CI notes of interest...

A big issue that keeps coming up is training. People feel like there needs to be training on x, y and z but everyone complains that training is not effective. I look at the training materials and see that some of them are not half bad. I would venture to say that the problem with training is that it is not connected to work. If tools were developed to help people to do their job, they would learn as they work. An example: One problem is that people have to go to distribution centers to make sure that everything is proper. How do they know what to look for?? We could hold a training and explain what to look for, we could even role play and make it a very active training where they really get it, but after the training, who is with them to remind them? Are they going to carry a heavy book with training notes? Would it not be more effective to give them a checklist, or form to fill out??

I have been wrestling with more complex issues and how learning may be more fully integrated with the work process. Learning and action are intricately tied together. Are there suggestions as to more ways to scaffold learning into the work process??

I have come to sink my teeth into a few projects here in Benin. They are both interesting problems from an information perspective and I would like to get some feeback as to how to procede.

The first issue that I am working on is in education. Here, village schools lack proper management. To deal with the issue, NGOs have been promoting parent organizations as a means for the village to ensure that the school is good. Heres the problem -- most parents have never been to school. They can't read or write. They've never been involved in organizations or have had to manage. So their capacity to manage the school is limited. Efforts have been undertaken to train the parents and these have had some level of sucess. However, the training focuses on the leaders of the parent association. Leaders are re-elected after 5 years so the knowledge of the past leader gets lost. Also, because they don't read and write, they aren't often able to keep track of enrollment from year to year for example. They don't know if it's gone up or down. My current job is to research to find out the capacity and then develop a way to improve parental capacity. (both immediate and organizationally - so knowledge doesn't get lost over generations)

The second issue that I am dealing with is development of a report card that benchmarks practices in food handling. We distribute lots of food and we need a way to measuret the quality of our operations. Again, a lot of the guys that work with the trucks and warehouses are not highly educated and the nature of their work is tacit (IE: there is a bag of rice with a rip in it) We are trying to come up with a way to use PDAs to capture data that is needed for the office while accomodating the work flow of workers.

Manual Castell's characterization of the on/off world accurately describes life for the past few weeks. Because we do not deal specifically with ICT development there is a culture of "off" at work that is very difficult for me to adapt to. There are of course IT people and projects within the organization, but they are managed like other resources. They are locked down -- I needed permission from the country representative to be able to turn on my MSN messenger. Our connection runs through a proxy server which requires login -- to which I as an employee do not have access. Effectively I am turned off to the more progressive applications and uses of the internet.

Now that I am serving in the role of program assistant, writing grants, evaluating projects and the like, I am amazed at the amount of information that I am asked to manage without any real system to do so. Part of my problem is tht I am not adequately enculturated. There is an extensive vocabulary of accronyms and jargon which allows people to mentally characterize information. I can imagine, however, that this system of codification make working with outsiders more difficult.

I am ever more excited about progress in Haiti - dispite setbacks and inprobability of sucess. We had our 4th Centra meeting this morning where we continued to hammer out the Information Technology program.

We are in the process of designing the first distance course which I will lead in the fall from Benin. It will be an introduction to computing course designed to teach students important computer literacy skills (email, information searching, word processing, etc) and provide them with an overview of the professional field of information technology.

The course will be held in English, French and Creole. The students have been studying English for the past year and will be ready for some form of English instruction. I believe that this needs to be supplimented with conversation and ability to explore concepts in their native language. As a teaching team, we are really stuggling with making the most use of limited contact hours. How much and what should be taught in English? How much and what should be taught by the distant instructor vs. the local course facilitator? There is a lot to think about.

From other perspectives, important parts of the course are coming together. I am building a strong relationship with the local facilitator of the course who will lead discussion sessions, proctor exams and grade homework. He will be my eyes, ears and "presence." Theoretically, I predicted that the success of this model of distance education rests largely on the relationship between the distant instructor and the local facilitator. I feel confident that by developing the course together, the local facilitator and I will be able to make the course a successful experience for the students. The bigger question becomes, how do I encourage that type of relationship building between other instructors and facilitators in the future? What mechanisms and or resources need to be in place to encourage that relationship?

This past weekend I drove down to Virginia to meet with Patrick from the University of Virginia who is doing his PhD in Education Technology and is interested in writing about distance learning as a way to do training in health care in Haiti. We are working collaboratively both in research and practice, so it was nice to meet him.

He is flying down to Haiti this coming week to do a needs analysis on health care in Haiti in terms of what kinds of things would make good training seminars. The plan is then to develop a mini certificate program to offer through the American University in Les Cayes via Centra that will allow health professionals in the US to train health care workers in Haiti.

I am excited about the possibilities of what we might be able to learn from this project. Some knowledge will invariably need to be tacit. My question is, are there enough affordances in Centra to facilitate that kind of knowledge transfer. The other interesting component or opportunity that arises from this project is possibility of engagement. Many of the potential partners of the project are faculty at the University of Virginia. Are there opportunities for them to learn more about tropical diseases or gather data from Les Cayes ?

Will post more as the project unfolds...

I have been working with the American University of the Caribbean in Les Cayes to try to pilot a distance education model using conferencing technology and members of the diaspora. We are getting very excited as I've just recieved our new projector, router, and speaker system with which we will launch the program.

To start enculturating University staff to the idea of using technology to do things. I have started holding meetings and training sessions in Centra. So far, I've had fairly good results. I would say to this point that the biggest challenge is setting the schedule and making sure that people show up. When they are online, the communication flows easily and we are able to make decent progress. Tools are fairly intuitive and people are comfortable using them. The bigger challenge is most definitely coordination. There isn't a phone there that I can call when they are running late or have network problems. This leaves me wondering where they are.

I've noticed that the best way to try to deal with this is to take on the responsability to do the coordinating. Sending out several reminder emails. Spending extra time on messenger to catch people when they happen to sign on. Things like that. I'm hoping that as we work to develop a culture of concious use of online tools that coordination will become easier.