Barreras comerciales Competencia desleal (Subsidios y dumping)

The PARG seemed to enjoy the challenge of working on something different, learning new technical skills and thinking about their profession in a different light. They were also keener to work within the Moodle environment than I had envisaged and eager to create videos and quizzes etc. by themselves. It was regular practice for some trainers to come along to a working bee, share an idea, ask for some particular piece of help or advice and then disappear off to create their own resource. In my own reflective journal I noted that this was having some impacts on how the course was taking shape. Firstly, through experimentation

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trainers devised new ways of creating such as using cartoons instead of film footage. Secondly, although we had discussed that videos should be scenario- based, one or two trainers were creating resources that listed features rather than solving problems.

I was in turn exhilarated by the creativity and passion displayed by the PARG and surprised and concerned by the desire to maintain independence over their work in ways that opposed what I considered one of the primary directions of the programme. My role as training coordinator means that I work alongside trainers rather than managing them. In the past when training was delivered face-to-face I provided advice, training and support for trainers, in the form of suggestions rather than directions, which could be disregarded if chosen. The Online Reference Programme was similar. The programme was a collaborative effort between the whole PARG, and for me it was important that all the trainers to felt that they had ownership of the project rather simply being “told” what to do. Although the group had discussed and agreed to create modules around scenarios rather than features this appeared to be considered to be merely a “suggestion” rather than a “rule.” The resources themselves were slick and technically very professional, representing many hours of work, and time was constrained. Although I had some misgivings, refusing to include these resources in the

programme, or forcing them to be changed, seemed counterproductive and would damage relationships within the PARG. I decided that these resources could work well as additional “overviews” within the programme, and would provide variety and so as such they should be included. The programme after all was a pilot and one for which there would be considerable feedback.

As well as watching videos, trainees would also be required to try things out for themselves. Again using scenarios as a basis, multiple choice quizzes and longer lessons using the features in Moodle were created. Six core members of the PARG developed most of the interactive quizzes and lessons and we became aware that actually creating effective and useful interactive lessons was harder than we had expected. In particular, we wanted to create a process that could provide feedback automatically. This would ensure that there would be no need for a trainer to

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constantly monitor the programme and provide the same feedback to each trainee. For multiple choice questions this was relatively easy as the Moodle environment enables specific feedback to be created for each response.

However, even with a simple one-word response the problem becomes harder. For example, to the question “What is the capital city of France?” a learner may

respond “Paris”, “paris” “PARIS” “The answer is Paris” or even “Paaris” and expect their answer to be marked as correct. Programming the Moodle environment to accept all these responses as correct requires each possible answer to be

separately coded as correct, and even then errors may still occur (e.g. the response “London or Paris or Rome or Wellington” could be given full marks). Longer responses to questions would need to be read by a human to make sense of them. Our solution to this problem was to require trainees to post their answers to a forum; in this way the trainees could see each other’s answers and the trainer would only need to post a “correct” or “model’ answer once. The forum would be a place for trainees to answer the “questions of the week”, discuss their learning with others and pose any questions they may have themselves. The forum was designed to be a core part of the course. Feedback from the previous Digital Communication course (discussed under the “learner lens” above) also suggested that the forum would be a popular component.

The multiple choice lesson option in Moodle however enabled a branching

scenario or “Maze” to be created. Evidence from the literature lens suggested that this could be a simple way to create a game-like activity. A very simple reference interview maze was developed to test this idea and an actor was filmed as if responding to the different actions. Although this created an interesting and entertaining game-like lesson, it still required considerable time to design and programme. Although the lesson maze appeared to be an effective learning tool, the time restraints and challenge of writing a simple yet testing branching scenario restricted our use of this approach.

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Time continued to be a challenge for all concerned. The PARG had other projects and day to day work activities and some of the most enthusiastic group members of the group found that these other constraints compromised their ability to help create the course. Slowly however, the programme took shape.

The start date for the programme was set for June 2012. Setting a date encouraged the PARG to concentrate their efforts on completing the programme focusing in particular on the first three modules, which would need to be ready at the beginning of the programme. In addition to the online modules, the face-to-face sessions also had to be planned and prepared. The initial face-to-face session would provide an introduction to the online environment as well as an introduction to the topic of Reference Skills. The final session would enable trainees to practice their skills through role-play, and facilitate face to face discussion. Three members of the group were keen to facilitate the face-to-face sessions and be tutors for the online programme, answering emails and queries from trainees.

As the start date drew nearer it became apparent that the later modules of the programme would not be complete by then. The programme and the development of the programme would need to take place concurrently with one module being delivered while later ones were still being created. This was not the ideal situation but it would enable us to respond and adapt more quickly to trainee’s needs.