Context

Before I delve into my personal reflection on supervising an exam via skype, I thought I would put it all into context for you.

Who are the students? We train electrical apprentices online. They do their regular work, and instead of going to TAFE they complete their theory training online. Our students age from 16 to 50+. Their time for training is sometimes at their workplace, in an office, one day a week, and sometimes it’s at home after work, and sometimes it’s even on their holidays. It doesn’t really matter when they do their training, but their exam has to be supervised, which menas it has to be done Monday – Friday, between 8 and 4.

How are they assessed? Because of the way this training is done, students take differing amounts of time to finish competencies, and we rarely have more then one student doing an exam at a time. Students have to book in the time that they want to sit their exam as well, so staff can manage when students sit exams. Online exams are just one of the methods of assessment for each competency (we’ll talk more about that another time). We use moodle, and so our online exams are moodle quizes. For those interested, we put a time limit on the exam, and the review options are all unticked, except for feedback and scores in the final collum.

Why are they supervised via webcam? They’re supervised by webcam so that we know that it is indeed the right student taking the exam, and so that we can be sure that they don’t have textbooks, or other things on their desk, or computer to help them (assuming the exam they’re doing isn’t open book).

Personal Reflections

Today was my first time supervising one of these exams online (though not the first time they’ve been done in our organisation). He’s a quick run-down of how it happened.

• Student calls because they’re booked in for an exam.
• We both have skype open and add each other. Start video call (student only- I’m not on video, and I’m on mute for voice too while they’re doing the exam)
• Survey room/screen/desk with webcam. Webcam is positioned so that both student, and their desk and computer screen can be seen by the webcam.
• Give student exam password and move skype to extra screen or corner of current screen.
• Periodically check on student, record exam if necessary.
• Student calls/talks via skype when they’re finsihed. Call is ended.
• Exam is marked, student and employer are emailed the results, is a resit is necessary, then student books in to do that.

Positives? When I said on twitter that I was supervising an exam via skype I got a few responses from people thinking that this was going to be really hard. These people probably thought that there would be multiple students; but with only one student, it’s a very easy, stress-free way to supervise exams. I personally found it easy to manage, and while it was another thing I was multi-tasking, I was able to give it the attention it needed, and also cary on with some other tasks. I did some work on my computer like emails, and created some slides- things I would have been doing had I supervised him in ‘real life’.

Negatives? There weren’t really any negatives that I can think of. Perhaps, if I had to give an answer, I would say having to listen to them was annoying- not that he was speaking, but there were keys typing and things like that. Simple solution is to turn down the volume, or put on some quiet music- that way I could still hear him if they need to talk to me (which they would only be doing if they had finished).

Technicalities

Why Skype? Well, most people have heard of skype, so it’s not a ‘new’ thing to a lot of people. This is a big deal, because there are already some ‘new technologies’ students have to ‘learn’, and we don’t want to make this too big of jump for them. It’s also free, easy to download, and easy to make an account, plus people will actually use it for other things- not just their training. It’s true that skype has limitations- like only being able to video call with one person at a time, BUT as I mentioned earlier, with students booking in times to do exams, this isn’t really an issue. Plus, we have 8 computers in the office. If was vital that more then one person was doing their exam at the same time then they could just connect to another skype account, and another staff member, or that same staff member could monitor them on the extra computer.

We’ve recently started a new process for making our eLearning courses, adding in more focus on the planning and editing stages, instead of just development of content. This comes after buying some new software- Articulate, to increase our level of professionalism and give us some new options for interactivity within our courses.

It’s been a learning curve to get the software, and us, working how we need it to; and we won’t stay the same but at the moment it’s a flow (not only are we life long learners, always changing; but we’ll most likely have to expland soon).

There are three of us in Development, and each of us take on one of these roles (this is after the material for the course has been written by the trainer). I do the planning, Cody the development, and Luke the editing. Of course, before that is some group brainstorming with the three of us, and our new office structure means that we can easily collaborate the entire time we’re working on a project.

It’s working pretty well, and the fact that everything is seen three times (sometimes more if the boss reviews the ‘final product’ as well), by different eyes, means that there are less of the bugs and mistakes that inevitable sneak through due to human error.

I’m loving storyboards as a tool for planning at the moment. They’re pretty simple to whip up (you can download a template here), give a good whole picture of what’s happening, and can be used to write notes in later stages of development so that as the plans gets passed through the development chain, everyone knows what’s happening. The thing I REALLY like about storyboarding by hand is that I can do it on the go. The other week I had to go see my Nanna during the week, when she got home from hospital, and as I was waiting for her I could storyboard. I didn’t need my laptop, or any fancy equipment. All I needed was some paper, a pen and my mind.

Once I’ve drawn the storyboards up we blow them up to A3 size so that they can be easily seen by everyone in our department, and any details/notes can be written clearly- not on extra paper, or in text too small to read!

I’m interested to know what editing processes other people have within their organisations- not just with eLearning, but with other delivery too. Do others use storyboards, edit the material once it’s been developed. Do you do more editing then this, or field test it before the product is released to students?

Google Wave has quickly become one of the most used tool in our workplace. We’ve been fortunate enough to get #wave invites from the get go, and have quickly adopted it in our workplace. All our staff have accounts, and even though it’s still in ‘Preview mode’ we’re not quite sure how we operated without it!

If you’re a little unsure about what it is, then this (lengthy) video should help you out!

If you’ve got Wave happening in your workplace, or you’re wondering how it could be of benefit to you, then here are a few ways that we’ve used wave so far…

• Project Management
• Planning out course material
• ToDo/Tasks
• Planning events (Christmas Party)
• Collating resources/links/ideas
• Connecting with other professionals in the industry/s
• Planning blogs/media releases/professional development
• Planning and Designing Database / Web Application Development
• Bug Fixing

Sometimes wave isn’t a better platform for what you want to use it for, but once you get a few different uses out of it, I find it’s helpful to have everything in the one place.

Stay tuned for future posts on each of these uses and a better explanation on what each of these may look like!

Think of every course you create as a project. That project needs management and planning, particularly if you more then one person is involved in the process. Wave has become one of the most critical tools for our company’s project management, and with 3 or 4 people all working on the one course at a time, good management is vital.

When it comes to project management there are so many options, so many different ways to achieve the same goal. The main area that drew us to using wave (apart from our addiction to using new technologies!) was the record keeping aspect. Being able to go back to the beginning, and see the process the project has gone through, and who did what. No information lost. No information hidden. If we need a diagram, we add pictures; and if we need more explanation on an area, we ask!

more…