Identifying Effective Pedagogical Approaches for Online Workplace Training: A case study of the South African wood products manufacturing sector

Abstract

Given the availability of environmentally-certified plantation forest resources, the forest products industry in South Africa offers a potential opportunity to address poverty and unemployment by increasing the domestic production of wood products such as furniture. The principal research question of the study was "Is constructivist teaching and learning an effective pedagogical approach for use in Web-based training for adult workplace learners in South Africa?" In addition, a number of secondary questions relating to corporate support for workplace e-learning, adequacy of computer infrastructure in South Africa, and computer literacy requirements were posed, though these are not discussed in this article.

This study investigated appropriate pedagogical techniques for workplace e-learning programs in the South African wood products (furniture) manufacturing sector. The study found that learners responded favourably to constructivist teaching approaches, such as asynchronous discussions, open-ended task-based activities, and assignments incorporating authentic, real-world examples. Learners viewed constructivist activities to be more useful than quizzes and traditional essay-based assignments, as they allowed new concepts to be learned in context and were perceived to promote deeper understanding of the subject matter. Nevertheless, they valued the inclusion of a blend of pedagogical approaches in the course design, as this enabled them to approach and analyze new concepts in an assortment of ways. Learners placed importance on regular interaction with other learners and course instructors, and were strongly in favour of including face-to-face components in Web-based courses.

Keywords : e-learning; pedagogy; constructivism; workplace learners; corporate training; learning activities

Introduction

South Africa has one of the best-developed economies and highest standards of living in Africa, and its Internet infrastructure - although poor compared to western industrialised nations - is well-established in African terms (World Bank, 2000). Despite these advantages, it shares many of the challenges that its economically less-fortunate neighbours experience. These include extreme poverty among a large percentage of the population and an unemployment rate that has recently been estimated at 41.2 per cent¹ (Streak & van der Westhuizen, 2004). Given the availability of environmentally-certified plantation forest resources, the forest products industry in South Africa offers a potential opportunity to address poverty and unemployment by increasing the domestic production of wood products such as furniture. A major barrier to achieving such growth, however, is a lack of appropriate skills; South Africa's Forest Industry Education and Training Authority states that "78 per cent of the forest industry workforce is either semi- or unskilled, and there are critical shortages of craft or skilled workers, technicians, and professional managers" (FIETA, 2006). New post-secondary and tertiary education programs are being developed in response to this problem, and e-learning is being considered as a delivery mode for industry training programs because it allows for flexible study schedules and eliminates the need for employees to leave the workplace and incur costly travel expenses. Two pilot e-learning courses on forestry for undergraduate learners have been offered by the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, and students responded favourably to the e-learning format (Längin, Lewark, & Ackerman, 2004). The results suggest that e-learning may also be an appropriate format for corporate workplace training, which has prompted the present study.

Using a qualitative approach, this research project investigated various pedagogical approaches in order to determine the most appropriate ways of conducting online workplace training in the South African wooden furniture sector. More specifically, it explored whether constructivist teaching and learning was an effective approach. The principal research question of the study was "Is constructivist teaching and learning an effective pedagogical approach for use in Web-based training for adult workplace learners in South Africa?" In addition, a number of secondary questions relating to corporate support for workplace e-learning, adequacy of computer infrastructure in South Africa, and computer literacy requirements were posed, though these are not discussed in this article.

Adult learners are likely to be relatively unfamiliar with constructivist methods of instruction - instead, they can be expected to be much more familiar with didactic teaching approaches which are prevalent in traditional school and university environments (Akerlind & Trevin, 1995). However, if the rationale for the constructivist approach is clearly explained, and learners are given sufficient opportunity to become comfortable with this style of instruction, it is believed that the approach can be both meaningful and effective.

Research Methods

A qualitative case study approach was selected for this study in order to obtain detailed information in a flexible, semi-structured interview format, and to allow for complex interactional variables that typically occur in learning environments to be taken into account (Cronbach, 1975). A quantitative study of learners enrolled in several courses was deemed inappropriate because it would not allow the researcher to frame problems as open-ended questions (Patton, 1990) or to probe issues which had not been anticipated during the questionnaire design process. Furthermore, the teaching and learning methods employed in the various courses would not be uniform and it would be impossible, in practical terms, to ensure that consistent approaches were being used across all courses. It was decided to adapt a specific e-learning course as the focus of the study so that the researcher was able to control and manipulate all of the key variables related to course design, including the course content, types of learning activities used, presentation of content, assessment criteria, student workload, and the timing of the course. In doing so, the researcher was able to ensure that a diverse range of teaching and learning activities were present for participants to experience and comment upon, so that the project would be as informative as possible.

The course selected for use as the research vehicle was an online, first-year undergraduate course, developed at the Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia. This course was intended to introduce students to what is known as the forest products value chain, beginning with the planting and management of forests, introducing the taxonomy of wood products, and then subsequently discussing all of the key manufacturing stages through to the global trade in forest products and the various issues and interrelationships along the supply chain. The course is delivered using the WebCT course management system.

A group of 20 South African workplace learners were selected to participate in the course, which was 14 weeks in duration. This sample size was chosen as it was manageable enough to allow for detailed, one-on-one interviews with each participant to be conducted before and after the course, yet still yielded a varied range of opinions and experiences. During the course, WebCT server logs, quiz scores, and grades for other assessed activities were monitored by the researcher² . Candidates for the study were identified with the help of regional human resources managers. Participants were required to have computer experience and to be working in occupations that were relevant to the subject matter of the course being offered. While human resources managers disseminated information about the course to suitable candidates, participation was voluntary. Consent forms were obtained from all of the participants, and the study was reviewed and approved by The University of British Columbia's Ethics Board.

Adaptation of the E-learning Course

To prepare for the study, the course content was substantially adapted and augmented so that it was germane to South African participants. In addition, a pedagogical redesign was undertaken with the aim of providing as wide a variety of teaching and learning activities as possible within the same course, while still maintaining a learning environment in which learners could progress comfortably. This involved changing the order of course modules, as some types of content lent themselves more readily to a particular pedagogical approach. It was decided that creating five discrete modules, each based upon a different learning theory and with no common elements, would confuse learners, and consequently, render the study of little use as a framework for evaluating appropriate pedagogies. For this reason, a more gradual, phased tactic was employed, in which a behaviourist approach in the first part of the course led toward a more constructivist, learner-centred approach in the latter half. The behaviourist approach was chosen for the early part of the course because this is the teaching style that is predominantly and traditionally employed in classroom instruction in schools and higher education. It was anticipated that familiarity with this style of instruction would build learner confidence in the early stages of the course. Module-by-module, learning activities were designed to progress smoothly toward a more constructivist approach, with more loosely defined tasks and greater freedom for the students to play a more direct role in their own learning. A constructivist approach - the focus of one of the key research questions of this study - was used in the later modules. Cognitivist principles guided the creation of optional self-test exercises used at various points in the course.

Table 1 describes the pedagogical approaches and learning activities employed in the course. The course did not represent a perfectly linear progression from a behavioural to a constructivist approach, since course content often lends itself to one pedagogical approach more so than another (Tennyson, 2002). A series of short quizzes were created within the WebCT electronic quiz tool, and these were integrated into the first two modules of the course, which were content-driven and involved highly-structured learning activities testing declarative and procedural knowledge. Online discussion questions were posed in Modules 4 and 5, and were designed to encourage learners to relate personal experiences and perspectives to the course content as a means of developing knowledge in context. Each module contained a major assignment - in the early modules, these focused on testing comprehension of information supplied in the online course text, while later modules promoted independent research and the social exchange of ideas to achieve authentic project-based tasks. Modules 1 and 3 also contained short optional exercises within the online text pages that encouraged learners to augment the information presented in the online text pages with their own relevant experiences.

Table 1. Pedagogical Approaches and Learning Activities employed in the Course

Technological Considerations

In choosing how information should be presented in the course, it was decided not to rely upon media or applications that required high bandwidth (video, animated simulations, audio) as it was foreseen that this would cause accessibility problems for some learners due to slow modem connections and poor bandwidth. Presentation of content was achieved through text-based HTML pages supported by photos, diagrams, and charts. Supplementary resources, such as third-party reports, were converted to the Adobe PDF document format and optimized such that the file size was as small as possible before posting them on the course website.

Selection of Study Participants

In selecting a group of learners to participate in the study, it was deemed important to minimize variation with respect to access to technology and corporate policies towards training. For this reason, all of the learners were selected from one large, diversified company. The company chosen was Steinhoff Africa Group Services Ltd., the largest employer in South Africa's wood products sector, with 32 manufacturing facilities dispersed throughout the country. The company actively encourages and sponsors training and further education for its management-track employees, and was interested in evaluating the potential use of e-learning as a training tool because of the challenge of providing standardized training across multiple sites and in many different countries (Geldenhuys, 2004).

Study participants were selected with the assistance of human resources managers within the company. Candidates were recruited on a voluntary basis, but were required to be working in roles in which the course subject matter would be relevant and beneficial, and to have access to and experience in using a computer. The participants were employed in eight manufacturing facilities located close to the three major urban centres of South Africa: Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban.

Data Collection

In June 2005, approximately three weeks before the course began, pre-course interviews, between one hour and 90 minutes in duration, were conducted with all 20 learners at their workplaces. The objective of the pre-course interviews was to obtain a detailed understanding of the learner group in terms of educational and career histories, personalities, experiences with computers and the Internet, and attitudes and beliefs about teaching and learning. Upon the completion of the e-learning course in October 2005, the researcher once again scheduled interviews of a similar length at each learner's workplace. The objective of the exit interviews was to obtain detailed qualitative data on the appropriateness of the various learning activities, assess the perceived level of difficulty of the various activities for learners, identify aspects that were particularly challenging or rewarding, and ascertain how well the various learning activities were perceived by the learners to have helped them to learn the materials. Eighteen learners were interviewed in person, and the remaining two, who had been unable to meet with the researcher due to illness and job-related commitments, were later interviewed by telephone. Six human resources and training managers, who between them were responsible for all eight of the factory locations involved in the study, were also interviewed at this time. WebCT server logs were also monitored during the course, but are not reported here as they did not yield useful data in terms of the effectiveness of pedagogical approaches.