5 years on

I’ve been in my current post over 5 years now and in a recent office move I found notes from a series of meetings from when I first started. After the previous VLE officer moved on, two e-learning support officers were employed, with one of the roles to expand the use of technology to support and enhance learning and teaching from a pedagogical rather than technology perspective. When I arrived, I discovered that the prevailing view in the department was that e-learning and the VLE were one and the same thing and anything outside that definition was not what would be happening here! One of us took on the VLE support role and the other one, me, was left in a kind of limbo. The VLE support didn’t require two people, even when training was included. So there I was, fresh off my masters, in a new city, an interesting sounding new job and ready to go but nothing to do. However, I’m not put off that easily. With the help of a keen and very supportive academic, I searched around for people with an interest in e-learning (I’m going to use e-learning as a term because I can’t be bothered to keep typing "technology to support and enhance learning and teaching" ) and asked if they would be happy to meet and share their thoughts. My aim was not to tell them what I wanted to do but just to listen and find out what was going on. I managed to find 10 people who were willing to give up some of their time. The notes I found have each person's comments divided into three categories - positive comments, negative comments and areas to explore. I'm not sure why I chose those categories but it obviously seemed like a good idea at the time.

So what did they say?

The positive

"It has changed out of lecture teaching. It's more efficient - I do different things."
"Initially it was time consuming but later not so bad."
"I use the VLE to deliver lecture notes, PowerPoint slides, spreadsheets for modelling and links to web resources."
"Some lecturing staff are very keen"
"The school has a group of believers."
"It's useful for seminar groups."
"Useful for links to websites."
"Nearly all lectures in my school use the VLE to some extent."
"It's useful for visually-impaired students who can print off in braille beforehand."
"I think many lecturers would be keen to move to the next level."

The Negative

"The VLE interface can be clunky."
"The VLE interface can be clunky." (No i didn't type this twice by mistake)
"Classes are too big for e-learning."
"Some lectures have problems such as the time it takes, not wanting to learn new skills, thinking 'it's not for me' and worrying that student won't come to lectures."
"Many lecturers are very anti the VLE."
"At the moment it's all about the tools in the VLE and not what the benefits of e-learning are."
"e-learning at the University is all just the VLE!"
"Not keen on the VLE. I don't see the point!"

The areas to explore

Virtual classrooms, podcasts and video for tasters of upcoming lectures
Virtual whiteboards
Interactive whiteboards
Blogs and wikis.
Collaborative social spaces for networking
More research into the effectiveness of e-learning
The University to run an MSc in e-Learning
JISC Plagiarism tool
As students have little contact with tutors during projects, explore the use of blogs and wikis to improve interaction.
Tools to ease content creation
Online surveys for module evaluation.
Use of audio to support students with accessibility issues
Would like to know more about what e-learning is.
Examples of good practice
Collaborative work
The use of video
Tools for content creation
More training
Want to provide something different for in and out of lecture time. Want to encourage students to think.
Keen to explore tools for formative assessment.
A question of knowing what's available
More flexible training schedule - one-to-one, department wide etc
Content creation tools
JISC plagiarism tool
Collaborative e-learning
Problem based learning
Scenarios
Easier content creation
Collaboration with outside partners such as the NHS
Use of streaming video in class - through the VLE?
Move beyond document store use of VLE
Learning objects to supplement class teaching
More advanced use of e-learning

So what does it all I mean? I'm not sure really. I'll take some time to think about this - about what's changed over the last 5 years, what's hasn't changed, what's new, what's worked and what hasn't - and return to it in another post.

Sustainable e-learning?

Last week I was at the 8th International JTEFS/BBCC Conference "Sustainable Development. Culture. Education at UNESCO in Paris. The picture is the view fron the UNESC canteen :-) I presented in the Education for Sustainable Development and E-learning strand, which looked at what are the challenges of e-learning/blended learning for higher education institutions? E-learning as the issue of non-formal education and E-learning and communication. My presentation was entitled "The Digital Natives Meme. Why context is more important than technology with the following abstract -

"Rising student numbers, greater funding pressure and an increasing consumerisation of education pose dilemmas for educators. Additionally, we are told that technology is going to transform education; that a new breed of young people, who have not known a world without pervasive electronic technology, are entering education; that this will lead to a paradigm shift and those unable or unwilling to make the change will be swept away. However, recent research shows this may not be the case. Using examples from an ongoing study of university students' experiences of using technology, this paper argues that a debate that is framed by thoughts of an army of homogeneous digital natives will produce technology 'solutions' that are unsustainable. It will go on to argue that a more context based approach towards the use of technology is needed in order to provide sustainable solutions to the issues facing educators in the 21st century."

The Digital Natives Meme. Why context is more important than technology

View more presentations from Chris Hall.

Overall the conference was pretty good with a number of excellent presentations from Dr Peter Purg(Slovenia),Dr Richard R. Jurin(USA) and Dr Mark Mifsud (Malta)

Is teaching online different?

So, my final session with the MA ICT in EFL class and my final presentation of my stay here. They are a very nice group of students and it has been a pleasure to work with them, albeit briefly. This session was about what similarities and differences there may be between teaching online and teaching in a more traditional classroom situation.

MA ICT for EFL - Is teaching online different

View more presentations from Chris Hall.

It was an interesting session but I'm not sure if I 'performed' as well as the week before. I felt I got pretty waffley in the second half of the lecture when talking about blogging. We some very interesting discussions though, particularly towards the end when there was quite a debate on what constitutes a 'real' conversation. One student proposed that she liked the idea of using blogs for teaching and learning writing in English, as the 'conversation' between the blogger and those making comments would be more 'real' than in a rather more 'artificial' traditional writing exercise. This sparked another student who felt that any such 'conversation' could not be real in the way that a face-to-face conversation is. The debate flowed back and forth and interestingly mirrored some of the conversations the IFA staff had had about what it means to meet. All very interesting stuff that I left Prof Sobkowiak to deal with later in the course :-)

Excellence in Learning and Teaching?

Tuesday saw the first Swansea University Excellence in Learning & Teaching Conference - part of a post RAE plan to raise the profile and status of learning & teaching. I only got to attend half the conference as I was chairing the sessions in one of the breakout rooms. Although it wasn't a technology enhanced learning conference, over half of the presentations involved the use of technology in learning and teaching. What I particularly liked was that, in the presentations I saw at least, it was about the teaching and learning use technology was put to not the technology itself. Technology Last - yay!

Reflective learning seemed to be an underlying theme of the conference and I really like Michele Raithby's idea of reflection as a pensieve.

"The Pensieve is an object used to review memories. It has the appearance of a shallow stone basin, into which are carved runes and strange symbols. It is filled with a silvery substance that appears to be a cloud-like liquid/gas; the collected memories of people who have siphoned their recollections into it. Memories can then be viewed from a third-person point of view. "
http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Pensieve

Could be a useful analogy for the PDP work here.

Overall a pretty successful day - the sun was even shining :-)