Global Learning Partners is poised to launch into cyberspace with our first online course. I know, I know, we’re a bit behind the curve when it comes to online learning but we’ve got our reasons. Because we’re so focused on learning through dialogue, we’ve been...
Digital Training – Inevitable yet Inferior? (Part I of V)
One of my great passions in life is using adult education theory to create learning-centered training – working out how learners can best learn so they then go on to flourish. A significant addition to this in recent years is digital education, to which there...
Addressing the Uniqueness’s of Learners – Does Digital Really Help? (Part II of V)
I could sense around me that I was losing my learners. It was during an early experience of me training them to use software to help with language learning. But these learners had very different levels of experience of using software and while I was helping some who...
Digital Training – Enabling Better Discussion? (Part III of V)
One participant came to speak to me about how the training session had been for her. At this early stage as a trainer, I had thought it had been good, but I listened. I had engaged participants with the content and had facilitated good discussion, either in small...
The Power of Peer Review and Implications for Digital Learning (Part IV of V)
There were many challenges throughout my course. Electricity was intermittent. English, the language of communication, had varying levels of understanding among participants. But the biggest challenge was the cultural shift to a dialogue approach to learning; a big...
Digital Learning in a Community of Practice (Part V of V)
Silence. Total silence. It was after one of the highlights for me of the Digital Education Masters program through The University of Edinburgh. Two world experts in their field had been discussing their topic together in a Skype class, with the rest of us listening in...
Technology Tools to Support Online Learning
According to Clark (2012), there has been “more pedagogic change in the last 10 years than the last 1000 years and it is all driven by technology innovations.” The online learning space continues to grow in numbers, content, technological advancements and...
Rethinking Our Online Meetings
Much has changed since pre-COVID. And in my view, our monthly all-staff meetings are better now that everyone is on a separate screen.
Jamming with Jamboard, a Virtual Whiteboard
If you have ever attended an International Budget Partnership (IBP) in-person training, chances are you scribbled some thoughts on tiny sticky notes and stuck them on flip charts around the room. We at IBP love our flip charts, color markers and sticky notes. We haul...
Breakout Rooms to Connect
Breakout groups – where small groups talk within the larger group – can help all learners participate more fully, engage with each other, and connect to the content in a deeper way.
Zoom Breakouts: Love ’em or Leave ’em?
As we reviewed the assessments coming in after the pilot of a newly developed training course, two words stood out: breakout rooms. Half of our team expected the feedback on these virtual discussion groups to be negative, the other wondered why almost every...
Teaching in Closed Societies
I work in a closed society. My colleagues do as well. In fact, we are all from the country in which we work and are passionate about what we do.