Training of Trainers Seminar for Centers of Excellence – 20-23 September 2016
National Office of Electricity and Drinking Water (ONEE)
Skills Development and Training Directorate
In Partnership with
African Network of Centers of Excellence in Electricity (ANCEE)
1st Seminar from 20 to 23 September 2016
Practical Guide
Andragogical EngineeringDeveloping, Designing and Implementing a Training Module
Facilitated by:
Mrs. Najia BEDOUI
National Expert and University Professor
Table of Contents
1.Training Arrangement
2.The Eight Stages for Designing a Module
3.The Organization of Progress in a Module
4.Designing a Training Sequence
4.1 Teaching Aids
4.2 Strategies
4.3 What is a problem situation?
5.Assessment
6.Types of Assessment
6.1 Diagnostic Assessment
6.2 Formative Assessment
6.3 Summative Assessment (certification, sanctioning assessment)
6.4 Achievements: End of Training Results
7.Types of Assessment
8.Field Assessment
1.Training Arrangement
In the training, there is a set of coordinated resources mobilized to ensure people access to knowledge, qualification level and to enable them to develop their social and professional skills by:
-mobilizing stakeholders: learners, trainers, tutors, and all those concerned by the action.
-gathering resources: equipment, premises, machines, teaching materials, documents, books, audio-visuals aids…
-and organizing them according to principles relating to time (group training or distributed, internship or several sequences); to space: (one or more locations (alternating) in "face-to-face" or distance learning); grouping methods (group or individual); in relation to personal and professional practices:
All these resources are mobilized to achieve objectives such as: employability/qualification, development, skills training, diploma, development of individual or team skills, or preparation toward a particular situation or acquiring a general level.
The teaching arrangement also provides regulation control. Action involving people, never takes place entirely as planned. It is therefore necessary for the different actors to consider the results so as to adapt the process and adjust their interventions.
2.The Eight Stages for Designing a Module
Designing a module [1] consistsin:
- Defining skills.
- Selecting capacity.
- Selecting knowledge.
- Determining the stage objectives by remaining within the family situation of skill, and by complicating each one compared to the previous one, achievementmade in the other are involved in the next.
- Assigning to each stage objective, the knowledge involved, in order to reach the quintessence of a sequence.
- Determining in each sequence the evaluation criteria including knowledge and capacity (specification table).
- Building the evaluation grid.
- Building learning situations, possibly problem situations.
The complexity of knowledge dispensed compels resorting to competent instructors, professor, andschools. Training becomes an activity in its own right and not "diluted" in day-to-day life: the learner and the instructor specifically dedicate part of their time to the transmission of knowledge, know-how (practical skill) or life skills (attitude, interpersonal skills).
The complexity of knowledge dispensed compels resorting to competent instructors, pedagogical skills, which he may himself acquire through training.
As a support throughout the day by the entourage (by others), training becomes a built in process that is separate from daily family activity.
It must therefore be designed before being implemented. The design answers the basic question: “Training who”? What? For what purpose?”.
-Training who: who are the learners, how are they selected, what are the prerequisites (what must they know before beginning the training)?
-Training in what: what are the knowledge and skills to be dispensed?
-For what purpose: what will this enable them to perform, how will they use this knowledge and skills? This is the objective of the training.
This enables to define the general objective: skills and knowledge to acquire or improve, the overall objective of course having to meet the training objective. Ideally, the trainer has texts structuring the training, standards: the standards define the objectives, list the knowledge and skills to be acquired, possibly duration and training sections, often referred to as "programmes".
The training includes a preparatory period: the trainer will train himself (initial training, be aware of references (standards), keep up to date knowledge) and be prepared for class (course notes, educational materials, exercises). The transmission includes a face-to-face between the trainer and the trainee, the course itself - but also possibly personal or group work outside face-to-face - homework, project, etc. It can be done in three types of activities:
- Discovery Activity: learner discovers what he knows or does not know;
- Demonstration Activity: The trainer delivers his knowledge;
- Application activity: the learner is implementing what he learned.
Therefore, training following a lesson plan aimed at achieving the overall objective. This scenario is divided into educational areas, which aims to achieve an intermediate objective. The educational parts are themselves divided into teaching units (sequencing) with[2]specific objectives. Sequencing obviously depends on the total volume of training, short courses (a few hours) may have less "hierarchical levels" while long courses may have more subdivisions.
To focus minds on:
-A teaching sequence lasts a few tens of minutes to hours, and is intended to acquire knowledge or skill; it is a course or part of course;
-The teaching sequences are a series of courses dealing with the same theme. They specify the specific objectives and their implementation progress
3.The Organization of Progress in a Module
a-Progress through educational staircase
To determine the progress of a module, educational staircase is developed, combining the different skill levels (intermediate educational objectives) while respecting two criteria: relevance and consistency.
The relevance criteria guide the designer in the choice of the first step: To begin with what objective?
The consistency criterion enables to articulate the objectives with respect to each other, once the first selection is made.
The establishment of this educational staircase must respect the following rules:
-the steps are not interchangeable;
-each step is a must;
-stable progress on a step is necessary advance to the next step; it must be checked before continuing with advancement (permanent learning assessment by step);
-the height of the step is the physical ability of people who need to take them (the objectives must be realistic.)
b-Progress by objective complexity
To organize progress, it must first be within the module which, we remember, is oriented towards the mastery of a skill, formulating complex objectives that is to say, expressing a level of competence that meet problem situations similar to the final problem situation of the module skill.
In other words, each objective is translated into a performance of the same nature as the final performance (or task). Around these objectives are formed teaching sequences which ensure mastering an overall situation within the skill.
They thus constitute an increase in sequence, each incorporating the previous one, in a new situation still more complex in the field of the final skill. This is in fact, organizing progress by remaining well within a class or family of competence, but starting from a simple situation and going to more complex situations. Progress is made through complexity of the task or performance while remaining within the framework of tasks in line with the skill.
The module is divided into sequences; each sequence leads to an objective. This objective is complex, that is to say, it gives mastery over a problem situation that has meaning in itself, and thus remaining overall.
This objective translates into a complex performance, which cannot be reduced to a single behavior, it is recognized in a series of behavioral assessment criteria.
In respect to its place in the module, this objective incorporating further learning, is rated by more or less numerous evaluation criteria, and more or less complex. It integrates previous achievements and offers new: thus avoiding trampling on prerequisites since what was not learned in a sequence reflects in the next. It concerns:
- Determine the final skill of the module.
- Select the capabilities involved in this module.
- Define complex objectives, select content that are within its mastery.
- For every complex objective, select the content that is within its mastery.
- Develop specification table, objective by objective.
- Provide evaluation grid for each objective.
- During progress of sequences, some indicators will be repeated several times, some even into the evaluation of the final skill: these form the skill backbone. However, others will only seem little, one sequence over another. They translate into either secondary points or repeatedly proven mastery of learning covered.
c-Specification Table
It is a generator tool of indicators ... …
"Used to identify with a certain rigor all significant behavioral competence and content involved as well as the capacity to be developed[3]”
The specification table provides indicators that allow organization of progress, regarding designing of the module and the formative and summative evaluation device (these two concepts are treated in the sequence that follows). Evaluation criteria are defined on the basis of indicators.
“An indicator is an observable and individualized behavior, involved in the exercise of the skill[4]”
The concept of indicators does not entirely cover the objectives; it is the product of an analysis of a complex skill or objective.
“Indicator is an observable and individualized behavior, involved in the exercise of the skill”. It is expressed by a physical action verb. It is related to a situation or a particular discipline.
Behavioral learning objectives can be formulated from the indicators as part of remediation. One can rely on these indicators to develop a skill assessment system: providing the evaluation criteria.
The indicator must be observed in intermediate or final performance by which skill progress is evaluated. It is not mandatory to provide an indicator at each intersection; nonetheless, several indicators may appear in a single cell. It is behavioral in the strict sense of the same logic level as the objective. But it should not be confused with it.
Any indicator does not lead to an objective; an indicator can give rise to several objectives.
A single indicator can take various boxes, particularly those which correspond to emotional capacities. If the indicators are used to identify and define objectives when designing the training system, they are used to define the evaluation criteria when developing the evaluation system.
The criteria are information taken points that provide educational decisions: remediation, stepping backwards, making progress with the programme.
The information taken allow the trainer specific interventions, on a sensitive point of learning; timely because they operate in the learning process: test, error, test, customized as a result of these decisions, the appropriateness and effectiveness, sensible since they are performed in reference to a global activity.
Conducting a training sequence and its regulation using evaluation criteria helps to go beyond the distinction between summative evaluation, linked to the idea of standards and certification and formative assessment, designed as an analytical assessment, since it distinguishes between evaluation objectives and yet global, and there as summative since evaluation objectives are not isolated from complex activity where they make sense.
4.Designing a Training Sequence
Designing a training sequence depends on a number of choices based on criteria: nature of the objective, learners’ style, available resources, trainer ease with a particular strategy, flexibility and tolerance of context. We mean by learning sequence ...
"A training unit focused on a complex objective (skill level) within the class of skill situations[5]”
This objective can be evaluated through behaviors (evaluation criteria). These behaviors make sense only within this objective. This objective describes a skill level. This objective describes a skill level.
"This is to make a compromise between a comprehensive description of the activity and the list of alleged individual acts involved: there can be as many target levels as compromise levels"[6]
Once decisions are made concerning objectives, it is necessary to decide on the means and strategies.
4.1 Teaching Aids
By means we mean, firstly, technological training aids: it is generally often expensive equipment which can only be treated in terms of availability (the equipment may either be obtained or not). The term also means teaching tools such as a trainer can make them, as self-corrective sheets. The means are to be evaluated in terms of resource-constraints.
A resource is not one in itself: it only exists as a means within a project it is utilized. Pursuing the same goal can be achieved with different resources and often the simplest means is not the least effective. The list of resources is in principle unlimited. In reality, the choice is always reduced and often narrowed down, forcing the trainers to do with. Opening the strategies chapter
4.2 Strategies
Strategy means the outline of an action. To see through the numerous strategies, we can sketch a classification taking as a criterion: that the trainer or the learner is active on the training situation.
There are two ways to acquire knowledge [7]: either by instruction through an oral or written text, either by action or discovery. The first form rather corresponds to exhibition training strategies: lecture, lecture courses, presentation, question and answer courses (inductive or interrogative method). The second form would relate to low guidance strategies[8].
If the activity of the learner is valued, pedagogies discovery, self-employment, and teaching by the problem are developed. The teaching combines both forms. Great variability can play in learning institutions. From this follows the theme of differentiated instruction.
Example of strategy development: it is not creating a riddle. A problem situation should be modeled on the skill situation since it corresponds to the expertise mobilized by solving a task in a family of situations. The situations referred to the objectives of each sequence within a module are similar in nature, and less complex than the final competence: the desired problem situation to be organized for a training sequence must define continuity of the problem situation that enables mastery of the final skill.
4.3 What is a problem situation?
This is a situation that meets the following characteristics:
-It provides a task to be performed by the learner, this task is problematic because the learner does not have for the moment all the necessary tools for him to fulfill it. What is missing in the learner is precisely what is planned as learning, so that its implementation requires mastery of an underlying objective. This allows learning to take place in a global context that gives it meaning.
-The student has the necessary resources to perform the task: personal resources (pre-requisite) resources constituted by peers (group work) resources offered by the trainer (documents, information, and research avenues). The trainer becomes a resource person and not the leadership. Instruction or a constraint compels passing through the objective to fulfill the task. This is not to circumvent the obstacle.
5.Assessment
The notion of training involves assessment. It is an action which consists in making an estimate, a judgment after taking a step. It is related to the modern docimology (assessment of performance).[9]Assessment of a fact, a principle, a job, a behavior, judged and evaluated based on appropriate criteria.
It is a process to develop a qualitative or quantitative judgment
In teaching, evaluation is defined as…
"To willfully and systematically review teaching-learning process, and to give a performance both in its preparation phase and in its practical implementation phase.[10]”.
6.Types of Assessment
All phases of teaching action (process and results) are subject to an assessment, with the distinction: Diagnostic evaluation, that of summative and formative evaluation.
6.1 Diagnostic Assessment
It is also known as prognostic or predictive evaluation. It intervenes when the question arises as to whether the learner has the capacity to undertake an apprenticeship or not. It helps to locate performance, detect potential, diagnose, and guide. It provides both an educational function (highlights strengths and weaknesses and shows what is acquired, or to be improved) and a social function (it guides and classes). The appropriate test for this type of evaluation is the aptitude test, also called placement test.
6.2 Formative Assessment
It forms integral part of teaching. Its purpose is to regulate and facilitate the learning of trainees. It should therefore be ensured during the training process that time is managed to assess what has been acquired and to evaluate progress made, so as to gather objective data on the completed course. The moderator may need to change individual or collective routes, to review their educational approach, and make any changes needed to improve learning of trainees. Such an assessment will conduct:
-Exercises to evaluate what has been acquired (mini-test, self-assessment test, knowledge control games).
-There is the need to choose exercises that downplay the notion of control while offering the trainer and trainee the possibility of assessing the progress of their learning process.
6.3 Summative Assessment (certification, sanctioning assessment)
This is the conclusion of the educational process by a detailed verdict on results: have the educational objectives been achieved? Skills (capacity and knowledge) acquired, have those who followed the training actually applied them? Such an assessment will implement:
-Conventional evaluation exercises (output test, multiple choice questions, or questionnaire with open and closed questions, etc.)
- Situations-tests to simulate all or part of a real work situation where the training is finalized directly on professional skills to be acquired or strengthened.
Summative assessment provides a social function of classification, control, loyalty and calibration. It is conducted during examinations, competitions, and at the end of internship tests.
To summarize, the following table reviews the different functions of assessment depending on the period in question.
Types of Assessment
Before the training/ During the training
/ At the end of the training
Type of assessment
/ Diagnostic
/ Formative
/ Summative
Function
/ Defining the prerequisites and addressing shortcomings
/ Regulating and facilitating the training
/ Certifying and validating the training
Focused on
/ The trainee
/ The trainee
/ The inputs
6.4 Achievements: End of Training Results
At the end of an internship, the evaluation meeting, synthesis provides an encounter between training actors: trainees, trainers, sponsors and lines of authority.