1. Co-Construction of Knowledge Through
5th
Engagement Between Students and
Teachers In an Industrial Training
Programme.
Anniversary By: Olufemi Olubodun
Book
Creative Commons License: CC BY
Project
Author contact: ojolubodun@cmul.edu.ng
Author Biography: I teach dental lab technology
and education courses such as online facilitation,
course development etc. I design courses for online environment using learning
management systems like Fronter, Moodle etc. I am driven by the amazing possibilities
21st century technology provides for exploring and mitigating the present day
challenges in education and day to day social life. I am an alumnus of University of
Cape Town, South Africa, Agder University College Norway, Lagos State University Ojo
Lagos Nigeria, United Nations University’s Global Virtual University Japan and I hold
postgraduate degrees in the following areas: Online tutoring, Course development,
ICTS in education, and Educational Technology. I am an Instructor at the University of
Lagos, Lagos. Nigeria. Research interest includes the use of internet tools and media
for online vocational education training, curriculum development, and instructional
design for vocational education training.
Activity Summary
This paper examined digital and paper logbooks and found out that digital logbook presents more
opportunities for students to represent their learning experiences during industrial training programme
than paper logbook. This was done by searching the Internet for relevant examples and by looking
at paper logbooks from schools in Nigeria running dental technology courses and from other parts of
the world. Industrial training is an out of the school training that could also be described as internship,
workplace training, housemanship and community immersion etc. The experiences of dental
technology students while on industrial training at our dental lab were also examined. This paper
proposes digital log book (using a combination of blog and twitter) as a better alternative to the usual
paper format logbook.
Class or subject area: Technical and Vocational Education Training
Grade level(s): Post Secondary
Specific learning objectives:
• To understand industrial training and the use of paper and digital logbooks.
• To understand types of logbook and their uses
• To present a novel digital logbook.

2. Introduction
Co-construction of knowledge in an industrial training setting involves the students and industry
supervisors. This presents opportunities for teachers and students to interact more productively
through the use of tools and equipments at workplace. Industrial training helps connect school
knowledge with real life experiences in the industry. Industry in this context could mean a
manufacturing plant, a laboratory, surgical theatre, medical and dental clinic, engineering workshop
etc. The use of tools, equipment, and materials for training, production and supervision is common
in industrial training. However, the focus of this paper is to examine the use of logbook to connect
school knowledge with real life experiences during industrial training. Industrial training provides a
learner the opportunities of connecting the knowledge of things taught in the school with real life
experiences and hence develop the needed competences for a better career future.
Objectives
1. To understand industrial training and the use of paper and digital logbooks.
2. To understand types of logbook and their uses
3. To present a novel digital logbook.
Industrial Training Experience and the Use of Logbook for Supervision.
Industrial training especially those that demand the development of skills require the involvement
of teachers and their students in knowledge and experiences sharing. Instructors perform practical
sessions on the fields or at work places in order to impact student learning experiences.
In Nigeria we called our industrial training for vocational education Student Industrial Work
Experience Scheme (SIWES), it is for the development of technical skills so as to make students
job-ready and to develop manual dexterities that will make them function in their chosen field.
Usually, courses like engineering, dentistry and medicine, and some artisans’ training employ
industrial training method to let students find the connection between school knowledge and field
experiences from more experienced people who are on the field such as surgeons, technologists,
technicians, etc. Industrial training places could be in the hospitals’ surgical theatre, engineering
workshop, laboratories, industrial plants etc-these are places where ideas and innovations met and
are incubated and bred by the students and their teachers through diverse learning activities, by
multi-tasking and multidimensional interactions using multimedia facilities. It is a place where mentor/
mentee relationship is fathomed. This is essential for many a reason among which is to bridge the
gaps between school theories and on the field practical knowledge that requires interaction with tools,
techniques and materials.
The normal practice is usually to expose students to practical know-how as the students watch
while techniques are performed by field supervisors. Subsequently, when the supervisor is satisfied
for example that manual dexterity in the handling of tools and performance of technique have been
established students are allowed to carry out procedure which usually progresses from simple to
complex levels. This is exactly what we do with dental technologists on Internship and on SIWES
programmes at the dental laboratory jointly run by the Lagos University teaching hospital and the
college of medicine of the University of Lagos Nigeria. I believe this is what obtains globally. Although
this is usually an unstructured training programme as there are no outlined course contents and
curriculum available to guide the SIWES programme. However, on a daily basis as schedules of
work are made which are primarily dictated by the tasks of the day derived from job requisition

3. from the dental clinic, students are expected to state in their logbook various activities performed
and experiences gained while watching what others (supervisors) are doing or while carrying out
tasks assigned to group or individuals. Tasks of the day, in the case of undergraduate dental
technology students are defined in the job requisition form from the dental clinic which presented
treatment cases of diverse simplicities and complexities. This includes fabrication of different dental
prostheses for correction of oral maladies. Students learn from these tasks and grow in experiences
as they perform tasks assigned to them (under watchful supervision) or through demonstration by
a more knowledgeable person. Students take time to recall their experiences and document them
appropriately in their logbook but only by writing and drawing as it is traditional with paper format
logbook but unlike blog+twitter digital logbook which allows them to take a picture or record a video
and audio of their learning experiences and upload in their blogs and tweet them to their teachers
back in the school, and friends and supervisors on the field who may be interested and may later
look at them and subsequently make comment and may also re-share. Contents of a digital logbook
could therefore be assessed progressively and that means progressive assessment student’s
skill development. In a paper logbook students are limited to representing details of activities and
experiences by writing and drawing. This limitation does not allow students to give more details as in
video and audio all of which are possible with digital logbook (blog+twitter) that is being proposed in
this paper.
There are gaps in that dental technology students keep logbook and do not share with fellow
students. This is not supposed to be so as industrial training should encourage participative learning.
They do this in order to be seen to have done better in keeping records of daily activities in the dental
lab than fellow students. I also observed that those that share what they have at all do so with close
friends only while some are just non-chalant about diligent record keeping. As good as it is to keep
record of activities in a book format it restrict access by supervisors back in the school until the end
of the programme but it would have provided better opportunities for impacting students’ learning
if digitised. It would have been better if teachers back in the school could have access to student
logbook while on the field so that they could participate in the whole process by adding value to the
experiences student may be having on the field. Digital logbook helps supervisor detect failure by
students to make daily entry and to ‘punish’ carelessness.
One critical issue is that in most cases paper logbook records are not subjected to critical review that
involves the teacher and the students at the end of the programmme and it is also in doubt if they
are ever used to gauge students’ level of skill development or if they ever contributed to the overall
assessment of students’ performance. A digital logbook will however give teachers the opportunity to
have timely access to students’ performance and provide feedback as soon as possible as there will
be no hiding places for negligence.
There are a number of limitations with paper logbook which only allows text and diagram entries, but
entries could be enriched with video, audio, and pictures if digitized. These categories of resources
(video, audio, and pictures) could not be kept in a book format logbook as we have today. I also do
think that supervision is limited to direct industry supervisors rather than encourage inter departmental
contribution to knowledge which could be achieved if a digital logbook is used.
I therefore reasoned that a blog and twitter will be useful in this situation. Although blog has been
put into diverse uses in education and training not any from my searches has been mentioned in the

4. use of it as logbook for recording of practical oriented training during industrial training or internship.
Undergraduate dental students in our college keep logbook and most often for a little carelessness
or for tight schedules of lectures and clinical activities they are in tatters. A digital log book will offer
answers to many bugging questions like this on the best ways field experiences are constructed,
incubated, bred, kept and shared. For instance a student will readily keep a photograph picture of
clinical activities in a digital log book or a dental technologist could upload a lab procedure rather
than to only describe it in a paper logbook. This will encourage co-construction of knowledge during
student-student and student-instructor interaction. This will make huge contributions to the overall
experiences of students and make supervision continuous and in-dept.
How should this digital logbook idea work?
Obviously it is not clear in the literatures if a blog has been used in combination with twitter as
a digital logbook but a lot has been written on the use of blog for other educational purposes as
personal diaries, classwork record and for other forms of collaboration. This blog+twitter digital
logbook idea should work with any blog account for which free account could be obtained from any
of the websites that offer free account for a user e.g. Google blogger and edublogs. Google blogger
is recommended as a twitter tab is readily available below every post for ease of access by users to
disseminate information through his network. Network could be limited to the school community which
could be done in the blogger privacy settings. Although the same is available with other blogs but
Google blogger is unique in that for every post there is a web link that could easily be shared across
many networks and other networking sites like Google+ that has a record of millions of users across
the globe. Google blogger provides enough space for users free of charge.
A blog could be accessible through a phone or hand-held devices like iPhone and other computer
tablets to enable students share and work on the go and enjoy the benefit and convenience of
working at spare time thereby converting spare time to gainful use. Diverse forms of multimedia
resources could be made with phones these days and entries could be made into a blog with them
as well. Individual student should open his blog account; give it a suitable title with the college
programme title and off he goes with keeping record of his activities while on an industrial training
programme and this could be exported to school website and be kept for life. Video, audio, and
textual files where necessary could easily be uploaded with a phone connected to the Internet.
Phones are very cheap these days and cheap ones have camera and they are mostly Internet ready
as well. Therefore, there is little to worry about except:
• Limited Internet access in some places
• Poor signals that may impede speedy upload of files
• In poor countries phone could still be an extra cost that parent may find to be a burden
• Power problem is an issue as electricity is not available every time for students to power their
phones and devices.
• In poor countries as well as developed countries not everyone could manipulate phones to the
extent that is required to access and work with a blog. Students need extra skills to be able to use
blog aside from the burden of class work. But these are skills which when developed help students
to fit quickly in the twenty first century world of works.
Why should twitter be included in this exercise?
A tweet is a short message that includes web links and other media through which a student could
disseminate quick information to his network. So as soon as an information is uploaded in his digital

5. logbook he could add a few words about the upload and share it in his network. So a twitter provides
several opportunities among which are quick share of information that could direct a receiver to a
destination (in this case digital logbook) where more detailed information could be obtained. This
indeed could be done through other social media but it will be better to take the advantage of the
massive patronage and ease of information dissemination that twitter users enjoy.
Summary
A combination of blog and twitter has been suggested for use as digital logbook as against the
popular book format which has a number of limitations earlier highlighted in this paper. This is a novel
idea which I wish to use in the coming year as our University (University of Lagos, Lagos Nigeria)
enters a new academic session in October 2012. However, I welcome news about the successful use
of it in practical terms from around the world.
Suggestions for research
1. What is the contributions digital logbook could make to the improvement of student learning
experiences.
2. What contributions does digital logbook make to creation of open resources?
3. In what ways does the use of digital logbook contribute to student –student and student-teacher
collaboration and learning?
4. Comparative studies on digital and paper logbook.
Bibliography
1. www.voced.edu.au
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_logbook
3. http://elearningeuropa.info/en/blogs/blog-twitter-digital-logbook
4. www.Google.com
5. http://dentaltechnigeria.blogspot.com/2011/10/improvised-method-for-acrylic-denture.html#links
6. www.twitter.com
7. http://www.elogbook.net/
8. http://www.fke.utm.my/li/document/LI_Scheme.pdf
9. http://www.nsche.org.ng/cms/publications_cms/uploads/lecture_nsche_engr_mafe.pdf
10. http://www.utar.edu.my/fes/file/Industrial%20Training%20Manual.pdf
11. http://www.gmat.unsw.edu.au/currentstudents/general/example_it_report.pdf
12. http://www.gmat.unsw.edu.au/currentstudents/general/IndustrialTraining%20Student%20.pdf
13. http://www.industrial-training.net/
14. http://www.itclearning.com/