On Tuesday (20 July 2004) I gave the keynote address at the University of Leicester's first e-learning conference. Despite it not being the optimum time for such a gathering the conference was fully subscribed. In this article I highlight some of the work of other presenters as well as provide an overview and links to supporting resources for my own presentation. It was refreshing to see so many academics from across the region and Leicester, a university with a respected research and teaching profile, who were obviously keen to find out what, if anything, e-learning has to offer them.
As well as offering traditional full-time campus-based learning programmes, Leicester is involved in significant flexible and distance learning; I suspect this provides an impetus for pedagogical and logistical diversity that institutions with a traditional campus-based focus may lack, currently. Leicester can only benefit from this. E-Learning is obviously perceived as being of increasing importance to the work of the university as evidenced by the recent appointment of Professor Gilly Salmon (currently UK Open University) as the University of Leicester's Professor of E-Learning and Learning Technologies. Gilly is well known for her work on E-Moderation and activity-based learning, i.e. E-tivities. The appointment of a Professor of E-Learning and Learning Technologies is making a strategic statement; other universtities should perhaps take note.
Two things impressed me immediately.
First, Professor John Fothergill who is both Professor of Engineering and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Leicester opened the conference. Now John is not just a senior university administrator he is also an actual 'getting his hands dirty' e-learning exponent and delivers his own module on Optical Fibre Communication Engineering via sets of online learning objects (Impatica encoded Powerpoints), supporting materials (books, videos, formative assessments) and tutor-supported discussion boards. Respect! Leading by example is good leadership. So John's 'street cred' was immediately high and his welcome was in part based on his own grounded experiences.
Second, the speaker who followed me was Mark Russel winner of this year's 'e-Tutor' of the year award. Mark is Principal Lecturer in Aerospace, Automotive and Design Engineering at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK. The following extract from his own institution's newsletter summarizes pretty well what he did.
“His submission had been based on a first-year fluid mechanics and thermodynamics module for which he improved the pass rate by 27%. Mark attributes the improvement to a range of electronic technologies he developed to, as he puts it, “…nudge, nurture, challenge and assess students”… The four competition judges agreed that Mark had made innovative use of the University's own 'StudyNet' managed learning environment, Excel (which read the work submitted, marked it and sent back an individualised e-mail based on performance) and such common software features as mail-merge. These had been combined to encourage collaborative and independent learning, to develop the student's confidence, to challenge and extend their learning, and very importantly, to provide feedback on their weekly computer-assisted assessment tasks.”
At the conference Mark described how he issued weekly questions to around 150 students. Although the question stems were all the same the values in the questions were all unique and so, at a stroke, collusion was out. Students submitted their responses to an online aggregator which also encouraged them to submit a hint or tip about the module. These hints/tips were then made available to the whole cohort and those who submitted were rewarded for their contribution by two additional marks. Mark is utilizing assessment as a driver of learning and has automated large parts of the system using a combination of Excel, Outlook and custom scripting to handle the workflow of submission, acknowledgements and fairly terse, but obviously effective, feedback. Like most highly motivated and capable people, however, Mark believes his solution is 'easy' and could be applied to other contexts with little effort. I think what he has done is wonderful but I look forward to examples of how easily it can be introduced elsewhere. Nevertheless, Mark is your man if you want a really grounded example of assessment in practice.
Now on to my contribution to the proceedings.
I chose a suitably cosmic theme 'Terraforming the environment for sustainable e-learning life!' Why? Because the University of Leicester hosts the Space Research Centre which in turn is also a key component of the UK's National Space Centre.
Terraforming was a good launch point for a consideration of how environments sometimes require modification in order to create the conditions for sustainable life. We weren't talking innovation here but change. I also considered briefly the role of failure in contributing to ultimate success, e.g. the UKeU.
In essence I was arguing no more than others, more august than myself, have already argued, i.e. in reality HE is still dominated by a knowledge (or in many cases information) transfer model and so change is frustrated by a desire to replicate this model using information and communication technologies. The result is we amplify many of the current problems instead of finding and exploiting new opportunities and solutions.
In the 'How Not to Terraform' section of my address I argued that we need to realise that e-learning isn't really about technology at all; instead it's a people thing, a communication thing, a process thing. I also indulged myself with a mini polemic on the adoption of 'student-centredness' and 'independent learning' by institutions as a 'flag of convenience' but which is not evidenced by the provision of a support and resource infrastructure to back it up. I also proposed that perhaps we are better at lots of innovation but less good at achieving sustainable change, e.g. what happens to these exciting and innovative projects at the end of their lifetimes or shortly afterwards?
I then went on to propose that success in e-learning (and learning generally) could be guaranteed … but only when there was explicit alignment of learning outcomes, assessment, activities, events and resources. From here I went on to explore the attributes of an effective learning environment and the importance of refocusing to a less content dominated and more active approach to learning. That is not to say that content and resources don't have a major part to play but it is only a part. A brief consideration of the ingredients of a student centred virtual learning environment was followed by some examples of active learning from within the UK and international HE community.
I finished up with a consideration of 'What looks promising on the e-Terraforming front' with a particular emphasis on the wealth of information, case studies, islands of good practice, and focused development funding calls that now exist. A brief mention of the Program in Course Redesign (aka the Pew Learning and Technology Program), Learning Design, the JISC E-Learning Programme, Maricopa Learning eXchange, and JORUM and I was done.
My slides for the address are available in two options (both colour PDF). You can view them as two slides per page or six slides per page. I suggest you right click your mouse to download them to your local computer.
