Coronavirus COVID-19 which spread in the world at the beginning of 2020, affected the education sector by pushing them to go fully online. This change became a problem when teachers/educators who facilitate learning don’t have any experience nor skills to conduct online learning. On my initiative, in the 2nd week of the lockdown phase due to coronavirus COVID-19, I made synchronous online training for teachers, to help them improve their online teaching. During my online training, I applied FIRST-ADLX from the day before the training until the day after the training.
One of the most important feedback from the teachers who attended the online training is: “I learn from this online training, how to make a good readiness for our online teaching. Usually, when I give an online lecture if it starts at 10.00, I come at 10.00. I didn’t check learners’ preparation.”
Another feedback also comes, “In this training, when the facilitator gave me a learning contract a day before, I started to prepare myself for this training. I asked my children, please don’t disturb me at 9.00-11.00 am tomorrow because I want to learn.”
Bahgat (2018) explained in his book that readiness is one of the key factors to succeed in facilitation because it is the keyword for more participation and engagement of the learners. Readiness becomes more important in online setting learning. Furthermore, because of continued reports of high dropout rates and achievement problems in online courses (Luyt, 2013; Morris, Xu, & Finnegan, 2005; Tyler-Smith, 2006). Not all learners can successfully participate in online courses. Learners’ readiness is one of the factors.
Kebritchi, Lipschuetz, and Santiague (2017) in their literature review said that learners’ readiness to attend online courses is one of the major issues discussed in the literature. To help learners identify their readiness to participate in online learning, we can use an overarching model with five major readiness dimensions by Hung et al. (2010) (Kebritchi, et.al., 2017). The five dimensions include self-directed learning, motivation for learning, computer and internet self-efficacy, online communication self-efficacy, and learner control.
Self-directed learning is defined as a process in which learners take responsibility in understanding their learning needs, establishing their learning goals, and implementing learning strategies and evaluation (Kebritchi, et.al., 2017). In this case, the intake of participants who attended training was elected by their interest. Only those who are interested in the topic will come. This is in line with the assumption in adult learning identified by Knowles (1984), that adults are more ready to learn because adult learners are more aware of the importance of development and self-improvement. They are more willing to learn and perceive learning as a means to elevate their social status and perform their social roles (Bahgat, Elsafty, Shaarawy, & Said 2018). So, when I made the poster announcement of my online learning with the clear topic and what will be discussed during the training, teachers and participants who came to the training were selected by themselves. Only they were interested would come.
Assumption in adult learning identified by Knowles (1984) also applied in the second dimension of readiness, motivation to learn. Motivation here refers to the “need to do something out of curiosity and enjoyment” (Kebritchi, et.al., 2017). As a person becomes more mature, his/her motivation to learn becomes more intrinsic (Bahgat, et.al., 2018). I asked this in the pre-survey of the training, “what makes you interested to register for this training?”. Mostly they are teachers or trainers who are closely related and need to learn about delivering lessons/ training through online settings, especially in this corona phase.
The third and the fourth dimensions of readiness in online learning, computer and internet self-efficacy and online communication self-efficacy, are the things facilitators could do something to raise learners’ readiness. Computer and Internet self-efficacy refers to learners’ perceptions about their skills to use computers and the Internet to accomplish a task whilst online communication self-efficacy refers to learners’ perceptions about their abilities to communicate in online settings (Kebritchi, et.al., 2017). Learners with higher communication self-efficacy as well as computer and internet self-efficacy perform better in online courses (McVay, 2000; Roper, 2007; Tsai & Tsai, 2003). In my facilitation, I made a learning contract which included points about computer and internet issues to raise the readiness of the participants so their computer and internet self-efficacy during the training would increase. For example, in the learning contract that participants should fill one day before in the google form, I asked multiple-choice questions regarding technical preparation such as:
“There will be some activities during the training that will be more convenient if you use a laptop/ PC. Would you attend the training through laptop/ PC?”
- Yes, I will attend the online training through my laptop/ PC
- No, attend the online training through my mobile phone
I made some multiple-choice questions for other points like a suggestion to use a stable internet connection, information about the application that we will use during the training, and how to download the application.
Regarding the online communication self-efficacy, at the beginning of the training, I explained to them about how to communicate during the training that it could be done in 2 ways, through a chat column and open the mic. I informed the participants how they could do that, and asked them to try before the training began.
For the last dimension, learner control refers to the degree which learners can direct their learning experiences (Kebritchi, et.al., 2017). In my facilitation, besides telling the participants about how we could communicate during the training, I also explained that in this training we would learn from each other and I will be the facilitator of learning, I will not be the only source of their learning. So, I conveyed that I hoped they would participate more for the sake of their own learning. The preparation worked well because, during the training session, participants are so active and engaged in the activities by actively answering by pulling questions, engaged in group discussion and presentation. In FIRST Framework, group discussion and presentation is considered as “losing partial control by design” which includes in Trust the Learner principle in Focusing domain. This thing also could be functioned to share control to the learner as suggested in this dimension.
So, based on five major readiness dimensions by Hung et al. (2010), the facilitator should take care of self-directed learning, motivation for learning, computer and internet self-efficacy, online communication self-efficacy, and learner control in readiness stage when applying FIRST-ADLX Framework in the online learning setting.
Sulistami Prihandini, M.Si
Magister of Science in the Educational Psychology University of Indonesia
Indonesian FIRST Edu Master Facilitator
References
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