F-1) Importance of Training: EvNet places a very high priority on training students, practitioners, and new researchers. We have devoted the largest part of our SSHRC budget ($790k or 63 per cent) to this activity.
F-2) Graduate and Undergraduate Students: Most of our training budget will be devoted to training graduate doctoral and masters students in research projects. Some projects will also train senior undergraduate students.
F-3) Practitioners and Collaborators in public, private and non-profit organizations will be actively involved in research skill development in two ways: (1) They bring applied expertise to our projects that benefits student research assistants and academic members. (2) Academic members and student research assistants train collaborators and practitioners in various organizations in new skills, such as emerging educational software and courseware (e.g. First Class Client).
F-4) New Researchers will also be employed by EvNet. Many post-docs are eager to obtain hands-on experience in educational technology. Most will build on their thesis work, but in the more applied EvNet environment.
F-5) The Skill Areas of Training will be the following:
F-6) Evaluation of Training: It is important not to use graduate students to perform mainly mundane, deskilled tasks. The Research and Training Committees will monitor the quality of training in research projects, and recommend actions.
F-7) Exchanges: Educational technology has two noteworthy features: rapidity of change and multidisciplinarity. It is often difficult for grad students isolated in their separate disciplines and institutions to find the ideal professor with the requisite skills and experience to obtain appropriate training, even when tutorials can be conducted at a distance via CMC and teleconferencing. EvNet will provide its research assistants with the opportunity of spending real time in the projects where they work, but at other institutions. This exchange is integral to our network-wide formative evaluation model in which testing of products in succeeding years is done at other EvNet sites. This would increase communications between institutions and disciplines, and be an opportunity for graduate students to be exposed to different approaches.
F-8) Internships: Research assistants will gain hands-on experience by working directly in our partner organizations. Using the Prior Learning Assessment community college model(see http://www.sheridanc.on.ca/wwwtst/AS/PLA.html), we will negotiate the creation of Internship Certificates with advice from David Wells (a collaborator). He is Internship Coordinator, Graduate Program in Educational Technology, Concordia University. It places 20 M.A. students annually in a 600-hour internship at schools, industry and the public service. Concordia has the only doctoral Educational Technology program in Canada. It has unique affiliations with schools, industry and government. Athabasca has a well known Masters in Distance Education program. Both programs will be utilized in EvNet's Internship Certificate.
F-9) Research Assistants' Network (RASNET): Virtual, Distributed Training: At two of our network meetings, the graduate students in EvNet proposed and refined a plan for an on-line virtual graduate student research assistants network (RASNET) within EvNet. Its purpose will be to facilitate collaboration across research projects and member institutions and organizations; help balance and promote the diversity of research traditions and interests through an interdisciplinary exchange of theoretical, methodological and evaluation skills, along with a cross-training of innovative practices for the application of technology in education (including online communication skills, media authorship, server maintenance, and design); provide access to multiple sites and opportunities for internships; intensify flexible alliances between universities and research projects for the integration and dissemination of findings; enhance an exchange of knowledge, practice, and expertise for the training of graduate students in research and as educational practitioners; and, promote the formation of intellectual links between young researchers which may lead to future multidisciplinary collaborations. Communication in RASNET will be conducted through the INTERNET and virtual/electronic participation (e-mail, chat, video conference, listserv, and central server). Each research site and/or project will update RASNET and EvNet on its progress. To reduce costs, annual meetings will be held at the Learned Societies Congress.
RASNET will draw on the experience of EvNet's Athabasca U. participants. Most of their research assistants work at a distance in Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia. Students mount projects on their own web pages (http://ccism.pc.athabascau.ca/html/ccism/projects/project.htm). Much of the research and development work at Athabasca is done by grad students in the Masters of Distance Education Programme, and senior undergrads in computing science. We will continue this approach to student training across a distributed environment. Assessment of this approach becomes part of the research itself (see Karen Stauffer on student modelling:http://ccism.pc.athabascau.ca/html/students/stupage/Project/sm_app.htm). Athabasca also has students staffing a virtual helpdesk, giving support to other students and faculty in web editing, unix support, e-mail, and Talker and INTERNET utilities (http://ccism.pc.athabascau.ca/html/students/stupage/vhd/vhd.htm). This is valuable work experience. Students have developed virtual work and social relationships unimaginable in the past. It is an implementation of Lanfranco's 'virtual workspace' in Project 4d. Graduate and undergraduate projects have already been linked into Athabasca's research infrastructure. Students at remote sites have linked their own web pages back to Athabasca's site (e.g., see http://www.netshop.net/~thibeaul/).
F-10) Multimedia Research Assistant Training Modules: For years, SSHRC has financed student research training in its grants programs. There is a vast untapped wealth of experience and lessons on graduate student training in past SSHRC research projects. At the same time, two new realities are emerging. First, researchers and graduate students in the social sciences and humanities are gravitating toward the science model of working in teams and networks. Second, even when the topic of research has little to do with computer-mediated communications (CMC), more of the daily work in research projects is now conducted via CMC. It would be useful to collect the experience of the old and new realities of research training in a central resource useful for future SSHRC grant holders and research assistants - a sort of 'best practices' guide to graduate student research training. RASNET will produce electronic and hard-copy instructional training modules to assist future students and practioners to perform and develop the on-the-job skills necessary for becoming effective research assistants (e.g., relations with supervisors, faculty, colleagues, clients etc.). The modules will also include skills for functioning effectively in multidisciplinary, cross-institutional, and interprovincial research networks linked to public, private and non-profit organizations. They will cover the basic skills research assistants are expected to have or develop on-the job. There will be a module on regulating learning at work to assist research assistants in evaluating their own progress. There will be a module on the special skills demanded in networked environments (such as team work, working at a distance, and communicating using instructional technologies). These skills are of increasing importance in the global marketplace and in the Canadian workforce (Corporate Council on Education, National Business and Education Centre, The Conference Board of Canada, 1993). Nurturing such skills will serve research assistants well in their employment. Often communication and team work skills are ignored, with emphasis only on the technical aspects of instructional technologies. An assumption is often made that if users can technically navigate a system, they can effectively communicate and work with others. This is not the case. The training modules will therefore emphasize communication and collaborative aspects of using instructional technologies, as well as technical features of e-mail, computer conferencing, course newsgroups, INTERNET listservs, and the world wide web. Graduate research assistants will keep a daily log or diary of their activities, practices, concerns, and problems. Once such materials are developed, collected and centralized, they will be produced in the form of an instructional manual. An interactive Web version and a CD-ROM version will also be developed. Research assistants will work collaboratively in groups of four to eight on the modules. Final production will occur in the Summer Institute at the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies at Mount Allison University. This will be an excellent collaborative face-to-face and virtual environment in which our research assistants can share their collective experiences working within EvNet, and convert them into a set of 'best practices' of benefit to other students.
F-11) Summer Training Institute: Research assistants, teachers, practitioners, collaborators, and faculty members will have the opportunity to take advantage of an in-residence Summer Training Institute which EvNet is setting up in cooperation with the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies, a joint venture among Mount Allison University, NBTel, Andersen Consulting, and Digital Canada. As an EvNet partner, the Centre will offer training in technologies, such as multimedia authoring and performance assessment. EvNet research assistants will obtain hands-on experience in the final production of three multimedia training modules (workplace, higher learning, and research assistant - see Part G, Dissemination). This will also provide a forum for exchanging information among students, practitioners, collaborators, and researchers in EvNet.
| SRNET | EvNet | ||
| Home | Research / Partners | ||