Engineers 2.0 & e-Engineers in Finland

Η Riitta Suominen (@Rsuominen στο twitter) είναι φίλη και συνάδελφος εκπαιδεύτρια στην Φινλανδία με την οποία γνωριστήκαμε μέσω των διεθνών επιμορφωτικών προγράμματων που διοργανώνει το Ινστιτούτο Επιμόρφωσης του ΕΚΔΔΑ για την Ηλεκτρονική Μάθηση.
Πριν από μερικές εβδομάδες η Riitta εξέφρασε το ενδιαφέρον της για τη συμπερίληψη του Engineers 2.0 στα case studies βιβλίου που ετοιμάζει αυτή την περίοδο για το e-learning. Στα πλαίσια της προετοιμασίας του βιβίου συντάχθηκε το εξής πρόχειρο κείμενο για το Engineers 2.0 στα αγγλικά.

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Engineers 2.0 & e-Engineers
The Engineers 2.0 course is a formal training activity in the frame of the e-Engineers (e-Μηχανικοί) action of the body of Greek Engineers (TEE) founded by EU. e-Engineers aims at the enhancement of the skills of thousands of Greek engineers.
Engineers 2.0 aims at assisting Engineers of all faculties and ages to understand the open & collaborative philosophy behind read-write web or web 2.0 and use them to achieve better results in the exercise of their professional activities.

The course has two components (as required by TEE): theoretical and practical.
Its total duration is minimum of 40 hours of tuition when delivered in a classroom, 18 hours for theory and 22 hours for practise.

In the 1st phase of the e-Engineers program, there are limited number of people who can be trained by paying just 10% of the cost, the rest 90% being subsidised by TEE.

Engineers 2.0 structure & methodology
For classroom teaching I propose groups of 10-12 people; not too much, so as for the tutor to deliver personal attention to each, but also not too few to pursue community builiding. The course is being built around individual & group activities in groups of 3-4 people.

The choice of platforms and tools for the program was based on the ease of the participant having in mind that once they have mastered a certain platform they can use similar ones as well. The course focuses on principles and deeper knowledge on functionality and usability, not on specific technical characteristics of tools. However the seminar does aim that the participants master basic tasks in the chosen tools.

So according to the Networked Engineer vision, the Engineers, as well as any other professional, can benefit greatly by constructing a personal learning environment or network (PLE/PLN) to orchestrate and coordinate his/her own learning, resources, understanding, insights and connections. As center of the PLE is the personal blog of the engineer that is created during the course.

Now the course practical section includes:

1. blogging (center of PLE)
2. rss aggregator (collecting feeds)
3. collaborative document creation
4. social bookmarking (organizing important websites)
5. social networks (connection & communication with peers)

In order to avoid multiple accounts creation for the less ict experienced peers, we chose to use Googles' apps for the first 3 categories (blogger, google reader, google docs). For the others we chose Delicious (4), Linkedin and Twitter for (5).

In the 1st 2 weeks, after understanding why internet, web 2.0 and especially blogs are important for engineers, we go on to establish our own blog.

It is essential for a freelance engineer to start establishing his own professional digital identity with his/her own blog.
The choice whether their blog will be open or not is up to them, but the default is to be open of course so as to be able to attract people around their work and interact.

As the time frame of 40 hours is fairly restrictive for the depth of issues, we encourage people to reflect on their thinking via writing in their own blogs. The participants are also expected to document the classmates' blog and comment in them.

I propose to fellow trainers a "smart mix" of theory of practise to keep participants interest and motivation in high levels. There are 2 scheduled sessions is a week, the first one explains theoretical elements and the other goes on to practise with the specific tool.

Each tutor is provided with powerpoint presentations with explanations, course notes including specific case studies, links and further video resources.

Sample activities include

1. discussion via comments in the course's blogs
2. reflection posts on new concepts & tools in their personal blog
3. collaborative "wiki-sms" exploration in class
4. using tools for a specific, freely choosen aim
   (e.g. on 4: finding saving and sharing a bookmark on delicious using the course tag)

Active partcipation is achieved through motivation. For example, I show how one average engineer managed with a blog of 2 blog posts to be no1 in google search and how he managed thanks to his blog to attract new customers & projects because of this open attitude.

Course assesment
Assesment is two-fold. As part of the TEE requirements I drafted a curriculum of questions for a formal examination at the end of the course leading to the certification of their abilities.
Questions are based of Blooms' revised taxonomy and include multiple choice, open question and case studies.
On the other hand the other, more realistic part of assessment is their individual work and participation in group activities around blog posts, usage of tools etc.
This will be emphasized in the upcoming online version of the course.

During the instructional design process I wanted to include sections on a) media literacy and b) online personal/professional branding. These could be offered in advanced version of the course.

My word of advice: Smart usage of web 2.0 tools can be very rewarding for professionals. So, engineers start to learn and earn! :)