On the job Training and promotion of skills through Open and Distance Learning- A strategy

Gangappa Kuruba, University of Botswana

Abstract
Among different modes of imparting education, Open and Distance Learning (ODL) has become the best option in the development of higher education. Most countries are witnessing new problems and multidimensional challenges such as changes in career paths and work situations, work force unwilling to disrupt their normal work to return to school etc. Although open and distance learning has proved efficient, provision of professional skills through open and distance learning methods in the form of short courses is proved essential to use ODL technologies and assist large number of people.

In Botswana, there is growing demand for short courses to upgrade/refresh the skills of work force. The paper analyses the significance of ODL for promotion of professional skills through short courses, review of ongoing professional development programmes and the need for a suitable strategy. The strategy will provide training avenues and thereby increasing base level skills of work force. This would in turn, lead to professional development of individuals and economic development of the country.

Among different modes of imparting education, Open and Distance Learning (ODL) has become the best option in the development of higher education. Most countries have experienced new problems and multidimensional challenges in the process of its implementation. One of the most challenging tasks was to assist organisations and its workforce to impart on the job skills without dislodging/disrupting from their normal employment.

Although open and distance learning has proved efficient in training people for formal qualifications, provision of professional skills through open and distance learning has not been given a serious thought as these skills are provided through face to face teaching/learning methods in the form of short courses. Since the face to face method could only manage a limited number of participants, it is essential to use ODL technologies and assist large number of people.

In most developing countries especially in Africa there is a shortage of professional skills needed in the economy. Botswana is not an exception as it depends on foreigners for scarce skills needed. There is a growing demand for short courses to upgrade/refresh the skills of work force. The rapid changes witnessed in information technologies should accommodate the needs of all clientele especially the working force.

In the context of offering short term courses in Botswana for skills promotion of the work force, the paper analyses the following:

1. Distance education scenario in Botswana
2. Significance of ODL for promotion of professional skills
3. Ongoing professional development programmes and their delivery by different institutions, and
4. Strategy for the provision of professional skills through ODL in Botswana.

While explaining the significance of ODL for promotion of skills and the need for strengthening professional development programmes, the focus of the paper is to analyse how the new technologies can be used to access this training in an unlimited way across all regions in the country. The proposed strategy has to provide training avenues and thereby increasing base level skills of people in different sectors of the economy. This would in turn, lead to professional development of individuals and economic development of the country.

DISTANCE EDUCATION SCENARIO IN BOTSWANA
The importance of distance education in Botswana was recognized as early as 1966. The need was felt looking at the general level of educational opportunities at primary, secondary and higher education levels.

In Botswana, distance education started at two levels, one as a consumer and another as a provider of distance education. The teachers in Botswana received training from Zimbabwe between 1960 and 1965 (Jones 1979). This facilitated to train about 48% untrained teachers in Botswana (Jones 1981). During 1977, the National Commission on Education reviewed the situation and recommended the necessary provisions to develop education in both formal and non-formal set up. Later in 1978, the Department of Non Formal Education (DNFE) was established in the Ministry of Education, and started functioning as a Distance Education Division (DED) of the DNFE. This Unit aimed at out-of-school education at Junior and Senior Secondary levels by distance mode. In 1986 Botswana became the provider of distance education through a project to upgrade 700 teachers (Jones 1979) which was considered as successful attempt and the same initiative led to the establishment of Botswana Extension College (BEC).

In 1994 the Institute of Health Sciences (HIS) started the distance education programme to upgrade the qualifications of nurses in the Ministry of Health (Moesi and Mmolawa 1998). At the same time, the University of Botswana has also involved in distance education through its Institute of Adult Education (IAE). Although IAE was divided into Department of Adult Education and Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) formally in 1991, the CCE became active in programming since 1994. Within CCE, Distance Education Unit (DEU) was established with the responsibility of developing distance education programmes at tertiary level.

The government of Botswana in 1999 established Botswana College of Distance and Open and Learning (BOCODOL) to take care of pre-tertiary education in the country through distance mode. At the moment the DEU of the University of Botswana and the BOCODOL are working hand in hand in the development of distance education in the country. But the aforesaid institutions have only targeted towards development of formal education and not much has happened in the area of development of short term courses to impart on the job skills which is essential to reduce the government exchequer on hiring skills from other countries by paying higher emoluments. Although some institutions in Botswana have been running these short term courses on a full time basis by taking work force out of the job, it is not meeting the growing demand for these skills. Hence there is need to develop the programmes by using different ODL technologies which will assist masses and yield expected results.

SIGNIFICANCE OF ODL FOR PROFESSIONAL SKILLS PROMOTION
The ODL has been accepted as a viable, cost effective and flexible mode of imparting education across the globe. This approach has been very much successful in the formal sector. With regard to promotion of soft skills to the working force, some institutions in Botswana started offering short courses on a regular basis. In fact these courses have been helping the nation in promoting on the job skills to a very limited number of clientele. As it was illustrated earlier, not enough work has been done in the area of providing soft skills through ODL. It is important that Open and distance education institutions have to increase their access to professional skills for a larger segment of population through multi-media instructional system. At preset there are few institutions that are running the short training programmes in the formal way. In their mission to reach out to the masses, the institutions have to start introducing different technology in the delivery process to make the learners comfortable and to receive education at a convenient time and place as dictated by the learner. Hence the role of ODL technologies in the delivery process is imminent and thus become economical, flexible and user friendly to its clientele. .

With the advent and advancement in communication technology, the offering of short courses should be treated as a priority to the Government in conserving its resources. A variety of teaching technologies have emerged in ODL. Teaching through Radio, Audio and video are considered as old technologies where as video conferencing and computer teaching is high tech/new modes (A.W Bates 1995). The new technology enables the learners to do courses offered from any part of the world with out moving out from their homes.

Since the demand for ODL to offer short courses is seen clearly, the concerned institutions should adopt different modes of delivery starting from print manuals to the high tech video conferencing and on-line training . The modes of delivery have to be selected depending on the nature of programme and its target group not only to compete with one another but also to become more learner centred.

In the context of Botswana, the provision of professional skills is mainly done by some parastatal and private organizations. The question is how to offer them on a large scale and assist all groups of people without any discrimination by way of rural/urban population as these skills are required by every one to earn their livelihood. Most of the requirement is seen in working groups and also those who could not attend to formal system due to heavy cost, distance, time and age factors. Since the country’s population is wide spread geographically, the significance of ODL as a mode of delivery is important. Further, most of the clientele would prefer to acquire these skills at their own pace, time, location, etc. It was observed that majority of learners who have been taking these courses form different organizations are from working force. And the indications coming from rural advisory committees suggest that the people need these skills for self employment and informal sector employment purposes.
The Government is also committed to increase budget for training manpower as long as it creates skilled human capital in the country and reduces the cost of hiring skills from other advanced countries. Since the learners are spread over different geographical locations, the video conferencing technology will help to promote cost effective and quality education with easy understanding signals.

ONGOING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES IN BOTSWANA
At present there are quite a few institutions that offer professional training programmes in Botswana. As the demand for these programmes has been on increasing trend, some private institutions have also started offering these courses. The institutions that offer professional training programmes are:

1. Centre for Continuing Education, University of Botswana
2. Botswana National Productivity Centre
3. Institute of Development Management
4. ILO project -Business skills programmes
5. In-service training programmes by respective organisations

The range and frequency of the programmes vary between these institutions depending on their resource capacity . Almost all institutions use a similar mode of instruction in the training programmes i.e. face to face instruction. These institutions were unable to cope with the demand that comes from employers’ of different organizations. Hence need to develop a new strategy to meet the increasing demand.

The programmes that are generally run by the above institutions are:

1. Customer Care and Professional Excellence
2. Dial-a-Smile(for Receptionists)
3. Training of Trainers
4. Supervisory Skills
5. Communication Skills
6. Occupational Health and safety
7. Mentorship
8. Time Management
9. Office Management

In addition, some institutions go into specialized areas and design tailor made courses on specific requests of clientele.
The professional training programmes are in good demand as most employers are looking for improved productivity by sponsoring their employees for these short courses. These courses are aimed at refreshing the skills and to impart new skills. The Table-1 shows the demand for some of the above courses that are run by Centre for Continuing Education through its Extra Mural Unit. Although the courses were offered for registration in various centres in Botswana, the programmes were run only in Gaborone Centre due to lack of physical and human resources. If these programmes are advertised and offered, there will be enormous demand for the same through the country.

Table-1: Number of participants in CCE’s Professional skills programmes

Source: Extra Mural Unit, CCE records

A similar number or even more participants were trained by other institutions during the period and the data for other individual organizations and private institutions is not available.

As already experienced and proved, the only way to cope with the demand and train a huge number of people is by way of using one of the technologies of ODL. In the process it was discovered that the concept of video conferencing (VCf)is a viable option to offer training programmes across the country at the same time with out compromising the quality of delivery.

VIABLE TECHNOLOGY FOR THE PROVISION OF PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
The viability of the available or future innovations will be judged against the cost of technology, accessibility, flexibility of usage, suitability to the situation and to the intended purpose, sustainability and finally the adoptability by the learners and also by the distance education practitioners.
In the light of experiences with the available programmes, both from the angle of practitioners and learners, the video-conferencing(VCf) technology is suggested to be a viable and sustainable media of instruction for promoting professional skills. The VCf mode suggested here has direct relevance in increasing access to professional skills. The new technology will assist to overcome the barriers of time and in built constraints of conventional systems.

PROVISION OF PROFESSIONAL SKILLS THROUGH ODL - A STRATEGY
Although distance education programme is not new to Botswana, the use of new technology is a recent phenomenon. As such the role of technology in the delivery of distance education programmes is limited. In the process of identifying suitable mode of technology for the provision of professional skills, the video conferencing method is proposed as a viable one. In this context, centre for continuing education and the University of Botswana has got resources to meet the demand for the provision of soft skills to large numbers through its four sites using video- conferencing technology.

Video-Conferencing (VCf)
This facility at the moment is available with the CCE and Educational Technology department. The equipment is installed through Education Democracy and Development Initiative (EDDI) project sponsored by USA. The facility is functional and the staff is also being trained on how to use the system and soon the facility will be utilized for running short courses.

This facility will be extended to other places to avail flexible access unlike face to face method. And the VCf facility would benefit masses and the number of people with these skills in the country will increase in a short period. Of course, the need for these skills will be there for ever as everyone wants to upgrade/refresh their skills now and then to sustain the competition. Since the VCf facility will be available at all four sites(CCE,Edu.Tech,Francistown and Maun) a viable, economical and integrated services could be provided in different places with out taking people from out of work.

Table-2 Projected Output (trained personnel)

The table-2 indicates the cumulative figures for all short courses.It is projected to train over 500 people during the year 2010with these soft skills in all programmes put together. Further, this number will still increase when new programmes are developed and delivered. All these programmes will be delivered through video- conferencing. Since the equipment is already in place in all the sites, the programmes will start as soon as possible. The provision of Professional skills through VCf method will result in increased productivity and national economic growth.

Way forward

Our experiences show that we can only train 20-25 participants at a time with face to face mode of delivery. Taking advantage of 4 sites of video- conferencing, 80 participants could be trained at the same time in a particular programme on all sites. This reduces unnecessary costs and cheaper to participants as the overheads and direct tutor costs will be reduced.
In distance education, the use of appropriate technology will make the difference in providing effective communication to the learners. With the suitable technology in place, the distance education will become a high quality education in order to overcome the resource constraints. In the present context, the VCf method for the provision of on the job skills will emerge as one of economical method.

The demand for these courses has been increasing as the employers needed these skills to their employees which results in increased productivity. In the present day competitive market, especially in private sector, on the job skills are required to maximize productivity and thereby increase their returns. Hence, employers were never hesitant to spend on training. Further, provision of on the job skills to the employees saves on hiring full time staff for higher emoluments by replacing existing staff for specified periods.
As most organizations require these skills, the institutions in Botswana especially the Centre for Continuing Education of the University of Botswana was unable to cope with the demands through its face-to-face method. In this connection, it is proposed to offer these skills through VCf method which would be accessed by many people at the same time in different parts of the country.

References

1. Bates, A.W. (Tony) (1995), Technology, Open Learning and Distance Education. Routledge, London.
2. Gangappa, K (2003),”Distance education through Collaboration-A Case of Botswana,” The OSAC journal of Open Schooling Vol-III:No.-1, National Institute of Open Schooling, New-Delhi, India
3. Gangappa, K and Chandraiah, E (2004),”Responses of Learners to Technology-Based Learning in ODL: A Case study of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open university,” Indian Journal of Open Learning, IGNOU, New-Delhi, Vol-13, No.-1.
4. Madhavan, K. and Manoj R. (2001), Role of Distance Education in Developing Countries, the Indian Publications, Ambala Cantt., India.
5. National Development Plans, Government of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana
6. Rastogi Satish, (1998-Ed) Educational Technology for Distance Education, Rawat Publications, New Delhi, India.
   

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