The Best Tech is Invisible Tech: Using ICT to Scale Technical Training in a Multicultural Context

• In Event: The human-machine interface: (Wait - which human? And which machine?) Exploring the dynamics of technology-driven instruction in developing world settings.

Proposal

Professional development skills training is a critical aspect of many jobs, particularly those with quickly evolving technical practice. Providing in-service training at scale is often assisted by instructional technology for direct instruction and tele-coaching. But does ICT-delivered training rival the quality delivered through an in-person cascade? In subject areas where the trainers need a high level of technical knowledge, such as with medical practice? Or when the training must cross cultural lines, while also attaining a high degree of cultural insight and nuanced application, such as with mental health counselling?

In partnership with Johns Hopkins University mental health clinicians and researchers, the Education Development Center is adapting their Common Elements Treatment Approach curriculum to a tech-supported model to investigate these questions. The tech-supported and live training cohorts will be compared over a four year, trans-diagnostic study involving lay mental health counsellors in rural Zambia. The tech cohort will use Stepping Stone (an offline learning platform that runs on smartphones) and blend it with Interactive Radio Instruction (an audio-driven learning methodology that scripts games and interactive exercise). This hybrid of platform and methodologies will deliver complex technical material in culturally contextualized packages to small learning groups.

There is high willingness for learning via technological methods in low/middle-income country (LMIC) settings (Garrido, 2016). Evidence demonstrates that video and audio-based instruction programs match the learning of face-to-face instruction in LMICs (Chandar, 2003; Mishra, 2005; Tripp, 1996; Lappia, 1989). When a well-designed, tech-driven training is implemented, it compensates for poor trainer skills by obviating considerable need for deep content knowledge, oral communication and time management skills, and an understanding of adult learning theory. This allows a tech-backed model to compensate for environments with low human capacity. They can also potentially lower long-term costs, increase the flexibility of scheduling, standardize high-fidelity training messages, provide contextually adapted learning content, and allow post-training reference to interactive materials in workplace settings. Research also suggests that tech systems can collect more detailed data about how trainees learn than can manual assessment (Lovett, 2008; Vendlinski, 2002).

However, tech tools have weaknesses that must be countered. MOOC dropout rates average 85% worldwide, and reasons for this are unclear. Technological tools frequently under deliver, especially when they are not designed in accordance with contextual factors such as user ambition and the social and cultural application of content (Toyama, 2015). Furthermore, technology often relies on cloud-based resources. Within Zambia, internet penetration rates are only 18.4%, and accounts for only 0.9% of traffic across Africa. Any technology solution must therefore run offline, deliver content that is adjusted to the cultural context, utilize pedagogy that invites individual interaction with the material, a social exchange around its utility, and opportunities for communal practice and group reflection upon new skills.

In short, the content must become so accessible, and the interface so intuitive, that the tech lies ‘invisible’ within the learning experience. In this paper we will outline the instructional design steps taken within the tech-supported training to achieve these goals.

Author

• Simon Richmond, Education Development Center (EDC)