M-HOUSE course: part 1

Every course needs to be built on Learning Outcomes but where do these LOs come from?

In the M-HOUSE project an 8 module course was built on the basis of 8 Key learning Situations (KLS), an approach which had been successfully used to build the UniKey course aimed at university students. In the case of M-HOUSE we would be targeting a group of people who maybe had less confidence in their skills and where it was critically important to demonstrate to them the crossover possibilities of the skills they had gained in running a household to also run a small business.

By consulting the literature both on entrepreneurship and household activity we came up with an initial list of 11 possible Key Learning Situations as follows.

1: Guest visit → marketing
2: Pursuing one’s dream → a common vision
3: Organisation of an event → organisation skills
4: Effective purchase → effective use of resources
5: Starting/founding a household → project management
6: Lack of funds → dealing with financial restrictions
7: Using ICT in a household → technical skills
8: Keeping and improving standards in daily life → quality management
9: Environmental friendly interior decor – make a difference → social responsibility
10: Everyday life – solve conflicts → conflict management in a professional context
11: Future plan/business idea → planning

We then did an extensive survey across Europe, consulting relevant stakeholders, to discover which of the 11 they considered to be the most relevant. This led us to the following 7.

• Guest visit
• Pursuing one’s dream
• Organisation of an event
• Effective purchase
• Starting/founding a household
• Lack of funds
• Everyday life – solve conflicts
• Future plan/business idea

Best practice?

A project partner with little experience of designing online learning asked me if using Key learning Situations was the only or best way to design an online learning course. My reply was that using KLSs as a starting point works well in some contexts but not all. In this situation where we want to expose a close connection between everyday tasks and tasks that could be expected in the running of a business, it works very well.

Coda

In the latest project meeting we met with one of our Polish Quality Board members who told us that in her opinion we had missed out the most important KLS which is about how to get customers? While agreeing that this is a critical process in business I had difficulty in visualising what the equivalent household situation would be? Selling a house or a car maybe? Can you think of any others?