Session T3E PROBLEMS IN THE PROVISION OF COURSEWARE FOR MATURE EMPLOYEES: AN INITIAL EXPLORATION John Heywood1 , Dave Bamber2 , Jim Freeman3 and John Sharp4 Abstract Many businesses in the UK, requiring employees to upgrade their skills, are turning to the use of Information Communication Technology (ICT). The UK government have established a University for Industry (UfI) to take advantage and make use of recent developments in ICT. This paper outlines the principles on which this university will operate. On the basis of prior research and an on-going investigation into the effectiveness of learning through ICT, this paper discusses some of the problems likely to be faced. Index Terms computer based courseware, mature employee, psychometric, SME, training needs, university for industry
INTRODUCTION Small Medium sized business Enterprises (SME’s) in the UK often find it difficult to release employees from work to undertake learning in colleges and universities to upgrade their skills. With the increase in the numb er of employees requiring to continually upgrade their knowledge and skills the use of computer technology is seen as an appropriate means of delivery at the place of work. To facilitate this approach to learning the UK government has established the UfI that is to commence work in spring 2000. The University for Industry (UfI) is at the core of the UK government’s vision for lifelong learning. It has two strategic objectives: w To stimulate demand for lifelong learning amongst businesses and individuals and w To promote the availability of, and improve access to, relevant high quality and innovative learning, in particular through the use of Information Communication Technology (ICT). “The UfI will help people and businesses to identify the learning they need, and to access this learning in the right form, in the right place, at the right time. For many people this will be through computer or broadcast media, at home, in the workplace, or through learning centers” [1]. It has not become apparent yet as to what organizations and who in those organizations will take advantage of the services that UfI will broker through higher education institutions.
1 2 3 4
The project described here is part of a larger investigation into the training and learning needs of employers’ and employees’ respectively in companies of less than 250 people (SME’s) in the North West of England, and to evaluate the effectiveness of ICT in meeting those needs. The project is organized by the University of Salford and financed by the European Social Fund’s ADAPT program [2]. This program has as its objectives; w alignment of the training needs of individuals with their company’s strategic objectives w anticipation of trends, gaps and weaknesses in parallel with individuals’ learning needs.
THE EXPLORATORY STUDY The purpose of the exploratory study was to determine the content required from Computer Based Courseware (CBC) for learners to improve their performance at work. The learners in this study were hand-picked by their employers who themselves had been on the Institute of Directors program for CEO’s and directors at the University for Salford (UK). The exploratory study was designed by Professor J. Heywood and coordinated by Dr. J. Sharp. The training needs of employers’ representatives from twentytwo SME’s were determined, through interviews, by Mr. D. Bamber. The training and learning needs of the employees nominated by the employers’ were determined later by a combination of interviews (DB) and a psychometric testing program that was designed and conducted by Dr. J. Freeman. This psychometric testing program was based on previous extensive investigations, shown in Table I, conducted at the University of Salford and was followed by customized individual feedback sessions with each respondent. TABLE I P SYCHOMETRIC I NVESTIGATIONS
Group A Group B Group C Group D Group E
ADAPT: This Exploratory Study Biology [3] Business, Operations & Control Course [4] Engineering [5] Modern Languages [6]
John Heywood, Division of In-Service Education, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland,
[email protected] Dave Bamber, The University of Salford, Department of Business and Management, Salford, Manchester, UK,
[email protected] Jim Freeman, Independent Consultant Educational Psychologist to The University of Salford, Salford, Manchester, UK John Sharp, The University of Salford, Department of Business and Management, Salford, Manchester, UK,
[email protected]
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Session T3E OBTAINING THE SAMPLE Obtaining the sample confirmed the difficulties that SME’s in the UK have in releasing employees for study. In this case one SME dropped out of the project as its employees were heavily engaged in traditional methods of learning and training. Thirteen SME’s deferred, largely due to immediate and urgent problems within the company, to future phases of the project. Eighteen learners were nominated for interviews. Seventeen learners were interviewed; one deferred and of these, thirteen continued with the ADAPT project, psychometric assessment, and learning through technology. Another of the problems to be faced by the UfI will be the sheer diversity among SME’s and their employees. Independent learners seeking programs will add to this diversity. This is illustrated in Table II, which shows the work areas and employment capability of some of the SME’s interviewed. TABLE II SME WORK AREAS
SME 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
Business Description Care homes: elderly people with learning disabilities Private clinic A group of high class hotels Civil engineering consultancy Interior and exterior home decorators Printers Manufacturer of pharmaceutical machinery Nursing agency Outsourcing and warehousing printing requirements Consultant and management training Sole trader: building stand alone PCs Manufacturers of specialized oil products Importer and distributor of castors Supplier of health nutrients Executive job placement consultancy Shower manufacturers Marine engineers Sports track Telecommunications supplier Crude oil refiners Shop fitting and electrical services Scaffolders – Industrial services Employer’s Views of their Training Needs
In the context of this project training is the instruction of accomplishment in a specific task within the employment setting. The employers described specific training needs associated with the jobs being done by the employee or, jobs they intended the employee to undertake in the future. These requirements could be classified into three broad domains:
w w w
Information Technology Management Commercial Awareness Employee’s Views of their Training Needs
Although 17 learners were interviewed, and detailed information was provided by the employer for one other nominee, only thirteen learners went on to undertake psychometric assessment. The interviews were in two sections. The first section of the interview was semistructured and interviewees were asked to outline their learning needs and problems they encountered at work. During the second section of the interviews the interviewees were asked to respond to checklists of specific skills following the methodology of Youngman et al [7]. A summary of individual training needs derived from the semi-structured interviews is shown in Table III. There was little if any overt misalignment of training needs of individuals with companies’ strategic objectives as the companies used Training Needs Analysis (TNA) and appraisal systems, such as those proposed by the Investors in People UK accreditation scheme [8]. Employers and employees had already matched the subject content of their training needs. TABLE III I NDIVIDUAL T RAINING NEEDS ( AS DESCRIBED BY THE INTERVIEWEES)
Interviewees 1-4 Commercial Awareness (CA) 1 2 3 4
The "big picture" money side of the business Understand finance and conduct an ISO 9000 audit Estimating project costs and cash flow Organizational profitability, cash flow and IT skills
Interviewees 5-11 Information Technology (IT) 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Create database forms Use all the computer packages’ full abilities Computer networks: costing and managing Learn about computer networks & office applications Improve and use IT skills and internet access Training with ACCESS database Basic Skills: IT, spelling and writing
Interviewees 12-14 Strategic Marketing (SM) 12 13 14
Improve strategic marketing Strategic marketing and learn HTML programming How to improve business in a high-class hotel
Interviewees 15-17 Change Management (CM) 15 16 17
Has vast need in several dimensions (CA/SM/CM) How to manage change effectively Knowledge of how to make the right decision
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Session T3E Initial analysis of the checklist data from the small sample of employees appears to reveal nine clusters of items that are not necessarily job specific. As more learners are engaged in the project the sample size will increase to allow a detailed cluster analysis which will reveal the statistical significance of any clusters. They are shown in Table IV, and if these are generic it follows that they are transferable. These are best defined to be learning needs where learning is described as; “that process which experience modifies existing categories and acquires new frames of reference” [9], such learning is essential for the solution of previously unknown problems. These findings show that objective i) of the ADAPT program is not being met because the employees have learning as well as training needs, which may be perceived as a misalignment with the company’s strategic objectives. These objectives are best met by the utilization of generic transferable skills [10]. However, through TNA processes, the employers focus on content, knowledge and recall rather than on cognitive and interpersonal skills. The cognitive and interpersonal skills being needed to bring about improvement in real job situations, and these skills may be better determined by a Learning Needs Analysis (LNA) process. TABLE IV SME WORK AREAS
Cluster
Checklist Example
Work Practices Problem Solving I Problem Solving II People Skills Communication Skills Time Management People Management IT Business Finance
Identify possible difficulties at work Clarify a problem Evaluate arguments Counseling skills Write effective business reports Prioritize jobs Supervise friends Create an easy to use database Prepare a budget
Even when the individual’s training needs are apparently aligned with the needs of the organization, there appears to be a mismatch between the course content requested by the individual and the underlying generic needs. The learning perceived by them to be beneficial in obtaining the company’s strategic objectives is at odds with the underlying needs for training in the social domain (interpersonal skills) and training in the cognitive domain (problem solving skills). Employees will need a high level of social and cognitive skills to bring about improvements in the intertwined aspects of changing people and changing technology. These points are reinforced by the psychometric study that follows.
THE PSYCHOMETRIC STUDY The United States of America’s National Association of Secondary School Principals presented a definition of learning styles [11]. "Learning styles" was stated to be a composite set of personal characteristics: cognitive, affective, and physiological factors, which determine how the individual learner perceives, responds to and interacts with the learning environment. Contained within the definition of learning styles is the definition of "cognitive styles," which maps the individual’s profile of information processing [12]. This includes the individual’s patterns of use of intellect; perception, thinking, remembering, and problem solving, including the well known styles of convergent and divergent thinking [13]. The ADAPT project required that the learning styles of the learners be determined in order to evaluate the effect on learning of the courseware and its environment. For this purpose a battery of psychometric instruments was used, which aimed to assess various aspects of learning and cognitive styles. The Selection of Psychometric Instruments and Methodology The choice of psychometric instruments was determined by a study of the impact on learning of a computer program that had been completed in the university during the previous year [14]. In that exploratory study an investigation among university biology students learning to understand and access the rotation of nucleic acids revealed the need for a Computer Awareness Vocabulary Scale because of substantial variations in their prior experience of IT. The better students in that study felt that the program was too algorithmic and that more flexibility was required so as to allow for the use of problem solving heuristics. Considerable personality differences were found between those who did well and those who did badly. Other work suggested that life-style contributed to the ability to work on one’s own on the internet. These results led the project team to hypothesize that they would find similar differences among the learners in industry. They also hypothesized that the learners would vary in their dispositions to the learning environment provided by ICT. Information obtained about the problems experienced by students in the open learning situation of the Scottish University suggested that some students would benefit from human tutorial support [15]. Given these hypotheses, it was decided to use a number of tests that had been used with the biology students and other students at the University of Salford [16]. This battery of tests (outlined in Table V) was given to the thirteen learners who were given customized feedback on the results by the consultant psychologist (JFr).
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Session T3E TABLE V Test
Brief Description
AH6 HT/DT VPI CSI EPI
Test of High Grade Intelligence [17] Hypothesis Test/Divergent Thinking [18] Vocational Preference Inventory [19] Controversial Statements Inventory [20] Esyenck Personality Inventory [21]
The tests were accompanied by a pre-course biographical questionnaire that included attitudes, interests and expectations of the course, and a self-assessment schedule [22] of how they perceived their own learning styles along the two axes of convergent thinking and divergent thinking.
THE NEED FOR CONTENT ANALYSIS OF COURSEWARE Although it was not part of this project’s remit to evaluate courseware the study with the biology students was accompanied by content analysis [23] that showed that the programs did not meet the learner requirements. Despite the fact that there have been recent developments in software that may meet the requirements of students it will nevertheless be necessary in learning situations of this kind to subject the courseware to content analysis that relate to the entering characteristics of each student [24].
RESULTS Thirteen individuals attended the psychometric assessment session, but one of the thirteen had specific learning difficulties (dyslexia) and did not complete the entire psychometric test procedure. The psychometric tests, from twelve individuals, revealed that this was a biased sample of learner-employees. This group had a high average intelligence that was combined with high enterprise, great drive and a high conscientious factor. However, they had rather low or awkward social skills ability. Their data (Group A) is compared with data obtained by Freeman among other groups of undergraduates at the University of Salford in Tables VI and VII, where the groups are those outlined in Table I. TABLE VI P SYCHOMETRIC COMPARISON
Group
Number of Respondents
Mean Age
AH6 mean IQ
A
12 28 28 142 162
37.5 20.3 20.7 20.9 20.4
136.62 129.12 128.42 127.98 128.54
B [25] C [26] D [27] E [28]
Data obtained in the interviews and from the feedback sessions, in addition to information from the tests, suggested that a formula for stress had arisen in some of the learners. The combination of the factors described above coupled with demanding managerial jobs, involving time and person pressures lead to four of the learners being assessed as at risk of stress. Most of the learners described changes in their work circumstances in which they were likely to lose confidence. Whereas in the past where they had always had to solve technical problems, which they could solve using their intelligence, now they were asked to solve people problems for which they had not had sufficient training. TABLE VII P SYCHOMETRIC COMPARISON
Group
T HE P SYCHOMETRIC T ESTS
A B C D E
VPI
VPI
VPI
VPI
Enterprisin g m±σ
Social m±σ
Investigativ e m±σ
Realistic m±σ
9.74 ± 2.93 4.72 ± 2.46 6.96 ± 2.11 4.17 ± 2.11 6.81 ± 4.99
4.11 ± 3.09 4.01 ± 3.03 7.89 ± 3.45 4.20 ± 3.42 8.10 ± 3.49
9.51 ± 3.69 9.95 ± 3.96 3.95 ± 4.02 9.50 ± 3.60 4.26 ± 4.94
5.41 ± 2.43 5.61 ± 4.25 2.32 ± 2.17 5.01 ± 4.28 2.62 ± 2.11
VPI scales (all dimensions): 0 minimum – 14 maximum m = mean, σ = standard deviation
Thus, there is a need for social skills training that encompasses the acquisition of self-confidence in dealing with interpersonal-skills and the isolation (loneliness) that accompanies managerial positions. Most of them were active people who would probably find the loneliness of working with a computer difficult. One of the objectives of the follow-up study is to ascertain if this is the case. In an apparent paradox this group of learners requested CD-ROMs in order to work at home, due mainly to the pressure of work and not having the time to work on the CBC in their offices. The learners completed a self-assessment schedule in which they rated their learning styles. A correlation of the order of 0.6 was obtained between their self-assessments of convergent thinking and the psychometric measures of convergent thinking, principally the AH6 intelligence test. A correlation of the order of 0.6 was also obtained between their self-assessments of divergent thinking and the psychometric measures of divergent thinking, principally the HT/DT test. These correlations support the view that the self-assessments were reliable.
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Session T3E Students in the previous studies stated that they required the CBC to be more flexible and allow the use of problem solving heuristics. In consideration of those comments and from the understanding gained through the interviews and feedback sessions with respondents in the current study, the research team was lead to hypothesize that, for the intelligent divergent thinkers, algorithmic CBC will not satisfy their need to develop heuristic problem solving abilities. Since divergent thinking and problem solving are key skills in the management situation, realistic training in these skills would seem to be desirable, and non-computer based teaching might be required.
CONCLUSIONS This exploratory study, if replicated, has considerable implications for the implementation of learning within UfI. Problems are likely to stem from misunderstandings about the population to be served, their modes of learning, and a failure to understand the differences between training needs, learning needs, and learning styles, as exemplified above. Employers and employees may better understand the differences between training and learning through realizing the benefits to their organization of the employees having good core generic transferable skills. These skills are likely to promote the strategic objectives of the company. Once the benefits are well understood then employers will be well placed to use LNA processes as well as TNA processes.
REFERENCES
[12] Messick, S., “The Nature of Cognitive Style: Problems and Promises in Educational Practice”, Educational Psychologist, 1984, Vol. 19, No. 2, pp 59-74. [13] Guildford, J. P., The Nature of Intelligence, MacGraw Hill, New York, 1979. [14] ibid. 3) [15] Cowan, Professor J., Personal Communication, Edinburgh, Scotland, 10th May 1999. [16] Freeman, J., Sharp, J., “Group Dynamics and the Learning Process”, Proceedings Royal Institute of Technology Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences Teaching Science for Technology at Tertiary Level: An International Conference, June 6-9, 1994, pp. 233- 244, Stockholm, Sweden. [17] Heim, A.W., Intelligence and Personality, Penguin Books, London, UK, 1980. [18] Holland, J.L., Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI): British Edition 1999 Revision, Psychological Assessment Resources, Odessa, Florida, 1999. [19] Hudson, L., Contrary Imaginations, Penguin Books, London, UK, 1966. [20] Pole, K.E., "A Study of Techniques for Measuring Creative Ability and Development & Valuation of a Creativity Test for Highly Intelligent Subjects", B.Litt Thesis, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, 1969. [21] Eysenck, H.J., Eysenck, S.B.G., Personality Inventory Manual, Hodder & Stoughton, London, UK, 1987. [22] Freeman, J. Self-assessment of learning styles: SALS , (Developed by Dr. J. Freeman), Salford, UK, 1999. [23] Holsti, O.R. "Content Analysis" in Lindsey, G., Arenson, E. (editor) Handbook of Social Psychology: Vol II, Addison Wiley, Reading, Mass., 1968. [24] Heywood, J., "Assessment in Higher Education" 2nd edition, Wiley, Chichester, UK, 1989. [25] ibid. [3] [26] ibid. [4] [27] ibid. [5] [28] ibid. [6]
[1]
Blunket, D., The University for Industry: Pathfinder Prospectus, DfEE Publications, Sudbury, UK, 1998. [2] The Scottish Office , ADAPT-UfI, Great Britain 1998-2000: Guidance for Applicants, DfEE Publications, Sudbury, UK, 1998. [3] Freeman, J., Thomas, E., "Spatial Ability and Computer Assisted Learning in the Biochemical Sciences" in Heywood, J., Sharp, J.M., Hides, M. (editors) Improving Teaching in Higher Education, University of Salford, Salford, UK, 2000. [4] Freeman, J., Lynn, N., Butler, R. “The Evaluation of a Programme for the Development of Business and Enterprise Skills” in Heywood, J., Sharp, J.M., Hides, M. (editors) Improving Teaching in Higher Education, University of Salford, Salford, UK, 2000. [5] Freeman, J., Sharp, J., “Group Dynamics and the Learning Process”, in Heywood, J., Sharp, J.M., Hides, M. (editors) Improving Teaching in Higher Education, University of Salford, Salford, UK, 2000. [6] Freeman, J., Sharp, J.M., Assessing Ability in Modern Languages a Report to the Modern Languages Department, Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering Department; Departmental Report, University of Salford, Salford, UK. [7] Youngman, M.B., Oxtoby, R., Monk, J.D., Heywood, J., Analysing Jobs, Gower Publishing Company Limited, Aldershot, UK, 1978. [8] IIP UK, Investors in People the Revised Indicators: Advice and Guidance for Practitioners, IIP, London, UK, 1998. [9] Heywood, J., Learning Adaptability and Change, Chapman, London, UK, 1989. [10] Green, C.S. quoted in Heywood, J., Assessment of Enterprise: Learning in Higher Education: Technical Report No. 20 for the Learning Methods Branch of Employment Department, University of Sheffield, UK 1994. [11] National Association of Secondary School Principals, Student Learning Styles: Diagnosing and Prescribing Programs, Reston, 1979.
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