Source: Ministry of Education (NZ) – Education Counts. The full report is available here:  http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/tertiary_education/76972

Executive Summary

This research provides readers with a greater understanding of the potential of e-learning for adult literacy, language and numeracy. It investigates how e-learning can be employed as a means of reaching greater numbers of adult learners and how to better meet their learning needs.

Our overarching research question was:

What characteristics of programmes, such as e-learning, mixed mode, and distance learning, have been successful in raising the literacy, language and numeracy skills (LLN) of adult learners and could be used to supplement workplace training?

The main message that we drew from our work is that e-learning is relevant to and useful for most adults with literacy, language and/or numeracy (LLN) learning needs. However, these benefits rely on a learning programme that is carefully designed to fit each individual’s needs and lifestyle, his or her proficiency with digital technologies, and his or her level of reading literacy.

This distance e-learning, especially when blended with face-to-face support, can provide an effective way of developing the LLN skills of learners currently at Level 2 of the New Zealand Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (2006). In this report, we refer to this level as the intermediate level of literacy.

The 10 main findings to emerge from our research are as follows:

1. Literacy, language and numeracy skills in the 21st century include proficiency with digital technologies and practices, including e-learning.
2. E-learning for LLN is largely a recent development in New Zealand: very few well-established programmes exist.
3. E-learning is more effective if it is part of face-to-face training.
4. Māori approaches to e-learning can be used to build skills and knowledge within the Māori community.
5. As long as adequate support is in place, e-learning provides a good source of practice and motivation for second-language learners.
6. The diverse Pasifika peoples benefit from e-learning that fits their respective cultures and lives and is accompanied by induction activities.
7. Many of the e-learning strategies used for building reading and writing skills can also be successfully used for and by adults with disabilities that limit their ability to learn and/or access learning.
8. Using mobile digital technologies in e-learning contexts increases the flexibility of LLN provision.
9. Tutors and support staff require specific professional development in e-learning, and organisations need to develop so that they can successfully accommodate this type of learning.
10. Communities of practice can provide a supplementary means of professional development for tutors engaged in e-learning and can lead to the development of relevant resource banks.

Blending face-to-face LLN training with e-learning for individuals and groups has the greatest chance of addressing needs, but these types of provision must be accompanied by professional and organisational development within and across organisations. We therefore conclude our report with nine recommendations for action:

1. Provide e-learning-related professional development for tutor educators and workplace assessors who work in adult education.
2. Ensure that the quality assurance measures used in relation to LLN programmes include regular assessment and updating of e-learning provisions.
3. Partnerships between and among key stakeholders are essential for the effective development and integration of sustained e-learning opportunities. These partnerships should include web-based facilities that offer access to e-learning content, tutors and professional development.
4. Increase the capacity for e-learning in all New Zealand contexts, including e-learning on marae in collaboration with Māori institutions and communities.
5. Research and develop e-learning in partnership with rural and remote communities. Immigrants’ home countries can be party to this provision, but only if the e-learning infrastructure in these places is sufficiently developed to provide immigrant and transient populations with the opportunity to develop their LLN skills.
6. Establish banks of appropriate activities and resources for use by tutors and assessors, and support these people in a way that allows them to help develop and update those banks as part of their professional development activities. The scale of need in New Zealand suggests this approach could be a cost-effective one. However, achieving this aim would need centralised coordination (a national hub).
7. Support projects designed to investigate the potential that more recent digital technologies might offer learners with LLN needs. This potential could include, within workplaces, for example, mobile learning via mobile phones, simulations with game-like interfaces, and e-learning on hand-held computers.
8. Encourage continuing research in e-learning that is sufficiently complex to aid the evolution of pedagogical practice. How digital technologies can be used to advance learning and how the e-learning professional development needs of professionals and organisations can best be served are issues particularly in need of sustained research.
9. Collaborate internationally to continue to review research and development worldwide, and to disseminate the findings of this research to the New Zealand tertiary sector.

The full report is avaliable here: http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/tertiary_education/76972

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The vaunted ‘business partnership model’ has yet to be realized – and in tough economic times, when the training budget is often the first to be cut, training is on trial for its very existence.

Using a courtroom trial as a metaphor, “Training on Trial” seeks to get to the truth about why training fails and puts the business partnership model to work for real. Readers on both sides of the ‘courtroom’ will learn how to stop viewing training as a cost center, and bridge the gulf between what learning functions deliver and what business units need to execute their strategies.

A thought-provoking read for trainers and business unit leaders alike, “Training on Trial” provides a new application of the Kirkpatrick Four – Level Evaluation Model and a multitude of tips and techniques that allow lessons learned to be put into action now.

BUY NOW:

Training on Trial: How Workplace Learning Must Reinvent Itself to Remain Relevant

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The key to high performance and satisfaction is intrinsic, internal motivation: the desire to follow your own interests and understand the benefits in them for you.

In Drive, Pink lays out the hard science for these surprising insights; describes how people and corporations can embrace them; offers details about how we can master them; and provides concrete examples of how intrinsic motivation works on the job, at home and in ourselves.

BUY NOW: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

About the Author

Daniel H. Pink is the author of a trio of provocative, bestselling books on the changing world of work, including A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, a long-running New York Times and Business Week bestseller that has been translated into 18 languages. A free agent himself, Dan held his last real job in the White House, where he served from 1995 to 1997 as chief speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore.

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While academic achievement at school was the strongest predictor of first-year university success for these students, not all higher-achieving school students performed equally well at university, and some who had lower school achievement out-performed students with higher school achievement. The report looks at the factors that might explain these differences.

The study considered a population of first-year bachelors-degree students at university, who had all achieved the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 3 and attained the University Entrance standard.

While academic achievement at school was the strongest predictor of first-year university performance for these students, not all higher-achieving school students performed equally well at university, and some who had lower school achievement out-performed students with higher school achievement.

Among higher-achieving school students, those who:

• studied part-time or for only part of the year, or
• were from the sole-Pasifika¹ ethnic group, or
• were low-decile school students from ethnic groups other than sole-European

showed lower levels of university performance than other higher-achieving school students.

Among those with lower school achievement, students who took a year off before starting their tertiary studies—particularly students from low-decile schools—showed higher levels of performance at university than those who progressed directly to tertiary study after leaving school.

But this better performance among those who took a gap year was not seen in European, or sole-Pasifika students.

Lower-achieving students from low-decile schools performed better in their first-year of tertiary studies than similar students from high-decile schools. This suggests that among lower achieving students, NCEA underestimates the ability of those from lower decile schools. And conversely, NCEA overestimates the ability of those from higher decile schools.

View the full report: http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/tertiary_education/76374

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Key Findings

• Level 1 to 3 tertiary certificates are of most benefit to people with no or low school qualifications and are best seen as a pathway to higher levels of study
• Level 4 certificates have better economic outcomes than school qualifications, particularly for men. There is some evidence of improved social outcomes for women
• The economic outcomes from diplomas are close to those of bachelors degrees. Diplomas are associated with improved social outcomes, more so for women than for men
• The clearest evidence of social outcomes from tertiary certificates and diplomas is for greater parental support for children’s learning

View the full report: Benefits of Tertiary Certificates and Diplomas – exploring economic and social outcomes

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We have interviewed hundreds of participants in learning programs, both online and event-based. Essentially, the question we asked was, “Were you able to apply what you learned in a way that helped you achieve a business outcome or goal?” Perhaps not surprisingly, a large percentage of these employees answered “No.”

However, when we delved deeper to understand what was preventing these learners from attaining and applying this new knowledge to achieve goals, we were surprised to discover that it was not a failure of the technology or the learning program itself. In most cases, learners point to factors outside of the learning program or event as being the most critical barriers to success.

The organizational factors that prevent employees from converting e-Learning into business achievement can be boiled down to five key principles. We call these principles the 5As, and together they make up the 5As Framework:

1) Aligning e-Learning initiatives (the content and purpose of the program, etc.) with individual and organizational goals;

2) Anticipating learning and success from participation in the e-Learning;

3) Forming a learning Alliance of learner with supervisor/boss;

4) Applying learning to achieving business goals; and

5) Being Accountable for business results.

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Attendance at traditional face–to-face workshops for New Zealand sheep and beef farmers has been dropping steadily over the past few years. FeedSmart, an industry and government funded research program, was charged with identifying the most effective elearning approaches to use to assist New Zealand farmers to feed plan more effectively.

As a result of investigating the ways farmers preferred to learn, eLearning was identified as worthy of investigation.

This paper reports on a small-scale, exploratory, action research study designed to determine the viability and effectiveness of generating and delivering information to farmers via a video-conferencing approach, supported by the use of other digital technologies such as video-cameras.

Key learnings from this study are that: the farmers enjoyed and increased their knowledge using this approach; eLearning of this type has potential as a learning approach for farmers; and that eLearning as a learning approach for farmer education is worthy of further investigation.

View and download the .pdf here: http://www.csu.edu.au/faculty/science/saws/afbmnetwork/efsjournal/volume5/number2/research/EFS_09_vol_5_no_2_article08.pdf

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Youth Training – Statistical Profile 1999 to 2008

This report provides participation and labour market outcome analysis of the Youth Training programme between 1999 and 2008, using the Youth Training administrative dataset. This is the first time this information has been made available in a single analysis.

The report provides analyses of participation in the programme, and provides statistical modelling of the factors related to transition to Youth Training from school, and the factors associated with labour market outcomes two months after leaving placements.

The report is available on the Education Counts website.

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The changes to councils come with the introduction of the Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Act, which requires new polytechnic councils to be appointed by 1 May 2010.

The 78 appointments comprise 33 existing council members and 45 new appointees.  A further two appointments will be made in due course.

As well as four Ministerial appointees, each new council is to have four members appointed by the polytechnic’s council.

A number of cross-appointments have been made to geographically related councils.  The most significant of these are in the Wellington area where three Ministerial appointees sit on the boards of both Whitireia Polytech and Weltec.

"The government is keen to encourage Polytechs to work together in a complementary way and the cross-appointments we have made will encourage that," says Mr Joyce.

Mr Joyce says he is impressed by the experience that these council members will bring to the governance of polytechnic councils.

"These appointments will help strengthen the performance of the polytechnics which play such a vital role in our educational and economic future.

"This means the polytechnics’ current councils are able to decide their non-ministerial-appointed members based on their knowledge of the needs of their communities and the issues they face.

"The Act equips polytechnics with the potential for strong and effective councils that are well placed to respond to the challenges faced by the sector in a tight fiscal environment.

"Councils will need to address the call of the Tertiary Education Strategy for greater efficiency and improved educational and financial performance to deliver the best possible return on the public investment.

"An important first task for the new councils will be to participate in the process for the development of polytechnics’ next round of Investment Plans for 2011.

"I look forward to working with councils to ensure their students meet the future skill needs of New Zealand," says Mr Joyce.

ITP_appointments.pdf (pdf, 91 Kb)

SOURCE: http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/appointments+20+polytech+councils+announced+1

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The Dunedin action group petitioning the government for a trial of National Standards is holding a public meeting on Wednesday 31^st March. They would like to invite parents, communities and schools to attend and hear well known and respected leader in education, Lester Flockton speak on this issue. The government has also been invited to respond. Take this opportunity to participate in the discussion about National Standards. The Regent seats 1800 so this venue can cater for a big turnout. Please pass on to your networks, community groups and families.

Trial National Standards, not our kids!

Kia mau ki te whakaako

Visit handsupforlearning to support the campaign

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