Citlalli Berruecos, National Institute of Adult Learning, Mexico Luz María Castro, National Institute of Adult Learning, Mexico

Transcription

1 DEVELOPING AND PILOTING ONLINE COURSES OF THE LIFE AND WORK EDUCATIONAL MODEL (MEVYT) OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ADULT EDUCATION IN COMMUNITY PLAZAS IN MEXICO Citlalli Berruecos, National Institute of Adult Learning, Mexico Luz María Castro, National Institute of Adult Learning, Mexico Summary During 2006, the National Institute for Adult Education (INEA) piloted eight online courses in five community plazas (centers that provide technological platforms -- computers, TV and, in a few of them, videoconferencing facilities, installed throughout Mexico, especially in rural areas) in each State of the Mexican Republic; 17 of the 32 States offered registration data for the pilot s analysis. The courses are part of the Life and Work Educational Model (Modelo de Educación para la Vida y el Trabajo). The first attempt to test the technological platforms in the community plazas with INEA s tutoring policy and course contents was done in November 2003, by the National Institute for Adult Education (INEA), the Government of the State of Tlaxcala and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, implementing the first online course in ten Community Plazas in Mexico City and Tlaxcala. The authors of this article developed the strategy for the national implementation of the eight online courses and describe how the project was designed and developed during five years in order to pilot the online courses which registered approximately 2000 adults studying online in the community plazas. Introduction The Mexican government began the e-mexico project in December E-Mexico System s objective is to provide basic education, health, economy, government, science, technology and industry services to Mexican society and to reduce the digital gap by installing and using information technologies throughout the nation. E-Mexico s project is based on three topics: connectivity, contents and system. One of the main actions taken in the project is the

2 creation of a Community Plazas (Digital Community Centers) network which allows connectivity with and between rural areas, places with no infrastructure and gives access to families with economic limitations. By 2002, the National Council of Education for Life and Work (Consejo Nacional de Educación para la Vida y el Trabajo, CONEVyT) requested the collaboration of the National Institute for Adult Education (INEA) in order to install the community plazas and offer INEA s academic program online. INEA has for many years offered an open schooling academic program, that helps, as Latchem and Hanna (2001) state, developing countries to overcome their acute difficulties in providing sufficient classrooms, teachers and teaching resources. Today (2009), approximately 2,700 plazas are open. Each community plaza counts with computers, internet connection, satellite television and some, a videoconferencing room. The technological platforms installed in the plazas may be PC, Sun and Mac. Plazas have different infrastructure and technological capacities. INEA signed agreements with different educational institutions in order to migrate its courses online. In 2001, the Open University and Distance Education Coordination (Coordinación de Universidad Abierta y Educación a Distancia, CUAED) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM; developed a first online course. From 2002 to 2004, the following online courses were developed with UNAM s support and installed in CONEVyT s and INEA s website ( Ser Joven (Being Young) Aguas con las Adicciones! (Beware of addictions!) Ser padres: una experiencia compartida (Parenting: a shared experience) La educación de nuestros hijos e hijas. (Our sons and daughters education) Sexualidad juvenil (Youth sexuality) Un hogar sin violencia (A home without violence) Vamos a conocernos (Let s know each other) Números y cuentas para la vida (Numbers and accounting for life) Nuestros valores para la democracia (Our values for democracy) Nuestros documentos (Our documents)

3 In 2005, INEA evaluated and modified eight of the ten courses, developed a registration system according to the internal processes and designed to work in a decentralized manner, and defined the strategy to implement a first national pilot offering eight online courses in the community plazas. In 2006, 17 States participated in the national pilot. In , the online courses were transferred to another technological platform. Developing the online courses In 2003, UNAM s Open University and Distance Education Coordination, developed its own learning management system called the PUEL System (Programa Universidad en Línea, Online University Program). Its main objective was to offer UNAM s Schools and Research Centers and other public institutions an open source system to develop online courses. PUEL was divided into three modules: users administration, course administration, and statistics. PUEL generated and stored activities in individual student binders, which allowed students to refer to previously performed activities and receive continuous feedback from their tutors. Students could also edit and store their activities in their personal online binder. PUEL generated access reports and statistics. Since there are different technological platforms in the community plazas, INEA s online courses were developed in a basic standard that included pictures and animations only when needed to achieve a specific pedagogical objective. Texts were processed based on an instructional design considering that the target population were mainly adults who were learning to read. The first pilot: Aguas con las adicciones! (Beware with the addictions!), In November 2003, INEA and CUAED piloted the first online course, Aguas con las adicciones! in ten community plazas based on the following criteria: Ten community plazas (four in Mexico City and six in the state of Tlaxcala)- Students would work in the nearest plaza during two weeks. Community plazas were selected previously in order to test the three technological platforms available: PC, Sun and Mac. All plazas had an acceptable Internet bandwidth. The course was administered by CUAED. Different groups of ten were organized for each plaza: Tlaxco (15-24 years old), Huamantla (adults older than 25 years old), Contla (parents with children studying K-

4 12), Santa Cruz Quilehtla (INEA s coordinators of other plazas), Mexico City (mixed population: young and adults) and CATED (middle school teachers of public schools). Figure I: Piloting strategy of the online course Aguas con las Adicciones!, A face-to-face tutor (the plaza s coordinator) and a technical assistant present in each plaza. The face-to-face tutor was at the same time the online tutor of the course with his/her group of students registered in his/her plaza. Web conferencing was coordinated by two INEA s online tutors (content experts who developed the course) in Mexico City. Web conferencing was open to all participants of all plazas. The results of the pilot were divided into four topics based on interaction: 1. Student / technology:

5 It is important to consider a previous course which offers an introduction to different online resources as web conferencing, ing, etc. Technical assistance must be available always in the plaza. At the beginning of the course, Internet bandwidth was very low, causing long delays in opening the web page and generating student frustration. This problem was common in the community plazas that used SUN. The SUN platform did not accept characters ñ and accents causing problems in the registration process. As a result, the only six drop outs from 100 students were users of the SUN community plazas. 2. Student / course content Students were very enthusiastic with the contents of the course. Some of the contents were considered long. Extra time had to be given to students when asking learners to do an activity outside the plaza (for example: comments on TV commercials, getting an address, etc.) 3. Student / tutors INEA s tutoring policy of having the plaza coordinator work simultaneously as online tutor of his/her community plaza does not enable the creation of a larger learning community sharing experiences of different locations. The plaza coordinator - tutor had to work extra time. A face to face session was needed to explain the methodology to students and how to use the computer. The plaza tutor became another participant in the web conferences coordinated by INEA s online tutors. 4. Student / student Although the course is individual, some students went to the plaza with other members of the family and worked the activities together. The recommendations to be considered for the following stage were: 1. Regarding technology, it is very important to consider how the course is going to be accessed in order to develop it under a standard that is accessible to all students. It is important to assure that Internet is available. 2. INEA had to reconsider if the plaza tutor can be an online tutor at the same time. Learning communities can be created throughout the whole nation with specialized online tutors working from INEA s headquarters or other INEA s offices. 3. Many of the plaza tutors had never had an online course experience.

6 4. Previous courses have to be offered: a train-the-tutor for the plaza coordinators-tutors and an introduction on computer resources. Designing the national implementation pilot process In 2005, INEA s Academic Area began the process of evaluating and modifying eight online courses that would be offered in the national pilot. Some of the courses went through five revisions, since it also gave the chance to modify contents and activities. The registration module was developed based on INEA s organizational structure. The first issue to consider was that the pilot should be designed delegating responsibility to each State. One of the problems to solve was the way to link an adult with his tutor, with a community plaza; the plaza with the community ( municipio ) and finally with the state. Different user levels were created: the system administrator in the headquarters, the equivalent to a plaza manager who could modify information, the tutor assigned to a community plaza, to which students were assigned and who had the chance to evaluate and send messages to student s binders, a moderator, a content expert located in the headquarters who would coordinate the web conference throughout the nation, and students. For the national pilot, each State would select five community plazas. INEA s headquarters trained face to face the plaza managers in order for them to train the tutors. Tutors were responsible of helping student s registration. The national pilot: eight online courses, January to December 2006 From the 32 States of Mexico, 17 delivered statistical data. The States were: Puebla, Zacatecas, Mexico City, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, Sonora, Campeche, Jalisco, Nuevo Leon, Morelos, Tlaxcala, Sinaloa, Colima, Querétaro, Hidalgo, Chiapas and Chihuahua. The sample consisted on 2244 adults; 866 were men (39%) and 1378 were women (61%). The squared Ji test with Yates correction showed a significant difference to 5% related to gender. Mexico City and Campeche were the only States that had a higher number of men registered (68% and 53% respectively).

7 Population Men Women % men % women Zacatecas Tlaxcala Sonora Sinaloa Quintana Roo Querétaro Puebla Oaxaca Nuevo León Morelos Jalisco Hidalgo Distrito Federal Colima Chihuahua Chiapas Campeche Total The number or adults that finished a course was 1332 (60%); 534 were men (62%) and 798 women (58%). The 40% represents those who deserted at the beginning or during the course and those who had not finished the course at the time data was collected. No significant difference was found when data was analyzed by gender (99%). Finished Men Women Passed Men Women Zacatecas Tlaxcala Sonora Sinaloa Quintana Roo Querétaro Puebla Oaxaca Nuevo León Morelos Jalisco Hidalgo Distrito Federal Colima Chihuahua Chiapas Campeche Total Students are required to register to be evaluated after they finish a course. Sometimes, this step is not done. But in the pilot, 1214 students (91.14%) passed the evaluation finding no difference between genders; 485 men (90.8%) and 728 women (91.2%).

8 The results of the pilot state: that a higher number of women register to the courses the 40% of desertion or course not finished is inferior to some face to face programs the percentage of 91% students that passed the final exam is a proposal to continue developing the program and investing on it. After the pilot, all courses were kept in PUEL but at the same time, migrated to Moodle. Today, more than 20 online courses are available. Conclusions The installation of community plazas, also named telecenters, telecottages, infocentros, espaces numérisés, telestugen, phone shops, or cabinas públicas (Latchem and Hanna, 2001) is a common initiative of many developing countries governments. In doing this, these governments sometimes forget that installing technological infrastructure is not enough, that it is very important to have available educational contents and to define strategically how are these courses going to be administered. The following conclusions have to be considered: There is no perfect technological platform or LMS. In this case, the open source PUEL was able to be adjusted to the academic criteria and the internal procedures of the institution. Problems in the community plazas were more related to connectivity and bandwidth than to course development, LMS or contents. The LMS, content and course development are tasks that require time and work. If it is done correctly, even when the community plaza does not respond to the technological accessibility required, we can still obtain good results. INEA tutors are volunteers causing a high rotation in the number of tutors throughout the country. An incentive program has to be developed to move to the online program. Planning is the most important step for continuous improvement and development. It is important to never stop learning by doing. If distance education is to contribute to development it needs to be on the basis of empowering people in the developing world to take responsibility for learning rather than on the basis of elitist views of power and wealth. (Guy, 1991)

9 Through distance education, developing countries have to begin developing their own courses and materials in order to continue consolidating their cultural diversity. The national pilot of INEA online courses was a first important step to reach many in distant places with interesting contents that refer to their day to day life. What is required is an ideology of development and a model of education which is in harmony with developing nations rather than the industrialized world. (Guy, 1991). References Baggaley, J. (1999) The Impact of Information Technology on Nacional and Transnacional Education. In S. Bond & J.P. Lemasson (Eds.), A new world of knowledge: Canadian universities and globalization, (pp ). Berruecos, C. Open University and Distance Education Coordination: Strategies used to consolidate distance education at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 5(2). Retrieved May 31, 2007 from: Berruecos Carranza, C., Rivera, M. C. G., Morales Vega, L., and Bosco Hernández, M. D. (2003). Integración de Proyectos y Diseño Instruccional en los Programas Educativos en Línea. CUAED-UNAM. Casas-Armengol, M (1995). Distance education universities in Latin America: expectations and disappointments In D. Sewart (Ed.), One World, Many Voices. Quality in Open and Distance Learning, Volume 2. Birmingham: ICDE. Castro, L.M. (2004) Proyecto Piloto. Curso en línea Aguas con las adicciones! Informe. Dirección Académica INEA. Consejo Nacional de Educación para la Vida y el Trabajo (CONEVyT). (2001) Programa de Mediano Plazo , CONEVyT Davis, A. (2001). Athabasca University: Conversion from traditional distance education to online courses, programs and services. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 1(2). Retrieved December 23, 2003 from: Depow, J. (2003). Open Source Software: Two learning management systems. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 4(2). Retrieved July 20, 2004 from:

10 Dirr, P. (1999) Distance and Virtual Learning in the Caribbean. In. G.M. Farrell (Ed.), The Development of Virtual Education: A global perspective (pp ) Vancouver: Commonwealth of Learning. e-méxico. Evans, T. (1995) Thinking globalization: Issues for open and distance educators in Australia and the South Pacific. In F Nouwens (Ed.), Distance Education: Crossing Frontiers. Rockhampton: Published by Central Queensland University Press. pp Guy, R. (1991) Distance education and the developing world: Colonisation, collaboration and control. In T. Evans & B. King (Eds.), Beyond the Text: Contemporary Writing in Distance Education. Deakin University Press. pp García, J. L. (1991) Overview of Spanish and Latin American Distance Higher Education. In American Journal of Distance Education, 5 (2). pp Guerra, V. (1999) Open and Distance Education Programmes in Latin America. In G.M. Farrell (Ed.), The Development of Virtual Education: A global perspective. Vancouver, Canada: Commonwealth of Learning. pp Gobierno en línea. Secretaría de Desarrollo Social (SEDESOL): Latchem, C and Hanna, D.E. (2001) Open and flexible learning: an environmental scan. In C. Latchem and D.E. Hanna (Eds), Leadership for 21 st century learning: Global perspectives from educational innovators (pp. 1-14). London: Kogan Page Limited. Peters, O. (2000). Digital Learning Environments: New possibilities and opportunities. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 1(1) retrieved December 23, 2003 from:

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