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.

Do we need teachers in Higher Education?

Interesting article by Paul Ramsden on the THE website about how "Producing graduates who are critical thinkers requires teachers who can bring scholarship and leadership to the academy."

As with many others, I have long thought that teaching is unbelievably undervalued and often poorly done in higher education. He argues in that although Student Satisfaction is now all the rage in the UK, universities are often barking up the wrong tree. How much marketing literature shows happy, smiling students studying on the beach and then walking off into the sunset with a good degree and a dream graduate job? The pressure to produce more happy students with a 2:1 misses what I think is fundamental about higher education. We could make students happy by handing out free beer at lectures, putting soft porn on the VLE and ensuring all students get a 2:1 but I'm not sure that would fulfill the mission of a University. We can often get dangerously close to thinking of students as customers to be serviced. However, when I go to a restaurant I'm not asked to think about the meal I'm about to eat. I don't have to go away and research the ingredients. I don't have to read about the great chefs who have cooked this meal in the past. I don't have to explore the cultural significance of the meal. I don't have to understand how to cook the meal and I'm not then asked to cook it myself, perhaps with my own individual take on the recipe. In a restaurant you are a customer, as student you are not a customer, more a partner in you own (and ideally the university's) development. As Ramsden argues, “Teaching in higher education should never fool students into thinking there is an easy path to success. Rather, it should make the hardest road enjoyable to follow by communicating complex ideas clearly and succinctly” and also that "Accomplished teaching is the single most important method of producing graduates who can reason and act for themselves, and can apply theory to practical problems - precisely the skills that any employer wants to see."

He also discusses the emphasis that is put on research to the detriment of teaching and argues that when interviewing successful researchers about their teaching he discovered that, “the researchers who were good at teaching - who went about it by focusing on students and their learning (rather than their own teaching performance or transmitting information) - were not those who necessarily produced the most research. They were the ones who focused on the underlying structure of their investigations, on the broad conceptual framework of their subject, rather than isolated individual problems within it - the ones who were scholars in their discipline.”

He concludes that, "The rationale for university teaching is not satisfying students, distributing information to them nor changing them, as some condescendingly say. Rather, it is enabling students to change for themselves." And that way to do that is through excellent teaching.

Research, development and IPR?

Today, as well as planning for tomorrow's lecture for the MA ICT in EFL class, I had a chance to look at some very interesting work being done by Dr. Michał Remiszewski Assistant professor in the Department of Computer Assisted English Linguistics here at IFA, AMU.

He's working on a powerful assessment tool, which has great potential for teaching as well as providing a good deal of research material. I'll be very interested to see where this goes. It also led to an interesting debate on universities attitudes to Intellectual Property Rights. A recurring theme around the world I think.

Jestem jaka jestem i jestem nauczycielem.

It's Thursday so I must be teaching. The class was on IT for English language teaching, which is an elective for second year MA students. They were in the middle of doing some history of CALL but we jumped ahead to later in the course and I looked and using wikis for collaborative language learning. The standard lectures are 90 mins, so you have an opportunity to get students more invloved than in a 50 min lecture. This suits me fine as once a TEFL teacher always a TEFL teacher and the first part of the lecture involved lots of bits if paper and the students doing all the work. I'm not sure they are used to that sort of thing in a normal lecture and suspect they wondered what this mad Englishman up to. I think it went down well or perhaps they were just being very polite.

Although the University uses a VLE I chose not to use it for the class as most of the students are or will be teaching in primary and secondary schools, very few of which have a VLE. I thought it made sense for them to look at something they could try for themselves and with their classes. I used PB Works but could equally have used wikispaces as well.

I used the wiki for the presentation as well as showing a small number of example uses.
http://inveniotech.pbworks.com/

During the last half hour we had an interesting debate on the whys, wherefores and practicalities of group activities, with a number of contributions from the three members of academic staff who also came to the lecture.

After a planning meeting for next week that followed the lecture, I got back to my flat in time to get something to eat and then watch the election debate on BBC World. Interesting stuff but not nearly as interesting as the Presidential election in Poland is going to be. The Speaker of the Parliament was the favourite to win the next election against the former President who has just died , which has now been brought forward. However, as Speaker, he is now the acting President and has to arrange the election. It is also likely that he will be now running against the former Prime Minister, who happens to be the dead President's twin brother! Interesting times in Poland.