Network Project Comprehensive assessment

Comprehensive Assessment of Organizations and Networks Development Project

Identifying development needs: What is the starting point?

when you work in a company the processes cannot be held individually, there must be a team working together with a common goal or the workload would become unbearable for the one who tries to do all the tasks by himself. But when talking about teaching we tend to be very individual, working like islands even when we have a common goal, maybe because we are not used to have someone giving opinions about our teaching performance or the activities we do in class, or maybe because teachers do not accept the interference in their teaching. Anyway the objectives stay there and we must find a way to reach them as a team. In the SENA there are defined groups called “executing teams”, which are the group of instructors that teach a specific program in a school o center. Usually the executor team must be in contact and have to plan the course project together among some other tasks during the process. Unfortunately the communication among them is sometimes difficult due to different factors such as lack of time, work load, and overlapped schedules. There are some meetings institutionally defined to get together with the whole team, but it seems to be not enough, and sometimes they are so rigid that the topics covered in those meetings are limited, and the opinions of the students and the industry are not usually heard during those gatherings. That was the starting point of my networking project, I pretended to think in an option that can improve the communication in such a manner that those voices can be heard, and that deeper and more meaningful topics could be discussed by the executing team of software programming, the one that I belong to.

What are the aims of the development process?

An idea like that one cannot be developed in just two months, but with this project I pretend to implant the seed to future changes in the way the instructors see and perform their cooperation and communication. The first steps were to inform the subdirector of the school who is the head of the center, then contact the instructors and by means of an interview giving them a trigger to start the discussion in a closer and more permanent way, also involve the students, especially the ones who have the experience of being in the companies in their productive stage. Then reach the industries opinion by the students bosses in the practical stage, finally go back to the instructors and share as much possible of the opinions of the different participants of this network and start the process again, making it a cyclical conversation.

Designing a new model

The project of networking has changed a lot from its conception, although the main objective has remained from the beginning, but two moments gave a new north to the project, the first one was a comment made by Irmeli in which she proposed me to have personal interviews instead of sending formats or a survey to the participants, the second moment was when I heard on the radio about a new perception of companies worldwide which says that the best ideas come from the must unusual places, they made a concrete reference “the best ideas come from the cafeteria of the company” It caused me and impact that made me think in the experience at SENA, what is going on here, do we really pay attention to the fresh ideas, do we really have successful meetings. Then I investigated a little bit more about it, I found a blog about Steven Berlin Johnson, an American writer who in his speech of “the intersection of science, technology and personal experience, in the TED global 2010 conference” reaffirms the idea of the importance of moments free of pressure to create innovative ideas for companies. This concept is also taken for companies like Google that created a working model where the creativity is a valued instrument, and where the spaces and moments to promote creativity are highly appreciated, and the model of stress, common in other companies, is avoided a most. When I finally had the encounters with teachers, I found with big surprise, that the conversation after the formal interview was a lot more productive than the previous discussion; it appeared secrets, pedagogical tips, deep feelings, and even real compromises of future activities where I really got what I was expecting from the project. All the participants were willing to contribute, and all of them had something to say, but it was only after each interview, in a free of pressure environment, where the best information emerged.

Implementing and evaluating the development process

As I mentioned before in this document the first step was to inform the sub-director of the school, then contact the instructors and interview them a trigger, also involve the students with the same methodology; after that reach the industries opinion through the students bosses, finally go back to the instructors and share the opinions of the different participants. I am still on the third step, and I am going to continue with the company bosses in the future days. The data has been collected in two ways, initially by recorded interviews, and the second is through notes taken after every conversation, all the information of the compromises acquired with the participants has been sent through e-mails and two Facebook groups that were previously created for students.

Disseminating the results.

So far the dissemination has been done person by person; the second step for it was to become part of the pedagogical team of the center, something that I already did, I was accepted in it, but only until December I am going to have the opportunity to share the results of the project; finally the last step is to write an article in the new magazine created by the instructors school, I already made the contacts, and I was told that this trimester the first edition is already completed, but the next trimester they are going receive the articles from the teachers and I am invited to participate with one text, of course I am going to talk about my network development project.

ASSESSMENT AND STUDENTS FEARS

By Fredy Alonso Roa

The traditional way of evaluating

Assess and evaluate are totally different concepts, but as it is the same term in Spanish “evaluar” it seems that for decades we did not really understand the importance of differentiate the two concepts, and we assumed that giving a grade for a task was the only way of “evaluar”. The old-fashioned evaluation system imposed from the high-schools remained in so many people that even the ones who became teachers, years after, kept that in their minds and still use it. The traditional test and the oral presentations (lecturing) are useful tools, but unfortunately have been over used in the last decades. And in times when the learning processes are different, the evaluation and the assessment need to be different too.

The student’s fears

The question “teacher, what was my grade? Did I pass?” is commonly heard in our classrooms, but the question “what do I need to know to be better?” causes fear in students. Their background information tells them that they are there to pass or fail, and they feel out of place when you tell them that they are there to learn and become competent. It is so hard to understand that they even ask again “but did I pass?”

The assessment is understood as the tools used to evaluate the learning progress and the process of a student, and a process is something that needs to be carefully seen in all its stages, step by step, testing is only one tool, but it seems that our apprentices consider it like the only and most important.

Changing a paradigm

But if it is difficult for our students imagine how difficult can it be for some teachers who have always count on testing as their primary tool, how to convince our colleagues that the final product is not the most important, that the finish line is not the objective but the path to get there, convince them that assessing the process and supporting your apprentices with permanent guidance and counseling is even more important than handing in the final paper or product. We need to create a new consciousness where the mistakes can be seen as opportunities and the people are not taken as mere numbers but as beings able to learn and change constantly. The hardest task is that we need to make the instructors believe, believe in their students, believe in the abilities of transformation and adjustment of our apprentices, but is our responsibility to show them the correct way.

But why is it so hard to do that, as it is mentioned by Edna Lucena Acosta in her Book “Modelo de evaluación del aprendizaje” the grading is used for teaches as a tool for control and power, and some teachers might feel that there are losing their control over the class. If we want to have a successful assessment in our courses, the first thing we need to change is the perception of their own role, making clear that the instructor role is as a guide, and putting the student in the center of the process as it should be done from the beginning.

THE USE OF THE SPACE IN THE CLASSROOM

By Fredy Alonso Roa

 

For years the classroom were static spaces with rows and a lines, it was due to the character of the classes in that time, where the teacher was a figure of control and the person in front of the students possessed all the knowledge, but the times have changed, and the knowledge is something that is public, and the students became active participants willing to share knowledge and experiences.

SENA learning environments have experienced many changes due to many reasons, eliminating walls, including working stations, sometimes avoiding the use of boards, among some other variations, but even though all this changes have good intentions we have witnessed that not all the decisions in this concern were the most appropriated. Anyway, in this moment the most important is to remember, what the character of our learning sessions is, and also the new competences that our apprentices must develop such as collaborative work, problem solving abilities, interaction and autonomous learning, where the student is the center of the process.

Taking those aspects into account we must be aware of the classroom setting, the experience given by the latest times has shown that the spaces that are too static become not convenient for a collaborative class. The option of having light chairs and tables to create multiple distributions in the classroom is something that can promote the interaction and a more adequate environment for the cooperative work. Pair work and team work is easier when the participants have the option of moving around or placing the chair face to face, also in the moment of socializing information or having forums, debates and panel discussions is more comfortable when the classroom can be set in a half moon or in two parallel rows. Even moments like a warm up or a wrap up can have more options with a nice classroom setting.

So let us separate from the old heavy tables and the precisely organized rows in the classroom, we can be able to see our classrooms in a totally different shape.

NETWORKING PROJECT ADVANCES

Having an informal conversation sometimes is more fruitful than answering a questionary or being involved in a restrictive meeting or a  work briefing. After listening a wise advice from my teacher Irmeli I decided to take the way of the interview to contact the different participants of the network, today I am going to talk about the interviews with teachers. They were the first to be contacted, and many surprises arose; the first one was the good will that every one of the instructors showed, even the ones that I could expect as reluctant to participate, that was very motivating and gave me the opportunity to listen to the different points of view of the instructors. The interview was done individually with each of the instructors in their own classrooms. During the conversation with them I asked about the perception that they have about the program and the feelings about their students, I tried to send provoking questions as a trigger for the further conversations, in special questions about how successful the students are, or the reasons why they sometimes fail in their companies, then it appear the second surprise, there is a sensation that the majority of apprentices from SENA are successful in the areas of knowledge, but they have difficulties in their personal lives that cause them problems in their workplaces, the three pillars of learning in SENA are “the knowledge”, “to know how to do” and “to know how to be” and it seems that the behavior is the weakest point in this chain.

The last surprise came after the interview with Josefina, the math instructor, we were discussing about ways of improving the contents of the program when Fabio, the technical instructor (who I had interviewed before) came in to participate in the discussion, and  in that conversation we agreed to work together in an activity that would involve programming, math, and English at the same time, and we made a compromise of sharing the information and preparing the activity to be implemented in January when the students were working on “Delphi”  in software programming, and when they were starting “set theory” in math.