Professional Experience Reflection – Week 1

I’m lucky enough to actually work where I am doing my professional experience so it allowed for some flexibility in delivery. One of the disadvantages of this was that I was asked to develop and deliver training that is specific to site and therefore much more difficult to find ICTs that lend themselves to the training I was asked to develop. The fact that it all had to be translated to Vietnamese added yet another dimension.

 

I developed a three lesson training module called Electrical Drawing Introduction based on the electrical drawings used at site. Using a combination of screen cast, face to face teaching and examples of drawings we use daily allowed me to develop a training session that met the learning styles of the attendees including visual, auditory, read/write and kinaesthetic (VARK) as espoused by Fleming (2001) (sighted Hawk and Shah, 2007. p.6).

The group of trainees in this training were the same group I wrote about in my previous post Connectivism at Work – 3 so it was good to have them as my first group because they struggled quite a bit with the previous tasks I asked them to perform which revolved around the use of electrical drawings. It was good to see the smiles on several of the trainees faces during the training, especially when they finally grasped how the electrical drawings interact with each other and how to locate plant and electrical items by using the drawings. Later during demonstration and practical assessment they demonstrated competence so I was pretty happy with their effort over the three days.

 Do I think my lessons were rich in ICTs? No, not at all. But with the limited access to computers and the language barriers I have to deal with I believe the training was a success and I hope the trainees will become more efficient at their work and use their new skills for the betterment of themselves and the company.