16 reasons why...

... I want an interactive white board. The student made excellent presentations which, as per the course policy, were filmed but the written aspect of those presentations was done on flipchart paper. So instead of nice screen captures from and IWB we had 16 photos of pieces of flipchart paper uploaded to Blackboard.
Sigh!

A transfer of light and sound

I was filming a lecture on diabetes management today and the lecturer set the students a group task and prefixed it with: “A lecture is just a transfer of light and sound what you are going to do next is learning.” I thought this was a rather charming description of the 'teaching' method common to most higher education institutions. He was absolutely right when he said “learning happens when you interact and engage with the material” and this is exactly what he had them do. They were given three areas of research and asked to discuss in groups and then present the information from their papers. As a lecturer he could have easily summarised the information and compared the three papers in 2 or 3 slides, and I think many in his position would have, but as an educator he made the students involve themselves with information. Furthermore in adding a level of peer evaluation to it the students are more focussed on knowing and presenting the info because it is important for them to stay on a level with their peers. Some may argue that at a masters level students should have the skills to take presented information and learn from it. However I am not sure at what point Higher Education stopped teaching and started presenting. You wouldn't expect an 8 year old or a language student to watch a presentation, listen to some facts and understand maths or become a proficient English speaker. So why expect the same of a student studying for a masters.

Web-based learning functionality

I found this action research project written by some strange woman... (me) and I have been revisiting some of the ideas in it and how they have changed with technology changes since I wrote it.

Web based learning has at least seven areas of functionality to take into account. Real time announcements so students are as up to date as possible with changes and information. Real time grading and feedback systems allowing students some of the interactions that may be missing by the removal of a tutor in person. A facility for posting materials in any format that will be accessible to both students and teachers on a variety of operating systems. External links and reading lists that students will need throughout their course in one accessible place. Automated quizzes, worksheets and tests to keep the work interactive on some level Discussion boards and chat rooms to facilitate student to student and student to teacher communication An email function that allows private communication between students and teachers about topics which should not be discussed on the message boards and forums. (Roberts, T. S., & McInnerney, J. M., 2007)

This list of functionalities is based on a course undertaken entirely on-line but how would they need to be changed or developed to take into consideration the possibility that some students will be in full attendance, some in part time attendance and some totally distance based. It strikes me that in any course where some or all of the students are distance learners all of the above points remain equally important as students must all be offered the same resources and information. This emphasises the importance of a CMS such as moodle or Blackboard as it provides a level playing field of information for all students. I think it is important however to train students and staff alike in what interactions are expected of them and how to use the information that is provided as part of an initial introduction. For example, tell students that all information will be posted as announcements on their CMS. Feedback will be sent to them and their teachers via the gradebook and set up a protocol for the answering of questions. All information should be in .pdf form and ideally labelled in a uniform way (although this could just be me being a tad OCD about filling). Staff throughout all courses/modules post links to the CMS in the same way so students do not have to learn a slight variation in the system for every module leader. As much as possible should be automated rather than 'on paper'. Although there is a level at which this becomes unrealistic. Discussion boards can be a fantastic learning tool but are worthless if they are not widely used, this also should be part of the induction packages that gives students an idea of what is expected of them and how they should be using the available forums. Likewise, in many content management systems there are a variety of methods for sending personal messages, along with institution emails and private emails. There should be a precedent set from the begging of the course regarding how students should contact various staff members.

In addition to this there is also the possibility of using social media to encourage learning and sharing of information, that however is for another post.

Information vs performance in e-learning

I was reading this blog and it got me thinking about the differences (if there are any) between commercial training and education. In commercial training, as outlined in the blog I was reading, the focus is often on compliance and establishing that goals have been achieved and protocol is understood. I would suggest in an educational setting the focus is more on gaining knowledge and cementing understanding but the process is generally the same.
Information based courses provide the learner with the knowledge that they need, however as the author points out this is often unnecessary as the information is probably somewhere else. This is definitely true of the Masters Programme I have been working on where the information is provided in a variety of forms. Lectures, attended or watched on-line, reading lists provided by the faculty or peer led debates or discussion forums for sharing information. I am not sure this entirely negates the need for information based e-learning content but it certainly suggests that the focus should be on directing students to appropriate locations rather than feeding them information.

Action based learning focuses on enabling a student to use the information that they already possess. This type of e-learning content is also in abundance within the masters programme. Where students are provided with case studies, multiple choice quizzes, interactive 'formative' assessments and pre/post tests. As mentioned in a previous post I am upgrading from Blackboard CE8 to Blackboard Learn, this gives me a chance to re-evaluate the current e-learning material and perhaps enhance it.

Information vs performance e-learning provides an interesting view on the way the information is already presented. As it stands at the moment the course effectively has both but they are almost totally independent of each other. This, I think, is a problem. By simply adding links to both sections the information and the activation can be joined together. For example a case study which is essentially a set of questions based on real or simulate information assumes knowledge of certain pieces of information. If the educational purpose of the case study is to definitively test if a student knows the information then there is no reason to provide a link to that information. However if the case study is a formative assessment meant to cement knowledge by asking the student to actively engage with it then there is no reason a set of resources should not be provided for reference. This also encourages students to revisit information and provides links with that information and the real world application that is being tested in the case study.

The formative assessments, in the form of multiple choice quizzes or graphical drag and drop exercises, provided are also purely an activity for students to complete on their own. They are interacting with it in a somewhat 2 dimensional way. If students were in a classroom situation working with these activities, teacher led or not, students would almost certainly develop a discussion on the content or make comments to each other. This adds another dimension to the way students interact with the information and with each other and I think this level of interaction should also be encouraged in distance learning. Whether or not students will have the same level of uptake as they would in class is another matter but I think it is worth a try.

 As I mentioned each module also has a pre/post test attached to it. This subscribes to the test-teach-test approach which definitely has benefits for the student. However I think the presentation of the pre and the post test should be slightly different. The pre-test should, in an ideal world, be used by teachers to make sure that students get the information they need from the module. The post test should prove that they have. However, what if they do not get 100%? The principles of assessment tell us that all assessment must be relevant and I am not sure that assessment can be fully relevant if no feedback is given. So the post test should probably include links back to the information to help students find the answers to questions that they did not answer correctly.

In essence I can see the benefits of e-learning being solely information based, or performance based but their needs to be links between the two areas to provide a total and rounded learning and assessment experience for students. 

Should on-line education be aesthetically pleasing?

I am currently working on upgrading a course from Blackboard CE8 to Blackboard Learn. At face value the course is set up to look very visual with large icons and graphics. However because of the restrictions of the CE8 system the file contents where the student information actually kept, mostly in the form of pdf documents and weblinks. it looks in many ways like the file manager on windows 95. 
Blackboard learn is in some ways much friendlier and allows for icons and a much cleaner approach to the file systems making it look and feel a lot more like a smooth web tool than Windows 95, which is good, but I have found myself wondering... Is it worth it?

I personally think that students are more likely to engage with information that provided for them if it is easily accessible, well labelled and looks attractive. Which would be why publishers spend large amounts of money on the layout and design of textbooks. Furthermore in a digital age where students have grown up with the soft and well rounded aesthetics of sites like Facebook and the BBC I-player this is what they expect from educational websites. Perhaps a clunky, unfriendly system would have the same educational content but this means very little if students are unwilling to use, or fully engage with, the materials because the system is either hard to use or looks outdated. Which could in turn cause students to believe that the information is outdated.