{"id":8,"date":"2017-05-21T06:30:41","date_gmt":"2017-05-21T13:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mgrant\/?page_id=8"},"modified":"2017-06-11T18:58:58","modified_gmt":"2017-06-12T01:58:58","slug":"platform-evaluation","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mgrant\/etec-565a\/platform-evaluation\/","title":{"rendered":"Platform Evaluation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Moodle Platform Evaluation For Secondary School Industry Training Programs<\/span><\/p>\n

About Our Organization<\/b><\/p>\n

Our organization is represented as a group of industry training programs facilitated out of the Burnaby School District (BSD). As a public non-profit government run institution, we plan to use an LMS to support and enhance student learning, student experience and organizational efficiency.<\/span><\/p>\n

Platform<\/b>: Moodle<\/span><\/p>\n

Background<\/b><\/p>\n

The BSD\u2019s industry training programs enable students to receive credits towards high school graduation through the exploration of specific areas of interest. These programs can be broken into three categories:<\/span> Ace-It Apprenticeship<\/span><\/a>,<\/span> Industry Certification<\/span><\/a> and<\/span> Industry Connection<\/span><\/a>. The main distinction between these divisions are the level of official certification that students can achieve. For example, though the Industry Connection programs have articulation agreements with post-secondary institutions, that often include advanced credits, no official diploma or certification is obtained upon completion of the program. In contrast, the Ace-It Apprenticeship programs require students to complete industry recognized practicals and examinations so they can achieve various levels of official certification.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even though these programs differ in official industry recognition, each program\u2019s basic structure is common. These commonalities are three-fold. Firstly, all learners must leave their home schools for an extended period of time in order to participate. Secondly, all students engage with both specific theoretical content and project based learning. Lastly, all students must participate in a minimum of 120 hours of relevant community based work experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

LMS Supported Collaborative Design<\/b><\/p>\n

The industry connection programs are facilitated out of nine physical locations. Given this fragmentation, vital communication is conducted by the usage of non face-to face practices (email, phone calls and district mail). The problem is that these methods lack a sense of history and precedence; moreover, this form of management could force an authoritative top down model. Bates (2014) suggests that the community of practice model is more of an effective approach to collectively bring together appropriate educational communities to share common interests and expertise. <\/span><\/p>\n

The benefits of collective LMS facilitated communication far outreach the practicalities listed above. Globally, the vision and design of the industry training programs can now be opened up to include learners, facilitators, counselors, management, career advisors and community partners. This inclusivity leads to a more robust, flexible and engaging design; a design that can be recursively evaluated to ensure that the programs are organically evolving to meet their intentions, rather than rigidly sticking to a concrete pre-determined plan (<\/span>Parker, Holesgrove & Pathak, 2015<\/span>).<\/span><\/p>\n

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BSD Industry Training Program Goals<\/b><\/p>\n