Start of Learning Toolbox pilots in Bau-ABC – Part Three: Technical issues, requests and ideas for further development
In my two previous posts I have blogged about pilot activities with Learning Toolbox (LTB) in the context of our EU-funded Learning Layers (LL) project. In the first post I reported of the Kick-off event in the training centre Bau-ABC (on 14.3.2016). In the second post I reported on our recent follow-up visit (5.4.2016) with emphasis on progress reports in the pioneering groups and on plans to get new groups and learning areas integrated into the piloting. With this final post I focus on technical issues, requests for improvements and on ideas for further development of the tool.
Technical issues
At the moment the WLAN provides rather limited opportunities for using LTB in Bau-ABC. Partly this is due to the weak infrastructure provided by Deutsche Telekom to the area of Rostrup. This issue has been taken up by Bau-ABC to get the services improved – given the nation-wide importance of their training. Given these limitations, the capacity of the WLAN is not ideal. Yet, the colleagues are trying to adjust their settings in such a way that the pilot groups could work with LTB without interruptions. This is subject to internal discussions in Bau-ABC.
Requests for improvements
As we see it, there will be some new trades that could join in the pilot and there is a chance to work with the transversal learning area ‘health and safety’ (Arbeitssicherheit und Gesundheitsschutz). This will increase the number of stacks and make the search processes more complicated. In general, the searches could be facilitated by using project titles, group numbers and domain-specific tags as keywords for search. However, if the apprentices are expected to type themselves correctly spelled terms, this will be a hurdle. For apprentices it would be practical to navigate from a menu of the main occupations to the ‘parent stacks’ (in that occupation) and then to recommended tags (this requires efforts from the LTB developers and from the trainers).
At the moment LTB doesn’t provide an online tutorial. This would be appreciated very much. (The ITB and Pont team took this issue as homework.)
The trainers had observed that the apprentices do not notice that they have got new messages if there is no alarm tone alerting them to the fact. This would be a major improvement.
Ideas for further development
The trainers in Bau-ABC are constantly observing the emergence of new apps in their trades. One of the newest newcomers is the BaustellenApp (www.baustellenapp.com) for the road-builders (Strassenbauer) and for the construction site managers in this trade. It is worth checking if this can be linked to LTB.
Also, there is an interesting development in the protection of hearing. The newest earmuffs are equipped with technologies that can pick wireless signals and convert them into audio messages. Thomas Weerts can give more information.
These were some of the issues were taken up in our latest discussions. As I see it, they give a picture of the constraints, practicalities and possibilities with the current pilots using the Learning Toolbox (LTB). We will continue the monitoring of the pilots and take further steps to engage more users in a short while.
More blogs to come …
