Table Of ContentC O L
C O L
PERSPECTIVES ON OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING
USING ICTS AND BLENDED LEARNING
IN TRANSFORMING TVET
The Education for All initiative concluded in 2015, but in many countries, and particularly in
the developing countries, secondary education is still the preserve of the privileged few. This
means that millions of adults and young people are denied the opportunity to complete their
Using ICTs and
basic education, which in turns sees them trapped in a pattern of low-skilled, low-income work.
How can they gain the knowledge and skills necessary to improve both their lives and their
employment opportunities?
Blended Learning in
This book draws on the expertise and experience of 15 experts who examine the potential of
technical and vocational education and training (TVET) to bring education to those who might
otherwise be unable to aces it. It discuses ways in which information and communication Transforming TVET
technology–based (ICT-based) methodologies can contribute to the transformation and expansion
of TVET programmes and courses. Drawing on nine case studies, it provides insight into — and
lessons learned from — different applications of ICTs in TVET around the globe, examines issues
of cost and approaches to planning for successful and sustainable applications of ICTs and offers
recommendations for the international organisations, governments, policy makers, managers
and staff responsible for TVET. This book should prove to be a valuable asset for both practising
and potential TVET providers.
Using ICTs and Blended Learning in Transforming TVET is co-published by COL and UNESCO as Colin Latchem
part of COL’s Perspectives Series on Open and Distance Learning. Editor
9 789231 002120
PERSPECTIVES ON OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING
PERSPECTIVES ON OPEN
AND DISTANCE LEARNING Using ICTs and Blended Learning in Transforming TVET
Using ICTs
and Blended
Learning in
Transforming
TVET
Colin Latchem
Editor
Published by the United Nations Educational, Scientifc and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO), 7, place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP, France, and
Commonwealth of Learning (COL), 4710 Kingsway, Suite 2500, Burnaby, BC
V5H 4M2, Canada
Using ICTs and Blended Learning in Transforming TVET
Colin Latchem, Editor
© UNESCO and COMMONWEALTH OF LEARNING, 2017
UNESCO ISBN 978-92-3-100212-0
COL ISBN 978-1-894975-85-8
This publication is available in Open Access under the Attribution-ShareAlike
3.0 IGO (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by-sa/3.0/igo/). By using the content of this publication, the users accept to
be bound by the terms of use of the UNESCO Open Access Repository (http://
www.unesco.org/open-access/terms-use-ccbysa-en) and the Commonwealth
of Learning's Open Access Repository (http://oasis.col.org).
For the avoidance of doubt, by applying this licence the Commonwealth of
Learning and UNESCO do not waive any privileges or immunities from claims
that they may be entitled to assert, nor do the Commonwealth of Learning and
UNESCO submit themselves to the jurisdiction, courts, legal processes or laws
of any jurisdiction.
The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this
publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part
of UNESCO or COL concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city
or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or
boundaries.
The ideas and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors;
they are not necessarily those of UNESCO or COL and do not commit the
Organization.
Designed by Commonwealth of Learning
Contents
Foreword by the President and CEO, Commonwealth of Learning ....................v
Foreword by the Assistant Director-General for Education, UNESCO ............. vii
Contributors. .........................................................................................................ix
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................ xiii
PART I: Setting the Context
Chapter 1
The demands and challenges ......................................................................... 3
Colin Latchem
Chapter 2
ICTs, Blended Learning and TVET Transformation ....................................... 27
Colin Latchem
PART II: Case Studies
Case Studies ....................................................................................................... 57
Chapter 3
Germany: BIBB ............................................................................................. 59
Michael Härtel
Chapter 4
Australia: OTEN ............................................................................................. 73
Robyn Harriden
Chapter 5
Sri Lanka: TVET and ICTs ............................................................................. 87
Janaka Jayalath
Chapter 6
New Zealand: Open Polytechnic ................................................................ 103
Caroline Seelig and Mark Nichols
Chapter 7
Jamaica: UTech .......................................................................................... 117
Jeanette M. Bartley-Bryan
Chapter 8
Finland: VET and Omnia ............................................................................. 131
Leena Vainio, Elina Oksanen-Ylikoski and Teemu Ylikoski
iii
Chapter 9
INVEST Africa ............................................................................................. 143
Shafka Isaacs
Chapter 10
Cambodia: The TVET Academy .................................................................. 155
Pascal Mabille
Chapter 11
Canada: e-Apprenticeships ........................................................................ 169
Paul Little
PART III: Planning for Transformation
Chapter 12
Considerations in Costing ODL and ICTs in TVET ...................................... 185
Sarah Hoosen and Neil Butcher
Chapter 13
Planning for the Use of ICTs at the National and Institutional Levels ......... 201
Colin Latchem
Chapter 14
Conclusions and Recommendations .......................................................... 221
Colin Latchem
iv
Foreword by the President and CEO,
Commonwealth of Learning
Skills development for livelihoods is a key priority for most governments today.
For this reason, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is
more important globally than ever before. Sustainable Development Goal 4
aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning
opportunities for all,” and to “substantially increase the number of youth and
adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for
employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship” by 2030.
How will this be achieved? There can be several ways forward: increased fnancing,
better policies, industry involvement and public-private-partnerships. At the
Commonwealth of Learning (COL), we promote the use of innovative approaches
and appropriate technologies so that stakeholders in developing countries can
adopt more cost-efective options. In fact, we have seen the positive impact of
these innovations on the policy, practice and outcomes of our many partner
institutions around the Commonwealth.
COL believes that learning is the key to sustainable development and that
open, online and fexible learning can play a key role in achieving this. There
are 1.2 billion young people between the ages of 15 and 24, most of them in
developing countries, and governments are looking for ways in which these young
people can be skilled for employment and entrepreneurship. The traditional brick-
and-mortar institutions do not have the capacity to manage such large numbers of
learners. Open and distance learning (ODL) and information and communication
technologies (ICTs) provide opportunities to increase access, reduce costs and
improve the quality of education.
While ODL has traditionally been used in higher education, its role in relation
to skilling cannot be underestimated. From working with farmers to developing
agri-businesses in India, to providing technical training to construction workers
in Nauru, to using mobile learning to support scientifc honey and beekeeping
practices among Uganda’s remote Batwa community, COL is fnding that fexible
and blended approaches using technology in an appropriate social, economic and
political context can have a signifcant impact on communities’ ability to develop
sustainably.
As an organisation that provides its resources under an open licence, COL has a
repository of open educational resources (OER) in TVET that can be adopted and
adapted for various learning contexts. In order to skill our young people at scale,
we need quality content, enhanced capacity and better connectivity.
v
This publication is a timely and important testament to the strong partnership
between UNESCO and COL. We are now past the one-year mark of the adoption
of the Sustainable Development Goals, and the world needs ideas and solutions
to help achieve the ambitious targets outlined therein. I thank the authors from
around the world for their valuable contributions and for sharing insights into
how we can use ICTs and fexible and blended learning approaches to transform
TVET. These lessons are sure to support our collective eforts towards more
inclusive and equitable education that will lead to sustainable development.
Professor Asha Kanwar
President & Chief Executive Ofcer
Commonwealth of Learning
Foreword by the Assistant Director-General
for Education, UNESCO
I am pleased to present to our readers this volume prepared jointly by the
Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and UNESCO, the latter involving teams
both from the Section of Youth, Literacy and Skills Development at UNESCO’s
headquarters in Paris and the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for
Technical and Vocational Education and Training in Bonn. The book is the
outcome of a fruitful co-operation between the two organisations. It brings
together the work of several leading experts, presented as a series of case studies
from around the world showcasing the use of information and communication
technologies (ICT) and novel forms of open, fexible and technology-enhanced
learning in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET).
TVET’s potential to address many of the challenges facing individuals,
communities and governments worldwide in their eforts towards achieving
employment, decent work and sustainable development are being increasingly
recognised, and TVET is accordingly becoming a policy priority in many countries
and regions around the world. This is also refected in the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development with several targets of Sustainable Development Goal 4
referring directly to technical and vocational education and skills.
Since the Third International Congress in Shanghai in 2012, UNESCO has been
calling for a transformation of TVET systems to ensure that they have the capacity
to respond to the multiple demands placed on them as a result of constant and
rapid economic, social, geo-political and technological changes. The development
of ICT and new modes of learning — such as distance, online and fexible learning
— is one such change that TVET needs to respond to if it is to ensure, for example,
that learners are equipped with the technological skills necessary to carry out their
current and future jobs. ICT has the potential to improve access to, and quality
of, learning, increase efciency, reduce costs, foster innovation, make teaching
and learning more relevant to people’s work and lives and prepare individuals to
become lifelong learners. ICT can thus be a driver for, and a means of, change for
TVET.
Both COL and UNESCO acknowledge that learning is more than formal
education, and much of TVET is in fact happening in a variety of settings beyond
the formal education system — in workplaces, online and in the community.
The selection of case studies presented in this book illustrates the diferent ways
ICTs and open and fexible learning are used in these settings. The book includes
contributions from partners from a variety of geographical and institutional
contexts, and indeed one of the publication’s important outcomes is to showcase
the diversity of approaches and models being developed and used. The extent to
vii
which each of these approaches and models is achieving its goals and contributing
towards TVET’s transformation is a question discussed throughout the book.
Many of the authors of the case studies are afliated with institutions that have
long-standing partnerships with our two organisations. I would like to mention
in particular The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB),
Germany; Omnia, Finland; the Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission
(TVEC), Sri Lanka; and the University of Technology (UTech), Jamaica. All these
institutions are members of the UNEVOC Network, UNESCO’s global network of
TVET institutions with over 250 members around the world. We are grateful to
all the authors for their contributions, as well as to the numerous peer reviewers
from within and outside COL and UNESCO for their constructive comments and
feedback.
Dr Qian Tang
Assistant Director-General for Education
UNESCO
Contributors
Dr Jeanette M. Bartley-Bryan is the Associate Vice President
for Distance Learning at the University of Technology (UTech)
in Jamaica. Her portfolio includes responsibility for facilitating
technology-mediated educational opportunities and fexible access
to academic programme oferings in Jamaica, the Anglophone
Caribbean and elsewhere across the globe. With over 30 years of
collective experience working with Caribbean and North American institutions,
Dr Bartley-Bryan has garnered diverse expertise as an educator, corporate trainer,
consultant, project manager and social history documentarist in educational
change through technology-mediated learning.
Neil Butcher is based in South Africa and provides policy and
technical advice and support to a range of national and international
clients regarding educational planning, uses of educational
technology and distance education. He has worked with various
educational institutions, assisting with transformation eforts
that focus on efectively harnessing the potential of distance
education methods, educational technology and open educational resources.
Neil has travelled extensively, conducting research on higher education, distance
education and educational technology for a range of organisations, governments
and donors.
Robyn Harriden is TAFE NSW - Western Sydney Institute’s
Manager, Business Planning and Accountability, a role that involves
overseeing strategic planning, asset management and performance
reporting. Her passion for education, and vocational education and
training in particular, is mirrored in her own pursuit of education.
She holds degrees in Communications and Social Sciences and a
Graduate Certifcate in Management, as well as several diplomas gained through
the VET sector. She is currently completing a Graduate Certifcate in Vocational
Education and Training.
Michael Härtel is the Head of the Digital Media, Distance
Learning and Training Personnel Division at the Federal Institute
for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) in Germany. His
responsibilities include concept design of models for work-based
learning environments in information and communication
technology–based VET, monitoring and evaluating nationally
funded Digital Media in VET pilot projects, making ongoing improvements
to Web-based services for trainers in VET, and developing national standards
for VET teacher and trainer qualifcations and advisory services within BIBB’s
international co-operation activities. Due to the growth of the Internet of Things
and its implications for VET, he is developing IT-media literacy concepts for VET
trainers. He is responsible for the quality management of VET-based distance
learning courses.
ix
