Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1. Why read this book?
1.2. Blended learning
1.3. An organizing framework
1.4. Information Technology skills
1.5. Securing your information
1.6. Further reading
Chapter 2. Face-to-face presentations
2.1. Lectures
2.2. Visual displays
2.3. Presentation Software
2.4. Creating multimedia content
2.5. Handouts
2.6. Copyright and intellectual property
2.7. Further reading
Chapter 3. Onsite learning activity and interactivity
3.1. Tools for individual activity
3.2. Tools for student group work
3.3. Interactive lectures and seminars
3.4. Onsite teacher assessment
3.5. Peer assessment
3.6. Further reading
Chapter 4. Online resources for learning
4.1. Shovelware
4.2. Multimedia online
4.3. Individual use of online tools and resources
4.4. Student self assessment
4.5. Further reading
Chapter 5. Online teacher-student interactivity
5.1. E-mail
5.2. Computer Assisted Assessment
5.3. Plagiarism detection
5.4. Further reading
Chapter 6. Online student interactivity
6.1. Discussion and collaboration
6.2. Real-time communication
6.3. m-Learning
6.4. Student peer assessment
6.5. Further reading
Chapter 7. Virtual Learning Environments
7.1. Integrated learning environments
7.2. Roles within a VLE
7.3. Integration
7.4. Activity monitoring
7.5. Communication and groups
7.6. Selective release
7.7. Integrating online and onsite environments
7.8. Further reading
Chapter 8. Designing blended learning
8.1. Getting started
8.2. Constructive alignment by blending
8.3. Efficiency and effectiveness
8.4. Further reading
References
Index
The technology available in Further and Higher Education in the UK has been developing rapidly and the previous SEDA paper on the subject had inevitably dated (O’Hagan 1997). It was time for a new guide to using technology for teaching and supporting learning, and I seemed to be in a position to write it. I have used computers and other technologies for 25 years in my own teaching in UK universities, and I have spent much of the last five years discussing with other teachers how they might use it. I hope this book will be of use to those who are starting to teach in F/HE, or starting to teach with technology.
The title of this publication caused me some reflection. “E-learning” is the current official term, and it marks a welcome emphasis on student-centredness. Those of us who have used “learning technology” for some years must be sanguine about its occasional re-badging. I must admit to the ubiquitous “e” prefix grating somewhat, because it harks back to the older term “e-commerce” (Bostock 2005), which is entirely the wrong model for education – do we want people buying degrees online? I hope not. However, accepting the prefix, as we must, this book is not directly about student learning, it is primarily about teaching, broadly understood as everything that supports student learning, whether face-to-face or online. This will include roles such as lecturer, instructor, demonstrator, task-setter, supporter of learning skills, supervisor, moderator, assessor, and so on. There are few aspects of being a teacher in F/HE that cannot be supported by technology. So, “e-teaching” reasserts our responsibility as teachers for the design and support of student learning experiences, whether face-to-face or online.
Why should you use technology in teaching? Because, like other ways of teaching and supporting learning, it can be effective and even be fun. To illustrate that, here are three quick personal examples. In 1981, I had one of the early microcomputers and wrote programs for it, including statistical analyses. On a one-day, extramural course with mature students, I was able to teach a topic in quantitative ecology by having them collect field data and then immediately use our computer to analyse the data statistically and display the results graphically. Discussion of theory followed naturally. The computer transformed the way I could teach the subject. Secondly, in 1995, I taught my first Web-based course, with about 200 students. Walking around a PC laboratory to watch three dozen students working with my Web pages was a thrill, and their evaluations told me they preferred it to my lectures! Thirdly and most recently, I have helped colleagues use voting technology in their lectures. It has been impressive to watch all students immediately answer questions by voting, and get immediate feedback from the lecturer on their answers. At the end of a lecture students are asked to vote on whether they want to use the technology again. The response is usually overwhelmingly positive; real progress within the ancient tradition of the lecture.
Why should you use a technology in teaching? We could ask the equally difficult question, why you are teaching the way you currently do? Educational technology is a Trojan Horse: inside are some fundamental questions about teaching and student learning, ready to break out and open the city walls to some radical changes in practice (see Chickering and Erhmann 1996). Rising to that challenge is as intriguing as anything in teaching.
I have referred occasionally in the text to named software. This is not an endorsement; there are often several examples that could have been given but there is no space for a complete list or a software review. You may have access to, or prefer, different software. The same principles will apply and you should seek the advice of local experts on the details. Although the book is predominantly about computer-based technology, some non-electronic teaching aids are included as they need to be considered alongside, as alternatives. There is, inevitably, some jargon, which I have usually explained on first use. Further explanations can usually be found on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/). A Web site supporting this book is at www.e-t.org.uk
I am pleased to thank Bob Rotheram (Senior Learning and Teaching Adviser, Nottingham Trent University) for many helpful comments on a draft; any errors are mine.
Stephen Bostock
stephen@keele.org.uk
Dr Stephen Bostock FSEDA has taught with computers in UK universities since 1978. After a first career as a biologist, he taught and managed adult education courses. From the mid-1980s he taught IT courses inside and outside the university, and then moved to a computer science department. From there he developed himself further as an academic developer, and in 2002 he gained his current post as Advisor for Technology and Learning at Keele University, UK.
Chapter 1 Introduction
Why do you need to know about the uses of technology in teaching and student learning? Before answering the question, let’s be clear that you already know quite a lot about educational technologies. You will undoubtedly have encountered, as a student or teacher, some traditional technologies such as a chalkboard or whiteboard, paper handouts or an overhead projector. In the last 25 years or so, such traditional technologies have been supplemented with, or replaced by, computer-based technologies. You probably use e-mail and the World Wide Web. E-learning is the current term (in a long line of terms) for any uses of computers and their networks to support teaching and learning. It includes a widening range of applications, for example, simulations and multimedia for students to use independently, digital presentations, and electronic voting for teachers to use in lectures. The Web has become ubiquitous since the mid-1990s; most students use it, although not necessarily well. Some institutions use it to provide wholly online courses (though the Internet). Student commonly use wireless networks and mobile computing (e.g. laptop computers, mobile phones, personal digital assistants – handheld computers), and online virtual learning environments (VLEs).
The reasons to consider using technology (see Teacher Training Agency 1998 in Kennewell 2001, p106) include providing both students and teachers with
When carefully chosen and appropriately used, technology can improve the learning experience, or the cost/effectiveness of its outcomes, or the efficiency of the process. Learning and teaching can be better and/or cheaper; and cheaper may mean saving you time.
This book is an introduction to the types of technology you may find useful in teaching and/or supporting learning in Higher Education. It introduces the technologies and discusses their characteristics, their affordances (utility) and limitations, so that you can make informed decisions about using them. Your local teaching context may offer only some of them, but we can be confident that many computer-based learning and teaching aids will become common. UK Universities are increasingly technology-rich environments and most students find this natural. Some of them capture digital images or videos with their mobile phones; they use e-mail routinely and text “chat” to friends over the Internet; they routinely use the Web to find resources for learning; and they use a word processor for academic writing. Most of use new technologies as they come along to enhance aspects of our personal lives; your teaching is no exception.
“several authors have found that the most efficient teaching model is a blended approach, which combines self-paced learning, live e-learning, and face-to-face classroom learning” (Alonso et al. 2005 p234)
I am not suggesting that you should abandon, or even necessarily reduce, your face-to-face contact with students: at most universities, students want personal contact with teachers and you probably enjoy it too (e.g. Monteith and Smith 2000). Rather, both traditional and technology-supported teaching must pay their way in terms of student learning. We should use them as deliberate choices, rather than teach because that is how we were taught, or because that is how someone else taught the course last year.
This approach to employing educational technology has been termed “blended learning” – designing a blend of traditional and technology-based teaching and learning activities. Every teaching and learning situation is different, and the optimum blend may be technology-rich or technology-lite. We owe it to ourselves and to our students to be aware of the technologies available, their utilities and limitations, so that we can “mix and match” our teaching methods and our technologies. An awareness of what is possible with a technology available to you may prompt you to try it, to address a problem or an opportunity in your own teaching. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Here are some scenarios based on personal experience.
1. A teacher has several dyslexic students in a class, who need access to lecture notes ahead of lectures. If the notes are in written in a word processor (e.g. MS Word) or presentation manager (e.g. PowerPoint) they can be printed a week ahead and distributed, or placed on a course Web site for reading in whatever way individual students prefer.
2. A course doubles in student numbers so that the weekly tutorials become impossible within the constraints of rooms and timetables. One solution is to have tutorials in alternate weeks, with discussions continuing in an online, asynchronous text, “discussion board”.
3. Third level dissertations are restricted in subject area because of the availability of research journals in the library. Electronic journals and the Web sites of other universities, conferences and research institutes can make a wider literature accessible, especially if links to them are collected on the course Web site.
4. A large, mixed-ability first-year course on basic science has a lecture attendance that declines through the semester, with predictable results in the final examination. Formative and summative (for a final grade) multiple choice tests in a virtual learning environment may keep students engaged and give them feedback on their progress, at least in relation to the simpler learning outcomes. The activity monitoring in the VLE allows a teacher to detect which students are failing the tests, or not taking them, so that they can be contacted before they fall behind or drop out.
Choosing the best technologies to blend with some traditional teaching methods is not simple; there is no blueprint. It involves selecting a technology and designing how it is to be used. Any one technology often has multiple affordances – the possible ways it could be used – depending on the context. A simplified course development process would be:
1. List the student learning activities needed to achieve the intended learning outcomes
2. Select the teaching method or delivery medium or technology to support each learning activity (the blend)
3. Refine the blend for compatibility, balance and cost.
The components of a course can be called teaching-learning activities (TLAs, Biggs 2003), or pedagogical techniques (Paulsen 1995), each consisting of a learning activity and its support. In an imaginary course, an example list of learning activities and their traditional supporting methods is suggested in Figure 1. One or more of these methods, or “media” (Laurillard 2002), could be replaced with advantage by a technology-based activity (in the adjacent column). Or technology could support an activity not currently supported. Or it could provide additional support in a different way. Technology support for TLAs can thus be a substitution, deficit-filling, or enrichment, of traditional course elements. Whether any of these are worthwhile will depend on the specific context. The optimum blend of (in this case) five or more methods will depend on their availability and costs, acceptability to the teacher and students, and their mutual compatibility, which only the teacher in the local context can decide.
Figure 1 An imaginary course
|
Student activity |
Example traditional methods |
Example technology-based methods |
|
Information acquisition |
Reading a set book, lectures |
Web documents |
|
Skills practice |
Problem sheets in classes |
Computer simulations |
|
Discussion |
Tutorials |
Asynchronous text discussions |
|
Discovery |
A field trip |
Finding and evaluating Web resources |
|
Assessment |
Essay questions in a closed exam |
Computer based assessment using multiple choice |
This book could have been organized by technical characteristics (e.g. multimedia, Web-based, mobile) or by broad categories of function (e.g. resources, tools, simulations, surrogate teachers, and communication media) (see Bostock 1996 for a discussion of classifications). Instead, it is organized by TLAs in the hope that this is more helpful to teachers thinking about their teaching. However, lists of appropriate TLAs will be different for different disciplines and topics, and the total list would be very long. Even a general scheme of common TLAs would have about 30 (see Oliver and Conole 1998). This book aggregates TLAs into five categories, based on the ways a student can engage with the teacher, the subject, or fellow students. The modes of student engagement have been used to structure face-to-face teaching (Bostock, Hulme and Davys 2006) but they seem to work for online activities, too (Figure 2). Most courses should have TLAs in each of the five modes. Modes 1 and 2 are perhaps a continuum of types of presentations, onsite and online, with a similar relationship between teacher and student. Nonetheless, it seems worthwhile distinguishing them, if only to be able to compare their potential benefits and problems.
These five broad categories of TLAs do not have a simple, one-to-one fit with teaching methods or with technologies; a TLA category like transmission-reception (mode 1) can involve a teacher, a book or an online document. Rather, there are multiple methods that could support each mode in some circumstances. Conversely, some technologies can serve different modes of engagement when supporting different activities. For example, presentation software (e.g. PowerPoint) can be used in simple and enhanced transmissions, face-to-face or as an online resource (lectures, files). Communication technologies (e.g. e-mail) are often useful for both student-student and student-teacher interaction. Despite these complications (in themselves interesting), it seems worthwhile using a classification based on TLAs.
There is still a broad distinction between onsite (offline) technologies - those supporting teaching and learning in face-to-face (F2F) situations or using technology not requiring network communication - and online technologies - those using the computer network to support student learning, whether individually, with other students or with a teacher. Figure 2 describes examples of the technologies supporting the modes of engagement, both for onsite and online environments. In some cases, software might be accessed either on a stand-alone computer or on a Web server accessed through a browser such as Internet Explorer. Because the Web typically allows access from any browser, problems of varying software, hardware or operating systems are avoided. It is thus a convenient way of providing access to software for an individual, without using other network features, instead of, for example, using a CD-ROM - compact disc read-only memory . In such cases, the technology is treated as onsite in its functionality even though it is used over a network. In other words, the online/onsite distinction is one of learning activities rather than technology.
This framework of ten TLAs (five modes, online and onsite) is used to structure this book; the chapters and sections are given in the table. In places, the onsite/online options are similar and dealt with in one section to avoid duplication. The integration of onsite and online environments is considered in chapter 7.5.