue!" Wonderful, I said to myself as I handed my signed paper documents and in a few minutes my test certificate was ready.

If all people quickly embrace the digitisation of systems, this is how RTSA outlets will be looking like:

I dream of a queueless RTSA!

At the end of this exciting day the biggest question on my mind was this: Almost everyone I saw on that queue had a smart phone, and a number of people were chatting on Whatsapp or were strolling through Facebook. Why couldn't they transact online? And what about that lady who gave misinformation about how long it takes to process the RTSA requirememnts online? Well, I can only say, what RTSA has done is great but as always, there is always not only resistsance to change but much misinformation that can hinder or delay a system from effectively taking off. The introduction of e-learning systems is no exception. If you are planning to introduce one, you will need a robust team with enough thick-skin to resist the resistance and to re-educate teachers or lecturers, and in worst case scenarious, to convince managers who may not favour the idea. However, it doesnt take very long for people to realise that much of the hardwork when transitioning from a brick-and-mortar education system to an electronically supported one is only during the initial stages. Later on, after the transition, lecturers start to work less; much of the content of subsequent intakes would have already been uploaded and only minor edits would be taking place.

From my RTSA experience here is what I learnt. When change occurs, there will be three kinds of people: 

• The ignoramus: that person who hardly knows anything about the transition taking place; the person seems completely unaware of new systems being introduced and so they continue to suffer doing work the hard way when there is actually a smarter way which has been introduced.

• The misinformer: that person who knows something about the system but hasn't dedicated enough time to practise and learn how the system works. He or she will make loud noise about the supposed errors or inifficiencies he enocountered when using the system. Beware of the misinformer; he or she can jeorpadise efforts of implementing a good system. It is important to provide enough information and training about the system, and more importantly to set-up a user-support mechanism for assisting those encountering challenges.

• The willing to try and learn: This person is ready to try and use the system. When they see that there are more benefits to be enjoyed from using the system than demerits, they are quick to encourage others to use it. For the RTSA system, I belong to this category and I am now trying to encourage you to use it. Apart from saving you time, you will contribute to a healthier greener planet: less cars on the road going to RTSA, and less paper getting printed.

If you have already transitioned to e-learning or are in the process of doing so, I can't wait to hear what your experiences have been. Would you care to share?

Switching to E-learning: How to Manage the Change

In the wake of the COVD-19 problem Lusaka Business and Technical, under the oversight of a robust team, successfully carried out all training activities for distance learners via a Learning Management System. Our team has now been given another mandate to manage the change to Blended Learning for full-time students. I wish to share insights on what may characterise this transition.

Switching to Blended Learning (or e-learning) is not a simple matter of merely telling lecturers to start using an e-learning platform. It is important to be aware that a college or university may even have the best learning management system and a great team of lecturers but yet fail to transition successfully. An important thing that seldomly gets considered when transitioning is the cultural context of a college. In this article I first want to discuss how culture can work for, or against , Change. Secondly I wish to share Lippitt’s Model of managing Change; the model consists of simple steps that can be followed to manage Change.

Culture

Organisational culture comprises the norms and values that characterise the behaviour of an organisation. Now, if culture is a “norm”, it is by definition the first stumbling block to Change, and it goes without saying that any Change programme that takes off without considering the cultural context of an environment will not be successful. However, it is interesting to note that one way to get around the culture stumbling block is to use it as an agent of Change! Aguirre and Post (2013) explains how this is achievable: “When companies tap into the energy and emotional commitment that are bound up in their cultures, change initiatives are far more sustainable”. Sadly, however, although it is critical to business success, and although many managers are aware of this, culture seems to occupy a background position in many organisations.

A survey done by Strategy plus Business indicated that culture is widely seen to be more important than companies’ strategies but yet only 35% of executives said their companies did an effective job of managing culture (Aguirre & Post, 2013). It is when culture is ignored, and all efforts focus only on change, that culture will be seen to be diametrically opposed to the desired change. 

So, how exactly can culture be a tool of change? Well, culture resides in, and is sustained by, human beings  - lecturers, IT support staff, administration staff etc -  who work at a college. Thus, instead of only thinking about change in terms of transformations that will occur to methods of teaching, preparing schemes and lesson plans, focus should be on the human beings that are the real agents of change!

During change in business, the management team of a college, or the Human Resource role to be specific, should listen to concerns of lecturers  and foster a two-way dialogue to move big changes forward (Khatri, 2016). The HR function can create a work-environment where employees become pro-change. Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter notes that  “The most successful organizations develop a culture that just keeps moving all of the time” (cited in Khatri, 2016). Iljins et al (2015) suggests a method of motivating employees into adapting to change by implementing a reward system. Training and rewarding of employees during performance of tasks during the change programme can encourage them to do their best to target achievements of the organization and in the process that may influence them to enjoy the change. An important feature to add to the reward system is  penalties for non-performance or wrong-performance of tasks. At LBTC, we devised a system which enforces a penalty of 5% off a person's remuneration for each omisssion of an item that was supposed to be uploaded onto the Learning Management System. People now work hard to ensure no penalties affect their earned reward points.

Change Programme

To effectively manage change, a suitable model should be selected. Some common models include Lewin’s Three-Step model and Lippitt’s model. Lewin’s model consists of unfreezing the status quo, effecting the change and freezing the new change. 

Lippitt’s model builds on Lewin’s model through a detailed seven-step process (cited in Higgins & Bourne, 2018). The steps include:

Step 1: Diagnose the problem.

Step 2: Assess the motivation and capacity for change.

Step 3: Assess the resources and motivation of the change agent.

Step 4: Develop action plans and establish required strategies. 

Step 5: The role of the change agents should be selected and clearly understood by all parties so that expectations are clear.

Step 6: Maintain the change. Communication, feedback and group coordination are essential elements in this step of the change process.

Step 7: Terminate from the helping relationship (gradually). The change agent should gradually withdraw from their role over time. This will occur when the change becomes part of the organizational culture. 

Once a suitable change model is selected, there will be need to also choose the correct e-learning or blended model that your college wishes to implement. More on that in my next blog post.

Importance of Values in a Work Place

In managing an organisation leaders should be aware that the different individuals that make up the workforce have different values, behaviours, perceptions, and attitudes. However, an organisation has one mission and it can only succeed if the various attributes of the workers get aligned to that mission. Research (Berkhout & Rowlands, 2007) has shown that companies whose employee-hiring criteria is focussed on matching personal values with organizational values tend to be significantly more successful because of the fact that employees have a higher level of job satisfaction. It is important for leaders of an organisation to understand the underlying causes of certain behaviours and work towards creating an environment that would enable and motivate people to contribute positively towards an organisation’s mission. The beginning point should be a good understanding of what constitutes values and knowing how values influence workers’ attitudes towards work.

Grieser (n.d.) in explaining why workplace values are important in his blog post likened an organisational system to an engine and steering wheel of a vehicle: A vehicle requires both an engine and a steering wheel to be able to work correctly – “An organization is no different: its purpose is the engine that propels it forward, and its values are the steering system by which it is guided”. To put it another way, an organisation has a mission, which is the purpose why an organisation exists, and values are needed to guide people on how they should conduct themselves, or to be guided on what things can be done and cannot be done in their work of serving the purpose of the organisation. For example loyalty, honesty, reliability, and efficiency may be the values of a company. But how exactly are values of a company formed?

It is important to note that values of a company never arise haphazardly; there has to be a deliberate plan in place. Heathfield (2019) explains that every work place has values and the question should be whether the existing values are creating the desired workplace. Thus, the first step towards defining the values of organisation should be the coming together of executives of an organisation to identify what currently characterises the organisation. The executives should move on to discuss the importance of having shared values as an organisation. Next a list of desired values should be discussed and agreed on. Workers should all be involved through well organised workshops during which individuals can freely share their personal values. Professional trainers should facilitate meetings during which individuals’ values are aligned to the organisation’s mission.

Now, aligning people’s attributes is not a mechanical process. Human beings are products of different experiences of life and the experiences may influence how they perceive life or situations around them. Perception is “a process wherein the individuals receive various stimuli, organize their impressions, interpret in their own way, thereby giving some meaning to the environment” (EDUCBA, n.d); because of this our behaviour is a consequence of our perception. It goes without saying that wrong interpretations about situations may lead to wrong behaviour and wrong behaviour may ultimately affect a company’s performance. In my teaching career for example, some teachers believe work is about earning money and so anytime there is a chashflow problem their eagerness and zeal to work gets affected; they slow down. Such happenings by individuals working for a school or college may over a period of time injure the reputation of an institution.

To foster a positive work environment people’s personal values, attitudes, and behaviours should be aligned with a companie’s values. However, before workers can be motivated into alignment executives should agree on the importance of having shared values in a work-place. Managers would have to take a leading role in inspiring a culture that is conscious of company values. More important in all this is the human-resource function of an organisation; the recruitment process should select candidates with values that resonate with a company’s values. That would make the process of aligning individual person’s values with company values much easier. 

REFERENCES

Grieser (n.d.). Why Workplace Values Are Important. Randy’s Blog. https://theordinaryleader.com/blog/why-workplace-values-are-important/ 

Berkhout, T., and Rowlands, I. H. (2007). The Voluntary Adoption of Green Electricity by Ontario-Based Companies - The Importance of Organizational Values and Organizational Context. Organization and Environment, 20(3), 281–303.