TDU Talk
ISSUE 5 ▪ JULY 2009
eLEARNING
Course Design
Nigel Robertson (WCEL)
Practical Strategies for Managing Communication in Moodle
Dianne Forbes (SOE)
What is WCEL?
Derek White (WCEL)
Google Apps
Nigel Robertson (WCEL)
Gander at Glossaries in Moodle
Teresa Gibbison (WCEL)
Current Directions in eLearning
Nigel Robertson (WCEL)
This work is licensed under
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Commons
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“
Kia ora koutou,
Welcome to the July edition of TDU Talk. This edition focuses
on the important domain of eLearning. Our thanks go to the
WCEL team who compiled this edition and to all the
contributors. Wherever you are on the eLearning spectrum –
from novice to advanced user, we hope that this edition offers
good guidance for practice. In particular, the technical advice is
always framed in terms of the pedagogical opportunities and considerations. The
edition demonstrates how effectively an online learning environment can
enhance students‟ interaction with subject, teachers and their peers. The
possibilities for a rich, collaborative learning experience are unlimited. We hope
that the contributions in this edition will enhance your practice and your
students‟ learning.
On another note, we have just completed an enjoyable series of teaching
workshops. Our thanks to all who participated and we hope that you will feel
inspired and creative in regard to your teaching.
ā
Best wishes
Dorothy
.”
Dorothy Spiller will be away on a fellowship at the University of Windsor, Canada from 8 August to 30
September 2009. Pip Bruce Ferguson will be available for teaching development services (Tuesday to
Thursday). Contact Pip by email at [email protected] or by telephone on extension 4116.
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
•2•
Nigel Robertson, WCEL
What are the principles of good course design when using an online
environment? Several writers have tried to express this in a variety of
ways, and you will want to adopt an approach that works best for you.
In this article, I outline three models and their implications for your
courses: a process model; a rubric; and a maturity model. There isn‟t a
single template for a successful course, whether fully or partially online but
evaluating and reflecting on what we do will help us improve our teaching
and the outcomes for our learners.
Salmon's 5 Stage Model
Gilly Salmon (2004) developed a five stage model of online engagement.
It was developed through action research at the Open University and, while
it principally applies to the discussion-based model of online teaching, it
can be used more generally.
Salmon’s 5-Stage Model of teaching and learning online
Salmon, G. (2004). E-Moderating: The key to teaching & learning online (2nd ed.).
London: Routledge Falmer
•3•
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
Salmon describes online teaching and learning as going through 5 stages,
each one needing to be completed before the next one can be engaged with
effectively. Ignoring the first two stages of Access and Socialisation can
often be the reason for poor student engagement with the online
environment. Teachers may complain that they have put lots of 'stuff' into
their course and no one uses it or that no one enters into discussion. If you
haven't ensured that your learners can access the site or are motivated to
use it, then that result should come as no surprise.
The first consideration is to ensure that your learners are able to access the
environment. Don't assume that because it works on your computer, it will
work for everyone else. One way to do this is to start with a low stakes
activity such as a welcoming ice breaker. Check that all your learners have
been able to access the activity and follow up on those who haven't. If the
initial activity has low stakes, this allows for access issues to be sorted.
Using low stakes allows access without disadvantaging your learners.
Working online can force learners to be visible and they can be wary of
expressing their thoughts in case they appear foolish. In a lecture context,
the invisible students may be those staring at the desk when a teacher asks
the class a question! Using low stakes activities and being encouraging
allows users to start to engage with the environment and to feel more
comfortable about writing in front of their peers. Always take into account
that learning has a strong emotional dimension. Require students to
comment on the postings of others but manage and encourage this to
happen in supportive ways. A level of trust within the class has to be
developed so that learners feel comfortable about posting, knowing that
others won't be dismissive even if they disagree. Once these hurdles are
overcome (and this might be quite quick for a class that already has some
good experience of working online) then much more productive discussion
and learning can occur for the rest of the course.
Rubric for Online Instruction
The California State University, Chico (http://www.csuchico.edu/celt/roi/)
published their Rubric for Online Instruction in 2003. They have kindly
made it available for others to use and adapt using a Creative Commons
'Attribution' license. WCEL is currently looking at this rubric as a starting
point for developing some guidelines in a Waikato context.
The rubric consists of six categories that relate to the design and use of an
online space.
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
•4•
Originally termed as weblog, these can be seen as
online diaries or journals.
There are multiple ways in which
they are used. Three modes are:
reading, commenting and writing.
Reading blogs opens a wealth of
information and access to the
thoughts and reports of others. A
level of critical faculty is required
to discern what is useful as with
any reading. This exposure to
wide sources, not constrained by
the hegemony of publishing
houses, requires readers to
become more critical and
discerning while giving them more
building blocks for their own
knowledge.
Most blogs also allow commenting
where a level of discourse and
refinement becomes available to
both the reader and the writer.
Ultimately, writing a blog entry
requires
thought
and
consideration. A blog has much
more of a personal element and
self ownership than the equivalent
writing in a forum or discussion
board. Blogs exist within Moodle
and these allow a gentle exposure
to public writing where this may
only be seen by cohort peers.
However, once blogging moves to
a public arena, it more readily
supports authentic learning, the
development of voice and
recognition of audience and
register. These are key skills that
employers
are
increasingly
seeking.
•5•
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
Learner Support & Resources
Online Organisation & Design
Instructional Design & Delivery
Assessment & Evaluation of Student Learning
Innovative Teaching with Technology
Faculty Use of Student Feedback
The categories address the key elements that are recognised as
improving learner outcomes and experiences. Within each category
are criteria and a set of descriptors that help you evaluate your
course and what measures you can take in order to improve it. It
provides a more comprehensive tool than a checklist where only
achieved or not achieved is indicated.
Many of the elements are similar to those in the maturity model
although they are described in different terms. Some of the
standards that this rubric promotes are:

Providing a consistent layout and structure so that learners easily
access materials and activities and so spend their time working
rather than searching

Co-locating administrative content so that the whole gamut of
course material is available within a single place. This can be
achieved by linking documents that sit elsewhere on the
university's web infrastructure

Giving learners opportunities to understand how well it is that
they are learning and allowing this to happen frequently
throughout the course
Keep the course interesting by trying out new things - don't let it go
stale for you and your learners. Don't just be open to feedback from
your learners, actively seek it. You didn't design that course in order
to show off your teaching talents, you did it to help your learners
learn. They are the ones who can provide the users‟ perspective on
which bits worked for them and which bits didn't.
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
Online Course Design Maturity Model
The Online Course Design Maturity Model was proposed by Neuhauser
(2004) as a way of developing a framework for planning and evaluating
course design. Maturity models suggest that a series of steps are required
in order to improve quality, with each step or level being a transformation
of the previous step. Evaluating a course at a particular level does not
necessarily suggest that it is less adequate than courses evaluated at higher
levels. Instead, those higher level courses are seen as being more mature or
more developed.
Key Process Area Goals by
Maturity Level
Neuhauser, C. (2004). A Maturity
Model: Does it provide a path for
online course design? The Journal of
Interactive Online Learning. 3(1).
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
•6•
The oral tradition was once
the
medium
for
communication
and
storytelling.
Prehistoric cave
drawings also indicate that
pictures were important to
people. Eventually we formalised
pictures into text and written
language. In the 19th century,
technology saw the development
of still photographs and then
moving
images.
Digital
storytelling allows us to pull all of
these communication media
together and allow rich expression
of ideas. Typically this allows
sequencing a variety of digital
media into a narrative using a
single tool. For instance, this
could be a short set of images
(and/or video clips) overlaid with
text and voice or audio.
In
addition, it allows contributions
from others as comments, review
or even conversation.
VoiceThread
http://voicethread.com/ is one of
the
more
popular
online
applications and has a free option.
We expect staff at Waikato to be aiming to work at level 3 or higher on
courses that are web supported and at level 2 or higher for those that are
web enhanced. The pace of change in technology and techniques is
highlighted in Neuhauser's descriptions. Neuhauser recognises early in the
paper that technologies are in a state of rapid change and therefore what is
seen as best practice will also change as new opportunities are presented.
Written only 5 years ago, we would now eliminate e-mail as a primary
communication channel and instead suggest using discussion boards in this
context. For private correspondence between teacher and student, Moodle
offers the Dialogue tool with e-mail as an alternative.
The diagram on page 6 is a summary of the goals within the model. These
represent a set of descriptors for the following five process areas:
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
Components and Appearance
Individualised and Personal
Use of Technology
Socialisation and Interactivity
Assessment
The model sees maturity as being obtained in stages with a plateau at each
stage. Consolidation and then building forward must occur before
progression to the next level occurs.
Examples from some of these areas include peer review of work; student
initiated discussion and facilitation; integration of resources including
lectures and other face-to-face situations; making things interesting through
the use of multimedia; audio and video; and the development of a learner teacher partnership for the learning process.
Contact Preetha Pratapsingh ([email protected]) or book through iWaikato (My Work > Staff Development > Coming Events)
•7•
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
Application to Practice and Design
So how can we apply models and rubrics to our practice and our course
design?
It is clear that the most important factor in seeking improvement is the
willingness to evaluate what is there already. There are three principal
sources of evaluation to enhance improvement. First is your own self
reflection, where you must consider such things as what the online
components are meant to achieve; whether they succeed; and whether
they align with the learning objectives and the assessments. Secondly,
always seek feedback from your learners. Solicit student feedback during
the course so that you can use the information to feed forward and initiate
change that will positively affect them. This gives students more
incentive to bring honest and useful comments and insights to your
notice. The final source is one that academics can sometimes have
difficulty in seeking and that is the evaluation of a colleague. The
colleague can be from the same or a different department but there must
be a bond of trust between the parties and the colleague should take on
the role of critical friend (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_friend
for a definition). Sometimes an external perspective is required in order
to see the way forward or to gain the confidence in what you are doing.
Attention to the following elements can help you to enhance learner
experiences and outcomes.
Make it easy for your learners to access all the administrative parts of
your paper such as the course outline, assessment schedule, contact
details and expectations. Also include links to other university resources
that are relevant, for example, for first year
students possibly a study skills tutorial on the
library site. Don't just say, "You should go and
read this resource", instead include a live link to
the resource. In the former case, there is a
temptation by the reader to say to themselves,
"OK, I'll do that later", but in the latter case the
reader can click on it there and then.
Creating a consistent and easy to understand
navigation structure is another positive step to
enable learning. We want learners to spend their
time learning, not hunting about to access the
resources and activities they need. For instance,
students are unlikely to remember the topic of
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
•8•
ePortfolios are tools that
support
collections
of
electronic
evidence
associated
with
an
individuals work or study
output.
They are often
defined in terms of the real owner
of the portfolio. Institutions can
impose ePortfolios on learners as a
way of formally recording defined
stages in the learning process.
Students tend to see this as a
hurdle to jump in achieving a final
mark. Learner owned portfolios,
however, should support genuine
reflection on the learning process.
These will often be a collection of
artefacts and writings which have
meaning for the learner. The
permissions able to be set for
access should be granular,
allowing the learner to define who
(if anyone) can see what (if
anything).
In
terms
of
demonstrating learning, this will
often be done either through
exposing parts of the portfolio as a
collection or view; or through
writing a commentary and using
parts of the portfolio collection as
evidence in the commentary.
Different views can be created for
different audiences, using the
same
stock
of
artefacts.
ePortfolios also support the lifelong learning agenda in that they
should be able to record learning
from school to tertiary to work
and further learning. Portability
can be an issue but standards are
being developed to make transfer
realistic. Mahara is an Aoteoroa/
New Zealand developed ePortfolio
that is gaining a lot of favourable
press within the ePortfolio
community. This is because it
aims to be learner owned and
contains tools that support
reflection and review.
•9•
Lecture Week 3, so give your resources meaningful names such as
'Principles of Macro-Economics' or 'Doline formation'. Add some
signposts to your paper so that readers can tell what each section is about.
In Moodle, you can add labels with short pieces of text to describe a
resource or group of resources as well as give instructions on what is
required within a particular section.
Use colours carefully and don't rely on colour alone to impart information.
You can't tell if someone has colour blindness just by looking at them.
Those beautiful red and green labels might all look grey to me! Also
ensure that colours have a good contrast; I want to get on with reading what
is there, not strain my eyes making out the yellow text on a white
background. You also don't want to create the 'rainbow effect' by using
every colour in the palette. Be consistent in your use of colours and fonts.
Communication is a key element when working online, whether at a
distance or in a blended model. Working in front of a computer can be
quite isolating so make sure that students are able to communicate and
converse. In a lecture based model of teaching, powerful learning can take
place in the coffee bar afterwards when people talk about what they have
just seen and heard. The more online your course is, the more you need to
consider creating informal communication and socialisation channels for
your learners. Be explicit about the communication channels that you want
students to use especially in the ways that they can contact you. Do make
these channels accessible and relevant though. Dianne Forbes outlines
many useful strategies for managing communications in this issue (p.12).
Make your course active. Consider using Moodle and other environments
for more than an electronic filing cabinet. Getting your students active can
let them engage in higher order thinking tasks. We want our students to
develop into critical thinkers, able to decipher the mass of information
available, to analyse problems and to produce creative solutions. Learners
coming through school and university now need to be agile and adaptive as
many of the jobs they will do in ten years‟ time may not even exist yet. Of
course these principles apply to any domain, not just online.
Discussion boards are one of the most common activities that people use.
However, they don't run themselves and do need to be facilitated in order to
be effective. This is an area that Salmon (2004) deals with extensively.
The Glossary Tool in Moodle can be a very powerful tool when used
imaginatively and is underestimated by people who haven't used it (see
explanation on page 22 of this magazine). Go beyond lists and definitions
and instead design opportunities for review, justification and synthesis.
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
Other opportunities for individual or group activity include blogging, wikis,
polls, creating websites and collaborating with online documents.
Increasingly used, GPS devices are
location-aware
which
easily
enables geolocation and the geotagging of content. Where was
this photo taken or report
recorded? In reverse, the phone
can also tell you when you have
arrived at a key point. Set up field
trips that users can navigate in
their own time. What about
historical or cultural places of
Hamilton? I walk around and
when I arrive at a location, the
phone tells me and lets me access
resources about that location. I
can also record my thoughts about
this place and add them to the
resource for others to use.
Make your paper engaging. Text readings can be a passive mode of
learning. They can also make the learning process very dry and reduce
students‟ motivation to engage. Add a variety of resources to keep the
paper interesting. A picture can be worth a thousand words and images in
your paper can be both informative and aesthetic. Add speech with audio
podcasts or include some video clips. These can be pieces that you create,
that you source online or that you ask your students to create. Explore
other opportunities too such as developing mindmaps or creating and
commenting on digital narratives with tools such as VoiceThread.
Assessment has often been a summative process, conducted at the end of a
paper or module. At that point, a learner has no opportunity to retrieve any
misunderstanding or misconceptions. The benefits of formative assessment
- assessment for learning, rather than assessment of learning - have been
recognised for some time now. Online environments offer many
opportunities for students to gauge their own learning and also for a teacher
to evaluate how well their class understands what is being taught. One of
the easiest is to create a short quiz each week. Make it about five questions
long; certainly no more than ten. Check the key learning points from your
last lesson and you could also include a question recapping something
which has been done previously. Quizzes are automatically marked so
students get instant feedback on what they know and what they don't. The
quiz results will provide statistics to the teacher on what questions most
people got right; but also importantly, the questions that significant
numbers got wrong. This allows you to go over that material again when
you next see the class. It also means you can reflect on why a certain part
of the topic was a struggle for the class and whether you need to make
changes to your approach in the future. There will be some work involved
in creating questions in the beginning, especially as you don't want to make
them trivial. An efficiency benefit comes for you in two ways. During the
course you can more readily judge when to move the topic along or when
to spend time reinforcing or consolidating. Then in subsequent years, you
are able to re-use the questions that you have and just need to spend time in
refining them
Peer feedback is another important area of assessment, particularly when
peers are required to justify their comments and also when the original
writer has to revisit their work or self assess. The peer feedback can
support a range of higher order skills and the learning can be more
profound than in the writing of the original piece.
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
• 10 •
Phones used to be big
things with a dial, attached to
the wall by a cable. Computers
used to fill a room and have as
much processing power as a cheap
pocket calculator has today.
Miniaturisation has combined
these things into the current
mobile phone. Not only can I
make a phone call on one, I can
also, for example, take a photo of
a work process I have completed,
write a caption, record a short
audio report to accompany the
image, find some references
online and then email everything
to my tutor or ePortfolio – all with
something that is in my pocket
every waking hour of the day.
This is a game changer in terms of
access to learning and assessment
opportunities. We are still in the
early stages of understanding and
exploring the ways in which
mobile technology can be used
but there is little doubt that it will
soon be mainstream in learning
and teaching.
Try things out. Make the teaching more interesting for yourself. If you
are engaged, then you are more likely to engage your students. Many
people who are avid practitioners in eLearning confess to being very
reticent when they started. Like their students, they were fearful of the
unknown, sure that they were far less capable than everyone else and didn't
want to reveal their perceived shortcomings in public. Once they took the
first step, however, they realised that they had crossed the highest hurdle,
that they could cope and that there was a lot of enjoyment to be had in this
new exploration.
Use the models described to gain a better understanding of the elements
that affect the design of eLearning and remember to ask for help from peers
and from WCEL.
References
California State University, Chico. (2003) Rubric for Online Instruction. Retrieved June 1,
2009, from http://www.csuchico.edu/celt/roi/.
Costa, A. and Kallick, B. (1993). Through the Lens of a Critical Friend. Educational
Leadership, 51(2), 49-51.
Neuhauser, C. (2004). A Maturity Model: does it provide a path for online course design?
The Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 3(1).
Salmon, G. (2004). E-Moderating: The key to teaching & learning online (2nd ed.). London:
Routledge Falmer.
1 September
1.00-3.00
Moodle One: Getting Started with Resources
8 September
1.00-3.00
Moodle Two: Paper Settings & Communication
15 September
1.00-3.00
Moodle Three: Assessment Tools in Moodle
22 September
1.00-3.00
Moodle Four: Groups and Groupings
December TBA
WCELfest
Book through iWaikato (My Work > Staff Development > Coming Events)
• 11 •
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
Dianne Forbes, SOE
Paper Administration and
Management area
“Please read this first”
This is a space, ideally placed near the
top of the Moodle paper, where students
can be reminded about any face-to-face
meetings to attend; textbooks to
purchase; and how to navigate around
the paper, and seek help. The intention
of this communication is to help
students to get started. Use a Moodle
text or web resource to create this.
Lecturer contact details
Again, near the top of the Moodle paper,
it is a good idea to let students know
who is teaching the paper, what their
role is (e.g. coordinator, lecturer, tutor),
and the preferred means of contact.
Office hours on campus can be
specified here, along with lecturer
preferences regarding communication
within Moodle. For example, students
can be advised to use the „can anyone
help?‟ area and individual tutorial
dialogue for most communication, in
preference to email; and to phone or
email for more urgent communication.
Lecturers can proactively advise
students of when they will be available
and how often they might be expected
to check into the Moodle class.
Paper outline
A PDF or Word document with all the
official information about the paper can
be uploaded to Moodle, saving
photocopying budgets and lost copies
and ensuring that all paper information
is available from one place.
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
Dianne is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Professional Studies in Education. She
has taught online in ClassForum and Moodle for seven years, and teaches Bachelor of
Education students in areas of ICT, information literacy, pedagogy and learning theory.
Email: [email protected].
Recently, we have received favourable feedback from students in the
School of Education in regard to our communication in Moodle. Students
have informed us of what is clear and helpful to them as they navigate
multiple papers in Moodle. The following is a list of recognised strategies,
popular in the School of Education, and likely to be of wider use across
disciplines.
Current information
Begin with a “This week” section, at the top of the paper. Each week, this
can be updated with clear bullet pointed notes on what is expected of
students for the week ahead, including reminders about open discussion
forums, assignments due, and so on. Students‟ attention can be drawn to the
change of message by the addition of an animated gif each week. When the
image changes, students know the message has changed, and this is
confirmed by dating each weekly message.
If further explanatory detail is needed, a weekly News forum message can
be sent to students and archived via Moodle. This is a good place for
lecturers to inform students if they will be offline or unavailable for more
than one day during the week ahead.
Sections
Divide the paper into clear sections, with all
sections preferably visible before the paper
begins, so that students can anticipate what
is coming up and can plan accordingly.
Useful sections include an Administration
section – with notes on how to begin
(usefully titled „Please read this first‟), as
well as lecturer contact details, and the
official paper outline.
“
(Ko & Rossen, 2004, p.210)
• 12 •
Help area
Frequently asked questions or FAQ
Using the glossary tool in Moodle, it is
possible to assemble a set of questions
and answers based on frequent queries
about online classwork. This can be
added to cumulatively, as new concerns
come to light. For example, FAQ might
dispense with such concerns as „How
much time should I be spending on this
paper?‟ and „What do I do if I know I
cannot complete my assignment on
time?‟
“Can anyone help?”
This space can be set up as a forum for
general queries and requests for
assistance. Students can be invited with
the reminder that “often, the only „silly‟
question is the one you didn't ask!”
Students can be directed to ask
questions that they think may be useful
for others to know the answer to as well.
This area can be used to harness the
power of peer tutoring since often fellow
students will be on-hand to answer a
student‟s question more promptly than
the lecturer is. Thus, „Can anyone help?‟
is a space for students to help each
other, while monitored by the lecturer.
This space is kept clear and tidy if
students are directed to ask their
question by adding a new discussion
topic to the forum, with the question in
the subject line. Useful questions and
answers can be added to the FAQ for
the next instance of the paper.
Q&A areas for each assignment
Where a paper has multiple pieces of
assessment, it can be helpful to have a
s epar at e hel p s pac e f or eac h
assignment. This way, all of the
di s c us s i on ar ound a pa r t ic ul ar
assignment is contained and recorded
for the whole class, ensuring that
students who check the Q&A have all
the trouble-shooting covered, and avoid
repeating questions that have already
been answered, which is helpful and
efficient for all. This can be particularly
useful when there are several lecturers
teaching the same paper, as it
moderates advice between team
members, ensuring consistency.
Separate areas for each assignment
mean that a student who has raced
ahead to think about the second
assignment will not cross over with the
queries of those who are still working on
the first assignment.
• 13 •
Include a specific Help‟ section where students can access the Moodle
help files; FAQ; a general query or „Can anyone help?‟ area; Q&A areas
for each assignment; a forum for „Good ideas to share‟; a Café; and an
individual tutorial dialogue.
Separate sections can also be used for discussions, assignments, and
online resources, the latter including links to websites, readings,
presentations and podcasts, so it becomes a virtual class library. These
elements are described in more detail in the boxes at the end of this article.
Section headings and labels can be usefully employed to clarify important
structural aspects of a paper. Colour and highlighting can help to draw
students‟ attention to information. Labels can be used to insert brief
reminders or explanations - e.g. to explain the timing of teaching recess,
and to add dates. To insert a label, see the “add a resource” menu.
Communications
It is advisable to keep all communication within Moodle, as far as possible.
In particular, email communication outside of class should be discouraged.
This way, lecturers are able to track communication easily, and choose
when to „attend class‟ by logging into Moodle in order to deal with the
daily business of the class. Anyone who has taught multiple papers
simultaneously in Moodle, particularly with large undergraduate classes,
will be familiar with how soon one becomes overwhelmed by student
emails. If students are instead advised to communicate via Moodle,
principally in the „Can anyone help‟ and individual tutorial dialogue areas,
then the lecturer can attend class in order to respond to queries, avoiding an
unmanageable flood of emails. An additional benefit of this system is that
all communications are archived in Moodle for later reference.
Of course, for this to be fair and effective, it is vital that lecturers log in to
Moodle regularly. With a fully online paper this will be at least once a day,
but may vary depending on the traffic in the paper. Lecturers can also
manage student expectations by clarifying at the outset how frequently
messages will be checked.
Otherwise, if student queries go unanswered, it stands to reason that they
will attempt other, additional means of contact. When students know that
they can count on the lecturer/s to answer a query within 24 hours, they are
less likely to start emailing, phoning and instant messaging in order to get
one question answered.
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
“Good ideas to share”
This is a forum to share any good ideas
that students or staff may come across
during the paper that they think others
would benefit from also. Resources,
readings, weblinks, information about
seminars and so on, can all be shared
by adding a new discussion topic.
Individual tutorial dialogue
Setting up a dialogue for each student in
the class enables one-to-one
communication. Students can be asked
to keep lecturers informed of difficulties
in this area, or to request extensions, or
to ask questions that are more individual
in nature than those for „can anyone
help?‟ Lecturers can in turn contact
students via this area, and can activate
email notifications, ensuring that all
messages are delivered to the students
while retaining a copy in the dialogue.
Encouraging communication via this
space enables all of the interactions to
be archived and preserved within
Moodle, as a useful record.
Resources
Podcasts
Podcasts are a great way to add variety
and humanity to communication in
Moodle. Podcasts with audio and visual
elements can be added to the paper,
and students can subscribe to these.
These are useful for presenting minicommentaries about a particular piece
of coursework; or for „talking students
through‟ an assignment for example.
Students enjoy hearing the lecturer‟s
voice for a limited time. Colleagues in
the School of Education employ
„conversational podcasts‟ to talk
together about the classwork, so that
the students can watch their lecturers
interacting, discussing and celebrating
as they progress through the course
(Rosina Merry and Sara Archard, 2008).
Despite this, it is important to acknowledge that there are times when a
student will contact a lecturer via phone or by dropping by the office. This
may be simply a matter of preference, or may be due to difficulties with
Moodle access. It is good to accommodate this flexibly, and in these cases
the lecturer might consider asking the student to follow up their phone call
or visit by noting the key ideas discussed in their individual tutorial, so that
once again, the communication returns to Moodle and a record is kept.
Teacher Presence
There is a vast and growing literature on online teaching and learning, and
a great deal of attention is paid to our presence as teaching staff in an
online environment. As Hammond (2005) points out, we need to signal our
presence online. Signalling our presence indicates that we are attending
with interest, listening to students, and teaching. When working in Moodle,
listening cannot be silent. Silence is read as absence. Listening must be
active, and presence must be actively signalled.
To signal presence, lecturers can:
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
Begin with a welcoming presence - contact info; photos; share some
personal info; express excitement at working with the students (Fisher,
2003; Palloff & Pratt, 2001)
Establish a pattern of frequent, quick response (Fisher, 2003; Ko &
Rossen, 2004)
Let students know when you will be offline (even for a day or two)
Hold online office hours (Fisher, 2003)
Monitor the Q&A section
Make announcements
Provide frequent encouragement
Turn assignments around rapidly
Initiate, maintain, and facilitate discussion by being actively involved
(Fisher, 2003; Ko & Rossen, 2004; Palloff & Pratt, 2001; Salmon,
2003)
Know when to use „wait time‟ in order to allow others to respond,
giving alternative points of view, and so as to avoid dominating the
class. However, for this to be effective it is still vital that teaching staff
monitor the Moodle class, lurking in order to maintain awareness of the
“momentum, and mood of class” (Fisher, 2003, p.115); and that
lecturers are ready to teach.
• 14 •
Discussions
Online discussions (Moodle forum)
Donaghy, McGee, Ussher, and Yates
(2003) identified a strong link between
the lecturer‟s level of interaction and the
student‟s enthusiasm. It is clear that
students want lecturers to contribute to
online discussion and to respond to
student queries. Students value areas
such as 'Can anyone help?' where they
can get fast responses from lecturers or
fellow students, and where they should
know that a) their response will be
answered within a few hours; and b) a
lecturer is monitoring the area so if a
response is answered by a classmate,
the lecturer will check the accuracy of
the advice. In online discussions,
students expect lecturer involvement to:
Through effective communication in Moodle, we as staff model
expectations for professional behaviour and quality of work (Fisher,
2003; Ko & Rossen, 2004; Palloff & Pratt, 2001). We give our students a
good deal, and they in turn reciprocate with enhanced motivation and
learning.
References
Donaghy, A., McGee, C., Ussher, B., & Yates, R. (2003). Online teaching and learning: A
study of teacher education students’ experiences. Hamilton: Wilf Malcolm Institute of
Educational Research, University of Waikato.
Fisher, M. (2003). Designing courses and teaching on the web: A “how-to” guide to
proven, innovative strategies. Maryland: ScarecrowEducation.
▪
be regular - every second day
▪
help discussion to flow well
▪
moderate tangents
▪
model requirements
▪
communicate enthusiasm and
interest
Ko, S., & Rossen, S. (2004). Teaching online: A practical guide. Boston, New York:
Houghton Mifflin Company.
▪
ask questions; probe; challenge;
introduce new ideas to think about
▪
give an opinion
Merry, R., & Archard, S. (2008). Podcasting – different ways of teaching and learning.
WCELfest 2008. Retrieved from http://edlinked.soe.waikato.ac.nz/upload/media/
WCELfest08/Podcasting-video.m4v.
▪
share additional resources
(readings, web links…)
▪
encourage comments - respond to
individuals
▪
value opinions
The Café
Virtual office hours and class meetings
can be held via synchronous chat in a
Moodle chatroom which can be
relabelled as a „café‟ or similar,
depending on the intent. Students might
be invited to participate for a short time
on a regular or irregular basis in the café
chat, and times of meetings can be
varied to suit the class. These might be
optional meetings where students can
drop in if they wish to discuss the
classwork or upcoming assignments.
• 15 •
Hammond, M. (2005). A review of recent papers on online discussion in teaching and
learning in higher education. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 9(3).
Retrieved September 21, 2006, from http://www.sloanc.org.ezproxy.waikato.ac.nz:2048/publications/jaln/v9n3/v9n3_hammond.asp.
Palloff, R., & Pratt, K. (2001). Working with the virtual student. In Lessons from the
cyberspace classroom (pp. 107-124). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Salmon, G. (2003). E-moderating: The key to teaching and learning online (2nd ed.).
London and New York: Routledge Falmer.
Make a space at your place for teaching
Some of the best learning happens through conversation and most of
the working life of academics is focused around the department. So
why not make the occasional space for conversation about teaching
in your department?
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
Derek White, WCEL
Waikato Centre for eLearning - Pokapū eAko o Waikato
You probably know that the Waikato Centre for eLearning (WCEL pronounced Whistle) was established at the end of 2007 to coincide with
the institutional roll-out of Moodle. You probably also know that we
provide support for staff in using Moodle but you may not be aware of the
other things we do and how we fit into the rest of the University. Some
common misconceptions include that we are primarily focused on technical
support, that we only support Moodle or that we only provide support for
teaching and learning. By way of clarification, the following is an
overview of our key responsibilities, the types of services we provide and
where we fit into our University.
Responsibilities
The Centre has five primary areas of responsibility
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
Leadership advice to the institution on strategic and organisational
matters related to eLearning
Professional development and support for staff in the effective use of
technology for teaching and learning
Investigation, development and management of innovative and
emerging eLearning environments and technologies
Facilitation and support for eLearning research
eLearning leadership and representation within the tertiary sector and
other external communities on behalf of the University
Who we are
WCEL is made up of technical and academic staff since one of our primary
functions is to bridge the learning and teaching domain and the technical
domain in relation to centrally supported eLearning environments and
technologies. Our current staff include:
▪
▪
▪
▪
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
Derek White - Team Leader / eLearning Designer
Teresa Gibbison - Moodle Specialist
Dean Stringer - eLearning Technologist
Nigel Robertson - eLearning Designer
• 16 •
Systems we support
Open
Educational
Resources,
Creative
Commons Licences and Open
Source Programs all point to
cultural
changes
over
the
ownership of knowledge. We often
say that we stand on the shoulders
of giants. Well, if we do, then do we
have the right keeping what we
have learned to ourselves? If a
university is a fount of knowledge
at the heart of its community then
people are saying that it should
spread that goodness around and
let the knowledge burst forth. Sites
such as YouTube, Flickr and
Slideshare among many others
demonstrate the wealth of material
available from all domains,
including
education.
For
educational materials, start by
exploring MIT, Open University,
Merlot and WikiEducator. Please
see links on pages 29 and 31.
WCEL is the institutional business owner of a number of eLearning
systems and technologies:
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
eLearn - the main Moodle site for teaching and learning
Moodle Innovation - a site for staff who wish to experiment with
additional third party plug-ins
Moodle Train - a site to support professional development and staff
training across the university
My Papers - the portal gateway within iWaikato for every paper taught
at the university
Google Apps - the Google suite of collaborative tools
CourseCast lecture and desktop capture tool
In addition to these, we provide support for staff using a host of other
learning technologies to meet teaching and learning needs.
If you are interested in any of these environments or want to discuss how
you can effectively use emerging technologies in your teaching, please
contact us.
How WCEL fits in with other areas of the university
WCEL is a central unit of the University, independent of the academic
units or ITS.
Our main relationships with other areas of the University are as follows:
▪
▪
▪
• 17 •
Delivery of professional development - we work in partnership with the
Teaching Development Unit (TDU) and the HR Professional
Development Unit (PDU).
Learning technology adoption - we have membership on the
Educational Technology Committee, the ICT Managers‟ Advisory
Group and maintain a close relationship with Teaching Technology
Group (a division of ITS).
Development of eLearning technologies and systems - we play a coordinating and leadership role with other developers from ITS and
academic units.
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
▪
▪
▪
eLearning teaching practice - we have membership on the Teaching
Quality Committee and roles within subcommittees developing policy
around teaching and learning and quality enhancement.
Technical support - we provide training to ITS Service desk in their
role as first tier support for eLearning systems. They in turn direct calls
through to us that they are unable to resolve directly. We also work
with distributed consultants in schools to support them in assisting staff
locally (relative to the particular roles that these staff play within each
school).
Student support - we maintain student help documentation and provide
assistance to academic staff and student support staff within Student
Learning Support services, Library and Service Desk areas in their
responsibility to support students to effectively use technology in
learning and study.
Externally, we represent the university within the national eLearning
Directors group (eLD), Australasian Council of Open, Distance and
eLearning (ACODE), the Moodle Universities Aotearoa (MUA) and the
Moodle development community. We are also involved in a number of
cross institutional projects to support eLearning in the broader education
sector.
Services we provide to staff
The centre provides the following services to staff:
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
Support in using eLearning tools effectively
Support for the setup and administration of eLearning Environments
and tools (Moodle, Google Sites, etc)
Consultancy for the development of effective eLearning courses,
materials and resources
Assistance in developing effective strategies for teaching in eLearning
contexts
Customised workshops for the development of specific eLearning skills
Facilitation of eLearning knowledge sharing between staff
Investigation of innovative solutions for eLearning requirements
• 18 •
▪
Do you have websites
that you go to somewhat
regularly, to see what has changed?
It could be a news site, a weather
site or maybe a writer who posts
every now and again. RSS or Really
Simple Syndication is a technology
that lets you select a source or feed
and then have everything from that
source fed to you. You don't need
to go there again, instead you wait
and as soon as something on that
site is updated, your feed reader
will pull it down to you. Once you
get your head round what it does, it
can fundamentally change the way
that you access certain parts of the
web.
Departmental eLearning reviews to support changes in eLearning
practice
▪
Support in conducting eLearning research
Our home site: http://online.waikato.ac.nz
Our Blog: http://online.waikato.ac.nz/blog
Read, comment and contribute to the WCEL blog. Recent posts have
looked at Wikipedia, Designing and Sustaining Creative Communities,
Digital Learning Resources, and Prospects for broadband in NZ.
Our Twitter Address: http://twitter.com/wcel
Supervision Conversations
Beside news sites, blogs are a
classic user of RSS feeds. Subscribe
to the RSS feed of a blog and then
you check one place - your feed
reader - and you will be able to
access all past and new content
that the feed delivers. Many other
tools now utilise RSS feeds to make
access to their materials easier,
including podcasts, wikis and Flickr.
See Google Reader http://
www.google.com/reader for an
easy web based feed reader.
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
• 19 •
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
Nigel Robertson, WCEL
The Google brand has become ubiquitous when we think of computing. In
2008, students at the University of Waikato had their email transferred to
Gmail, Google‟s online email service. As part of this, students also
received access to several of Google‟s other web based tools, collectively
known as Google Apps (Applications). These include word processing,
spreadsheet, presentation, calendars, text and voice live chat, and website
creation tools.
Later this year we will make Google Apps (not Gmail) available to all staff;
something which signals a significant change in the way we think about
some of the common programs we use.
Many staff will be unfamiliar with these tools and may ask what
the difference is between these and the Office applications installed
on their computer. Firstly, these applications are available from
any computer with an internet connection, making work more
flexible. More importantly, outputs can be shared and collaborated
on, providing many opportunities for learning and teaching,
streamlining work activities, and promoting and collaborating on
research. These include developing group work, supporting peer
review, being used as a presentation platform as well as working
cross-institutionally or with external partners.
Google Docs is the key tool in the Application Suite and is likely to be the
most used by people. It consists of four office type products, all available
from the same page. These are:
▪ Documents (word processing)
▪ Presentation (similar to PowerPoint; Keynote)
▪ Spreadsheet (similar to Excel)
▪ Form (create online forms that record data in spreadsheets)
Collectively, these four products are known as Google Docs, individually
as Google Presentations, Google Forms, etc.
Google Docs allows you to create content (as you might expect) and share
with colleagues using your normal University login. No more multiple
copies of documents, with someone trying to amalgamate the changes to
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
• 20 •
Web
browsers
have
allowed us to bookmark
(or favourite) websites
that we visit so that we
can easily access them
again. This was fine when people
worked on one computer. Now we
might have a work computer, one
at home and maybe a laptop that
we take when travelling. I would
never remember to save a link to
that really useful website on all of
these machines. Now services like
Delicious and Diigo let me save all
my bookmarks online.
It now
doesn’t matter what computer I
saved the bookmark from, it is
available to me on any computer
with Internet access. This makes
me more efficient and mobile. I can
even access these bookmarks from
the lecture theatre when I am
presenting.
Where does the social bit come in?
Not only do I have an online
collection of bookmarks, I can share
them with others, as well as
accessing their bookmarks too.
When I save an online bookmark, I
will add multiple tags or keywords
that make sense to me in my
context. I am able to search against
these tags, not just in my
bookmarks, but in everything that
has used this keyword. I now have
access to the searching skills of
many, many others. I can also link
to people that I trust to save useful
links, so I have some informal
quality assurance on what I am
about to view. This can help reduce
the information overload that
Google can give us when we search
for a term.
Most social bookmarking tools are
now quite richly featured and they
are increasingly used in education
in both simple and innovative ways.
Delicious http://delicious.com/
Diigo http://www.diigo.com
• 21 •
them. Instead, everyone can make their changes to the one document (see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRqUE6IHTEA). These changes are
reversible and files can be printed or exported in a variety of formats. All
the tools allow permissions to be set to determine who can access them and
whether they can edit or just view them.
Google Sites is a tool that allows you to very easily create and edit web
pages without needing web authoring skills. It is a wiki type product with
the ability to easily embed any of the other Google products as well as
images, links, videos and a whole range of other things. A wiki can be a
hard thing to describe if you haven‟t seen or used one before (see http://
www.youtube.com/v/-dnL00TdmLY). It is a collaborative environment so
work is made very easy for teams and groups.
Some staff have already been using Google Sites with their students,
getting them to create websites, analogous to creating a class presentation.
Other staff have created pages to support projects and information
distribution while some working parties and research groups have been
collaborating through the use of Google Docs.
We are currently seeking more staff to begin exploring how Google Apps
can be used to enhance existing and enable new work, research, and
teaching and learning practices. We will use these experiences to help
support the roll out of Google Apps to all staff. Contact Nigel or Derek in
the WCEL team for further information. (ext. 4794 or ext. 4731)
In the interest of cross-campus collaborations
around teaching practice and philosophy, the
Teaching Development Unit is initiating a Teaching
Network. The network will provide a space for
conversation about teaching and aim to foster a
culture which encourages reflective practice and
teaching excellence in support of the work of the
Teaching Quality Committee.
July 21
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
Teresa Gibbison, Moodle Specialist, WCEL Team
Introduction
A glossary is often thought of as a static list of important terms and
concepts. Glossary terms are usually defined by teachers and presented in
a paper for students to read and use as a reference. While this approach can
be useful (particularly where acronyms are often used) the Moodle glossary
tool can be used in a much more dynamic way, providing positive and
active learning experiences with opportunities for collaborative learning.
Moodle has deliberately created the glossary tool as an activity, rather than
a passive resource.
Features of the Moodle Glossary activity
The glossary tool has two primary components – a concept and its
definition. The glossary allows these to be displayed in a variety of ways,
such as simple dictionary style, encyclopaedia style, FAQ and list styles.
The entries can have attachments (such as images) and be searched or
browsed in many different formats. The glossary can be configured to
allow comments and/or ratings.
The Moodle glossary activity also provides an "auto-linking" feature.
When activated this allows individual entries in the glossary to be
automatically linked when the concept word or phrase appears in another
resource or activity (such as forum posts, internal resources and section
summaries) within the same paper.
Using the Random Glossary Entry side block
Using a Random Entry side block configured to one of your
glossaries will display one random entry each time the front paper
page is refreshed or visited. This prompts the student to follow up
on a term or concept they may not know well. Student work can
be made more visible to the class. This helps ensure student
entries are of a high quality when they know their comments may
appear on the front paper page!
Examples of using the Glossary tool
Here are some examples of ways that the Glossary tool has been
used effectively with students. You may want to experiment further and
develop activities that suit your needs.
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
• 22 •
Multi-User
Virtual
Environments or MUVEs
have grown out of the
online gaming arena and
they are an area where
academics can struggle to see the
worth.
The most well known
virtual world in Western culture is
Second Life, probably closely
followed by World of Warcraft.
Universities
worldwide
are
developing presence in Second Life
and this includes several NZ
projects.
What does a virtual world offer
that we can't do in the real world?
A couple of examples are role play
and scenario based learning,
especially where these would
require too many resources to
enable in real life or that would not
otherwise be possible.
Many
medical schools have taken to this
virtual platform to allow training of
doctors, nurses, midwives, etc in
procedures that they couldn't train
for in real life or may only come
across infrequently. Second Life
has a fully functioning economy
and business life; it has a proper
physics engine so objects react as
they would in real life; and it also
has a relatively easy scripting
language so people can design and
build
objects
within
the
environment. Philosophy, politics,
product design, architecture,
machinima, theatre, social science,
languages, tourism, simulation,
biology, physics and programming
are just a few of the ways that
people have used Second Life to
support learning at university level.
See also http://
sleducation.wikispaces.com/
educationaluses and http://
secondlifegrid.net/slfe/educationuse-virtual-world.
SLENZ: http://
slenz.wordpress.com/slenzproject/
• 23 •
 Bibliographic Details
You can use the glossary to record bibliographic information about the
resources on the site and/or the books and other resources you use within
the paper. This is great for auditing and for future reference.
 Book Reviews
Create an entry for each of the relevant books relating to the paper. Include
a picture of the book cover and a review of the book.
 Class Introductions
Create a glossary and ask students to add an entry introducing themselves.
Request that each student provide a short bio with one or more interesting
facts about themselves. Students can upload photos to their entries which
can add a personal touch and helps create a sense of community. This is a
great alternative option to an Introduction Forum and allows you to display
a student entry on the main paper page using the „Random Glossary Entry‟
block.
 Collaborative uses
Assign one or more terms or concepts to each student and ask them to
contribute the definition to a glossary you have created. Also encourage
your students to define and add unfamiliar terms, concepts or ideas they
encounter during the paper.
Request that your students engage with others‟ entries by either refining the
terms, commenting or rating them. You might then transfer the highest
rated or best defined entries to a final class glossary to be kept for use in
future occurrences of the paper. This approach reduces the time required
by teachers to create the glossary resource as the students are contributing
as part of their learning.
 FAQs
A common use of the glossary is a list of Frequently Asked Questions and
relevant answers. This can be built up over several occurrences of a paper
providing you with a useful „self-help‟ resource for your students.
 Language Learning
The glossary tool is often used in language learning to define a word or
phrase in another language. Use the „Term‟ as the English string and the
„Definition‟ as the translated string (or vice versa). Asking your students to
define entries for unfamiliar words or phrases they come across throughout
the paper will encourage them to remember the translations. Include an
audio file with the correct pronunciation.
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
 Presenting content
Create a glossary containing content to be delivered (documents, text, video
or audio files) then take advantage of the auto-linking to present your
content in an alternative way. Add the content to your glossary, ensuring
the „auto-linking‟ option has been enabled, then type the concept word or
phrase within a webpage, text field or forum post. Moodle links that word
or phrase to the glossary entry and when clicked a popup window appears
displaying the glossary entry and content.
 Previous Exam Questions
A glossary is a great place to publish previous exam questions for your
students to ponder. Ensure you refer to the appropriate section of the
current occurrence for further information on each question to ensure
students understand the context.
 Quiz Questions
Online Quizzes mark themselves and can provide instant feedback to
students. This is an excellent way of stimulating students to check their
progress within a paper and help them target areas they may need to work
on. A frequent issue for teachers when creating a quiz is allocating the
time to write the quiz questions.
Why not ask your students to create glossary entries of possible test
questions relating to concepts or ideas they are unfamiliar with. This is a
great way to collect information to be used for quizzes and to get an idea of
what areas your students are struggling with.
 Revision activity
Ask your students to create entries after a lecture or topic review to create a
useful study aid and a framework for further discussion. This is also an
indication of what the students picked up in the lecture and allows you to
ensure their understanding is correct. These entries can then be archived
and used in future occurrences of the paper.
 Shared Resources or Articles
Ask your students to create an entry for any books, websites or articles they
find during the paper that have been useful to them. Ask the students to
explain why the resource has been useful.
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
• 24 •
Considerations when students contribute to a glossary
▪
Ensure you allow duplicate entries where required, for example when
you provide a list of terms to be defined and expect more than one
person to add the definition.
▪
Allow comments and ratings so other students can contribute.
▪
You may want entries to be approved before they are published to the
other class members. Consider providing this access to a student
moderator.
▪
Allowing entries to always be editable allows the contributor the
opportunity to refine their concept definition after the default 30
minutes.
References
Glossary Module. (2009, May 12). Moodle Docs Glossaries#Collaborative_glossaries.
Retrieved May 12, 2009, from http://docs.moodle.org/en/.
Rice W. H. (2006). Moodle E-Learning Course Development. Birmingham, UK: Packt
Publishing Ltd.
Rice W. H. (2007). Moodle Teaching Techniques. Birmingham, UK: Packt Publishing Ltd.
eLearning Innovation Pilots
Earlier this year, WCEL put out a call for staff to develop eLearning pilots that would
extend the uses of eLearning. We have been excited and gratified by the
response. These pilots will run during Semester B or Summer School. They explore a
wide range of methods to enable or enhance learning, mediated through technology.
Some of the pilots taking place are:
▪
▪
▪
Microblogging with Twitter to engage and connect students on work based learning
Student created podcasts for reflection
Developing a model of hybrid courses taught to students both on campus and at a
distance
▪ Exploring the development of writing through the collaborative use of Google
Documents
▪ Using Google Sites and Moodle for student created content in language learning
▪ Developing a photo gallery in Moodle for display and comment on image collections
▪ Developing diagnostic testing of literacy skills using Library tutorials and Moodle
▪ Increasing staff skills in using Interactive Whiteboards
▪ Exploring tools to support maths teaching in Moodle
We will report on these pilots after they are complete and hopefully some will lead to
presentations at this year’s WCELfest in December.
WCEL Team
• 25 •
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
Nigel Robertson, WCEL
eLearning as a term is relatively new and there are indications that it is
starting to fall from favour among practitioners in this domain. Although
antecedents can be traced back to the beginning of the 20th century, since
the 1960s we've moved through computer assisted instruction, computer
based instruction, computer based training, computer assisted learning,
courseware, hypermedia, instructional technology and so on. All of these
were based around learners working on stand-alone computers, using
installed programs and later via cd-roms, generally within an instructional
design paradigm.
The development of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 was
the precursor to a paradigm shift in the ways computers were used to
support learning. It allowed communication and interaction between
participants as well as a move to web based programs. The end of the 20th
century saw the rise the terms „virtual learning environments‟, „learning
management systems‟, „managed learning environments‟ and „online
learning‟. eLearning was coined around 1999 and tried to encompass the
widening range of interaction and personalisation that the web and
computers offered for learning.
Change in computing technology is rapid and the early part of
this decade saw the development of what we know as Web2.0 or
the read-write web. This is actually the state that Berners-Lee
had intended; however, the first iteration of the web was a static
beast. In general, people could read what was on a website but
not contribute to it. Web pages were written by experts in
computing language that most users didn't aspire to, nor did they
have the opportunity to develop and host their own websites.
Web2.0 was a change from transmission to participation;
suddenly anybody with access to the web became able to create
and publish content online. Tools such as wikis and blogs meant
that this was possible with no knowledge of HTML and with no
need for expensive hosting. The key element in Web2.0 though
was the opportunity for other people to interact with that content
and to collaborate on its development. This is also crucial to a
view of the current direction that eLearning is taking and mirrors
the educational mores of learning, i.e. active versus passive;
creation versus transmission; and learner centred versus teacher
centred. The related language of education is also changing with
terms such as „technology enhanced (or enabled) learning‟ and
„learning in technology rich environments‟ being used.
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
• 26 •
Wikis are collaborative
websites where users can
work together to create content.
They are easy to use, need no
coding and have a special feature
of saving each revision to the site.
This means that it is always
possible to revert to an earlier
version if need be. In education, it
also means that a teacher can
review the development of a wiki
and see the changes that have
been made and who made them.
Wikis are good for the
development of group and whole
cohort projects.
Use them
following the same rules for other
group projects. Critical faculty,
argument and justification are
supported through using wikis
with groups.
Google Applications contains a
wiki type tool called Sites. It is
currently available to students
here and will soon become
available for staff to use. Some
staff have already been using Sites
to
expand
the
learning
opportunities for their students.
Other concurrent changes in technology are also having major influences in
how education adopts, adapts and utilises computing. Miniaturisation has
allowed mobile devices such as phones and MP3 players to become usable
devices for interaction with web and multimedia content. Coupled with
increasing access to high speed networks and wireless means we have
ubiquity of access. No longer are we deskbound when using the web - it's
becoming anytime, anyplace, anyhow. We shouldn't ignore the access
divides that still exist though. Broadly these are:



High speed access is not yet universal in New Zealand and
performance is not good relative to other OECD nations
NZ Internet access is expensive, as are mobile data plans, reducing
access for the less well off
Accessibility for people with disability is not given due importance.
New Zealand lags behind the USA and the UK in its response to
these needs within all levels of education.
So where are educators going in the current environment?
From primary to tertiary, educators who adopt new technologies still look
to theory and application as developed by the likes of Vygotsky, Dewey,
Knowles, Bruner, Freire and Papert. They seek opportunities to create,
communicate and collaborate in order to help learners develop their own
understanding. This aligns with the results from the eLearning survey that
WCEL conducted last year where our learners identified quite strongly that
they wanted these same things as well as the ability to gauge their own
learning progress. Educators have discovered that the online world offers a
multitude of opportunities to support these themes.
Creativity allows our learners to be active rather than passive and to
develop their thinking in what should be real and authentic ways rather than
rote retellings of lecture content. Papert notes that the act of construction
better supports constructivist models; it's not just knowing something, but
the act of doing something with it that more deeply embeds the learning.
Web2.0 has enabled learners to actively create online with tools such as
blogs, wikis, virtual worlds and digital storytelling.
Constructing knowledge can be accomplished in a solitary fashion.
However, most people are more successful when they have input from
others and can test their own ideas against those of others. This places
learning in a social context which current online technologies support by
enabling multiple modes of communication. Tools that are being used in
this context include blogs, digital storytelling, social bookmarking and
discussion boards.
• 27 •
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
Collaboration requires communication and similarly it allows greater
development of one‟s own thinking. Parties in a collaborative exercise
need to justify their arguments and ideas as well as evaluate them and
others within the context of the exercise. The ability to compromise to
accomodate the needs of the group is also a skill that employers require.
These ideas have gained traction in face-to-face teaching over the last
decade or so and computers support this mode quite easily. In fact, for the
educator, it is often possible to track the contribution of different parties in
the group as well as the development of the final piece of work. Wikis
have been the most used online collaborative tool but others include social
bookmarking, Google Docs, digital storytelling, virtual worlds and some
mind-mapping tools.
For many years, teaching and learning in universities has taken place
behind closed doors. Collaboration has been between peers and the range
of expert views that students are exposed to can be limited to those within a
particular department. Educators are increasingly seeing the benefits of
taking students outside of these confines and developing more authentic
learning situations. In Canada, Professor Jon Beasley-Murray had heard all
the complaints about the quality of information on Wikipedia. He taught
Latin American literature and decided that by getting his students to
actively contribute to Wikipedia, they would learn about its weaknesses
and strengths as well as the topic he was teaching. There is a report on this
project at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jbmurray/Madness which
contains links to the project itself and more detail on the success of this
endeavour. There are many other examples of academics using real world
situations to make learning more authentic, many of them only possible
through technologies that didn‟t exist ten or fifteen years ago.
14 July
9.00–12.30 Elements of Design and Desktop Publishing
21 July
9.00–10.30 Professional Goal Setting (PGS) for Managers
29 July
9.00—12.00 Effective Meetings
11 August
9.00-12.00 Dealing with People More Effectively
Contact Mike Bell ([email protected]) for details. Book through iWaikato (My Work > Staff Development > Coming Events)
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
• 28 •
Quick Links
Commoncraft ‘Plain English’
videos
Blogs in Plain English
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=NN2I1pWXjXI
Podcasting in Plain English
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y
-MSL42NV3c
RSS in Plain English
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=0klgLsSxGsU
Social Bookmarking in Plain English
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=x66lV7GOcNU
Wikis in Plain English
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnL00TdmLY
Digital Storytelling
VoiceThread
http://voicethread.com/
ePortfolios
Mahara: http://mahara.org/
Open Resources
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/
Creative Commons
http://creativecommons.org/
Creative Commons NZ
http://www.creativecommons.org.nz/
WikiEducator
http://www.wikieducator.org/
Moodle http://moodle.org
Yale http://oyc.yale.edu/
Academic Earth
http://academicearth.org/
MIT OpenCourseWare
http://ocw.mit.edu/
Open University
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/
• 29 •
This move towards having students work in more open arenas is also being
matched by academics working more openly. Access to teachers was once
confined to the four walls of the quadrangle. The Internet has
fundamentally changed this. Stephen Downes and George Siemens ran an
open course on Connectivism at the end of 2008. There were no sign up
fees unless learners wanted formal assessment; it was open to anyone in the
world with internet access and had about 2000 participants. On smaller
scales Professors Alec Couros and Javed Alam both encourage
participation in their university papers by people outside of the university
framework. This allows their students to interact with experts in their
fields while being part of a standard paper. All of this is enabled through
blogs, wikis, Twitter, Ning and web conferencing tools.
Openness is a major trend that is manifested in different ways. Resources
are being shared through the use of licences that are enabling rather than
restrictive. The Creative Commons (CC) movement makes it easy to apply
a license to your work that can allow others to reuse, remix or repurpose
that work. Many, many thousands of pictures, on Flickr for instance, have
CC licenses, allowing us to utilise them to support teaching and learning.
Software such as Moodle is released with Open Source type licences which
allow us to take the code and repurpose it to suit our needs. The
development work that our university has undertaken in Moodle would not
have been possible with a proprietary product. A further element with
many open source tools is the development of a community around them.
Moodle.org is the hub site for Moodle where practitioners and developers
share ideas, problems, strategies and effort so that everyone benefits.
Making artefacts, whether software, images, sounds or writings, easily
available requires a change in culture and attitude for many. Those
changes are happening though and not just by a few 'concerned'
individuals. Major players in the education field are promoting the
development and release of Open Educational Resources (OERs). Yale,
MIT, the Open University UK are three universities that have been making
content available online for some time now. iTunesU is a project to allow
universities to expose more content through the fairly ubiquitous iTunes
player. Our own university is likely to be only the second NZ university to
make some of its content available in this way. In the UK all projects
funded by JISC must now make their outputs available through JORUM
which then becomes available to all UK universities. The Commonwealth
of Learning, an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth
Heads of Government encourages the development and sharing of open
learning and distance education, knowledge, resources and technologies.
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
As part of the Millennium Development Goals it works on the premise that,
“Knowledge is the key to individual freedom and to cultural, social and
economic development.” To support this it launched the WikiEducator
project http://www.wikieducator.org in 2006. It was originally based in
Auckland and continues to have a strong NZ connection and NZ
contributors. Educators contribute resources to WikiEducator and they
become free to use by anyone. There is a wealth of material out there
(Alsagoff, 2008) that you can tap into to support your teaching. By
contributing, you return something to the community and support the tenet
of human rights that education is for everyone.
A final area that I‟ll mention is reflection for learning. Instead of
producing students who know the answer to questions that have been asked
for some time past, we should support learners to become thinkers, critical
of their own understanding and more able to answer questions that haven‟t
yet been thought of. Many professions, for example teaching and
medicine, require practitioners to be reflective and to continuously consider
what is best in an ever changing environment. One online method that
educators have been using to support reflective learning has been the
creation of ePortfolios by students. The making of a purposeful collection
of material can provide evidence of learning progress. Exposing different
views of this material or using it to support a commentary about their
understanding of a subject can enable a much richer experience for
learners. The reflection can come from revisiting work, deciding what is
relevant in context, and structuring a view of this material appropriate for
the intended audience. Used within a lifelong learning framework,
ePortfolios can support assessment tasks, job applications and further
learning. ePortfolio material can be collected from essays, blogs,
discussions, video, images, audio, and many other sources.
All in all, the themes that educators increasingly see
as important within eLearning and education as a
whole are: greater openness; learner centred
teaching and learner owned learning; increased
access and increased flexibility of access; more
authenticity through real world learning,
simulation and role play; and the recognition that
there is a wealth of experience and expertise that
can be accessed online. These changes provide
great opportunities for us as educators.
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
• 30 •
Jorum http://www.jorum.ac.uk/
Merlot http://taste.merlot.org/
iTunesU
http://www.apple.com/
education/mobile-learning/?
ref=http://itunes.com
SlideShare
http://www.slideshare.net/
YouTube
http://www.youtube.com
Personal Learning Networks
Twitter http://twitter.com
References
Alam, J. (2008). Infotechtools for Engineers [Youngstown State University,
Ohio]. Retrieved June 6, 2009, from http://infotechtools.ning.com/
Alsagoff, Z. (2008). University Learning = OCW + OER = FREE! Retrieved June 6, 2009,
from http://zaidlearn.blogspot.com/2008/06/university-learning-ocw-oer-free.html
Beasley-Murray, J. (2008). Was introducing Wikipedia to the classroom an act of
madness leading only to mayhem if not murder? Retrieved June 6, 2009, from http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jbmurray/Madness
Commonwealth of Learning. (n.d.). COL and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Retrieved June 6, 2009, from http://www.col.org/progServ/programmes/Pages/
mdg.aspx
Ning http://www.ning.com/
Social Bookmarking
Delicious http://delicious.com/
Diigo http://www.diigo.com
Couros, A. (2009). Computers in the Classroom: Appropriate Curriculum and Instruction
Related to Computer Technology [University of Regina, Canada]. Retrieved June 6, 2009,
from http://eci831.wikispaces.com/
Downes, S. & Siemens, G. (2008). Connectivism. Retrieved June 6, 2009, from http://
ltc.umanitoba.ca/wiki/Connectivism
Virtual Worlds
SecondLife
http://www.secondlife.com/
Various authors. (n.d.) Tim Berners-Lee. Retrieved June 6, 2009, from http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee.
SecondLife
http://
sleducation.wikispaces.com/
educationaluses
SecondLife
http://secondlifegrid.net/slfe/
education-use-virtual-world
World of Warcraft
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=rZ3Zn_VEV20
Second Life Education New
Zealand
http://slenz.wordpress.com/slenzproject/
• 31 •
JULY 2009 • TDU TALK
Developing teaching excellence
Same places,
different spaces
ASCILITE 2009, the 26th conference in the
series, is in Auckland City, Aotearoa New
Zealand for the second time in the history of
the Society.
Ascilite 2009 reflects on the emergence of
multiple spaces in our personal and learning
environments. The themes are:
BlendedSpace
Virtual Space
SocialSpace
MobileSpace
WorkSpace
December 6-9, 2009
www.waikato.ac.nz/hrm/pd/wil/wilday.shtml
Contact Mike Bell ([email protected])
www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/auckland09/
ascilite 2009
Wednesday 30 September - Friday 2 October 2009
Palmerston North Campus of the Universal College of Learning
http://efest-teach-learn.ning.com/
T&[email protected]
ĀHANGA