A Plea for "Just-in-Time Learning"

‘Just in time learning’ caters to busy work environments and works best where there are constraints of time. The usual Professional Development programmes often require employees to pull out time for the same from out of their own busy schedules. An already overworked environment is not ideal for lengthy professional development sessions. Professional Development or P.D. as it is called is not different from the older terms of In-Service or Career-Development Training. The Department of Education New Delhi holds In-Service Programs for its Government and Government Aided School Teachers in the last week before the commencement of the summer vacations in India. Often teachers are given compensatory leaves for the days that they have spent in the In-Service Programme. I remember attending many such In-Service Programme as a Government Aided School teacher. The In-Service Programs set up by the SCERT/NCERT were termed YUVA SLP Programs. The focus of these In-Service Programs is better Life Skills, how to handle adolescents and adolescence related matters.

Just in Time Learning, however, provides more autonomy to the in-service teacher and it provides instant access to tailormade solutions to specific problems. It is like an On-Demand Resource that helps you out of sticky situations. At school, Just in Time Learning equips the educator with resources and tools to teach a unit. It is like a storehouse of information, instructions and tips and readymade plans that help the educator go about his or her tasks in a smooth and efficient manner. What makes Just in Time Learning more effective than traditional week-long in-service programs is that it is instantly accessible on most of our social networking sites and it provides the educator with instant access to resources that make life easier! Pinterest, one of the most convenient sites, provides ample Just in Time Learning Resources.

Schools and colleges today should focus more on empowering their teachers to access resources online rather than make them go through hours-long traditional Training Sessions. Training staff to embrace Just-In-Time Learning strategies will help them to keep abreast with the latest in the field. According to Bradenberg & Ellinger, 2003, p 311, “Just-in-time learning is an evolutionary response to the demands of a knowledge-driven and speed-oriented marketplace.” In times when there seems to be no time to spare for teachers, it makes sense to piggy-back a learning program that is minimally invasive and least disruptive in nature.

The advantages of Just in Time Learning far outweigh its disadvantages as such. For one thing, just in time learning offers instant solutions which hours long, week-long Professional Development sessions can’t. Often the solutions appear at the end of the session and by that time it is already too late! Take for example a teacher who is teaching transformation of sentences to students. The students find it difficult to differentiate between coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions. How then, does the teacher learn how a child thinks and thus create a lesson that is tailormade specifically for a group of students who study in a specific section? Would it be right for the teacher to wait for a professional development workshop on how to teach challenging portions of grammar?

Dovetailing Just in Time Learning Strategies with actual working conditions in school like taking classes, correcting answer-scripts and general supervisory duties might, in fact, enhance teacher performance and thereby students’ results. One of the reasons for the success of Just in time learning thereof would be that teachers would be able to focus on their teaching, remediation, evaluation and other roles without getting distracted by long hours of In-service programs. What makes hours long Professional Development sessions boring is that they are more distracting and slow acting. Often, attendees tend to zone out, ending up more confused than enlightened. Just in time learning skills however, seem to be a better bet because they provide instant solutions. In times when the talk is about machine learning, deep learning and predictive learning, such that is driven by Artificial Intelligence, would it not make better sense to go for smaller professional Development sessions that are more focussed on actual classroom requirements than on abstract philosophies of learning? What teachers need today is resources and tailormade solutions for specific problems. We need, therefore to focus on grass-root level challenges that teachers face in classes and not identify solutions for problems that do not exist!

A proliferation of internet-enabled devices like laptops, Tablets and even Smartphones has made it easier for teachers to learn on the go. Learning today can happen anywhere, it can take place inside the bus, the canteen, or even the playground. Learning on the go helps professionals access bite-sized information which is most relevant to their needs. Educationists would benefit a lot by learning new things on the go without really having to devote extra time to learn new things. While we tend to find our own tailormade solutions for our students, what one does not perhaps appreciate is that the same solution or lesson plan will not work for other sections. The way a science section will tackle note taking will be different from how a commerce section will tackle the same topic. In the interest of differential learning and for that effect tailormade learning, one needs to provide the autonomy to teachers to identify and narrow down what works best for them. To this effect, it is important to train teachers in the use of Just in time learning strategies so that they can research, identify, collaborate, and share strategies that work best in their classroom. A training in research skills, using social networking sites, creative polls, surveys, dabbling with virtual reality, experimenting with augmented reality, gaining access to databases online, having film resources on lessons taught in class would do more justice than the traditional In-service training programs. However, Just-in-time learning capabilities can only be effective when internet-enabled devices with very good internet connectivity are available! Poor internet bandwidth cannot be an option for progressive schools. The traditional library is gradually getting replaced by online libraries. This is because the information found online on different websites can be accessed faster than by reading books and moreover, information accessed online can be filed into categories more easily. Just-in-Time Learning is about equipping educators with skills for accessing knowledge and information online so that they can use the same effectively in the classroom!

This article is based on an article appearing on the 15^th of September, 2018 on SH!FT DISRUPTIVE ELEARNING. The link is given below:

https://www.shiftelearning.com/blog/just-in-time-learning