Online Learning and Collaboration: 09/01/2004

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Community - Education with New Technologies

Registered members pick up your Backpack.

Learning Center: Online learning opportunities

Welcome Center: Information on what's going on here.

Project - SOLE

SOLE

SOLE is a project to undertake an independent evaluation of students' usage of virtual learning environments (VLEs) in higher and further education and draw out the effectiveness of VLEs in supporting different subject areas, different national agendas (such as that of widening participation) and student learning in general.

Research is being carried out at several UK universities and FE colleges, covering a broad range of subjects with diverse online learning requirements. The collaborating LTSN subject centres involved as research partners are: Economics, Psychology, Education, Information and Computer Sciences, Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism. A wide range of dissemination and outreach activities are taking place throughout the life of the project (October 2002 - August 2004). A short report giving an overview of the study is also available.

SOLE is funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) via the Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN) Tranche 2 initiative and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). It is hosted at the Institute for Learning and Research Technology, University of Bristol.

VLE - Constructivist Virtual Learning Environments

Constructivist Virtual Learning Environments

Constructivist learning environments have particular characteristics regardless of students or content. However, when selecting tools to help support virtual learning environments (VLE's) in normal course-based learning situations, the three elements of student demographics, course requirements, and VLE characteristics all impact the decision.

VLE Characteristics

VLE Tool Selection

Saturday, September 25, 2004

E-Learning Workshops - Oxford Brookes

e-Learning courses on demand

This year the workshops on e-learning topics will be run on demand when there is sufficient interest. Workshops will normally be run by Rhona Sharpe or Greg Benfield.

These workshops are designed for all those using e-learning in education and training including teachers, lecturers, trainers, part-time tutors, learning technologists and learner support staff.

If you would like to attend a workshop between January and April 2005, please register your interest by 10 December 2004
If you would like to attend a workshop between May and July 2005, please register your interest by 25 March 2005

Please register your interest in these workshops and express your preference for timing and location with our online interest registration form.

You will be contacted shortly after these cut off dates to make the final arrangements

Understanding e-learning and e-learners

This workshop is not just an introduction to e-learning, but also an opportunity to revisit our personal and shared understandings of what e-learning is and what it means to tutors and learners. The workshop will encourage you to articulate your aims and claims for using technologies in your teaching. Using examples from across the globe, we’ll consider how online learning challenges our design of courses and our assumptions about how best to teach them. We’ll draw on the experiences of learners and tutors to discuss how technologies can be used to enable different types of learning, how e-learning changes the roles of tutors and students and best practice in preparing learners for online courses.

Designing engaging online activities

The key to enhancing teaching and learning online is making use of the enormous potential for interactivity and engagement, whether that’s with the material, the tutor or peers. This workshop considers how best to exploit this potential through well-designed e-learning activities. This is likely to include discussions of how going online influences the design of learning activities and how skills in running face-to-face learning activities transfer to the online course. Online activities do need to be carefully structured and explicit about what is expected and there will be opportunity to consider a variety of activities designed to support various learning tasks such as critical dialogue, collaboration, creative writing, and reflection. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss, explore and design a range of different learning activities to meet specified learning outcomes.

Promoting discussions in online groups

One of the most-cited reasons for using online learning is to promote group interactions, but the experience is too often one of poor participation and low level discussion. This workshop will seek to improve the planning and tutoring of structured online learning activities, through a better understanding of the nature of online interactions. The session will apply recent theoretical developments to promote online communication and collaboration as well as providing practical solutions to practical problems. This is likely to include discussions of software tools to promote group learning, using dialogue to build learning communities, tutor skills for knowledge construction, and assessment of online work.

Online assessment, feedback and tracking

Objective tests are often regarded as inferior to other forms of assessment. They are also, rightly, regarded as difficult to write well. Lately, however, the ready availability of online testing tools in Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) has prompted many lecturers to ask how they can use objective tests to improve student learning. This workshop will look at the benefits and disadvantages of objective testing. Using case studies we will try to identify sound educational purposes for this type of assessment. It will pose and attempt to answer the question, ‘can you test higher order thinking skills using multiple choice questoins?’ Finally, the session will explore some very practical issues:

How to write objective test items
How to design and embed feedback into objective test items to support student learning
How to score them.

We will also look at two important and often overlooked aspects of multiple choice question design: ways of analysing and improving test items, and issues in constructing whole assessments (as opposed to the individual items within them).

Supporting e-learners at a distance

This workshop is designed for lecturers and tutors whose responsibilities now include supporting students who are learning at a distance. The challenge for distance tutors is to create supportive learning environments without the rich verbal and visual cues we usually use in face-to-face teaching. We’ll start by considering how the introduction of distance changes the learning experience for students and tutors and clarify the roles and responsibilities of distance learning tutors. Then we will explore what skills distance tutors and students need to succeed in their roles. The session should give you an opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with other distance learning tutors and develop strategies for dealing with issues specific to distance learning.

Evaluating e-learning innovations

Although the uptake of e-learning and particularly of VLEs has been rapid within education, there are still many questions about how learners interact with them, what the student experience is like and fundamentally – what works? Although this workshop won’t attempt to answer the latter question, it will provide participants with a toolkit of evaluation approaches and techniques which they can use to evaluate their own e-learning innovations. Participants will consider the functions and purposes of their evaluations, be encouraged to specify clear research questions, choose from a variety of approaches to evaluation and consider the appropriateness of a range of data collection methods. Participants should leave with a plan for evaluating their innovations which is valid, rigorous, locally appropriate and achievable.

Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, Oxford Brookes University
Wheatley Campus, Wheatley, Oxford, OX33 1HX
Tel: +44 1865 485910 Fax: +44 1865 485937 Email: ocsld@brookes.ac.uk

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Report - Ferl (Becta) "ICT and e-learning in Further Education"

	ICT and e-learning in Further Education: embedded technology, evolving practice
	By Steve Davies	25 Aug 2004

Summary

This is the full report of the 2004 ILT Survey. This study was carried out in January and February 2004 on behalf of the Learning and Skills Council. The survey seeks to assess progress in the provision of information and learning technology within the sector along with the extent to which this provision is integrated into the teaching and learning process. Four previous studies, undertaken in February 1999, September 2000, September 2001 and February 2003 provide comparative data to judge the impact of the deployment NLN monies for the development of ICT infrastructure and e-learning in the sector.

View or download

ICT and e-learning in Further Education: embedded technology, evolving practice
[left click link above to view OR right click to download]

Microsoft Word
350KB

Download instructions

Right-click (Mac users click-and-hold) on the link.
Choose 'Save Target As...', 'Save Link As..' or 'Download Link to Disk'.
Choose a location to save the file; then click 'Save'.

Problems downloading and installing?

If you are having problems with this resource email us (ferl@becta.org.uk).

Related resources

See related resources under the 'Related resources tab'.

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Academia - Dr Aisha Walker

Dr Aisha Walker

ICT in Education

Telephone: 0113 343 4633
Email: S.A.Walker@education.leeds.ac.uk

Teaching

I teach on the MA ICT in Education . I am also involved in course development using virtual learning environments and can provide input on other courses to develop appropriate pedagogies for teaching and learning with ICT. I am a member of the Institute of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education .

Research Interests

My main research interest is in the educational use of computer-mediated communication, especially synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC). I am in interested in the strategies used by teachers and learners interacting in a CMC environment and how those strategies can be made more effective. I am also interested in the development of roles, relationships and groups in CMC educational contexts and the extent to which the CMC medium offers cognitive and affective benefits to teaching and learning.

As my background is in English Language Teaching - especially English for Academic Purposes - I am also interested in academic literacy and discourse, in particular the ways in which the teaching/learning of these skills may be supported through ICT.

Interaction, Communication and Learning Technologies

I co-ordinate the Interaction, Communication and Learning Technologies Group which brings together people with a common research interest in the interactions that occur between people and between people/computers when technology is used for learning and teaching. Details of our seminars can be found on the ICLT website .

Academia - José Miguel Baptista Nunes

My name is José Miguel Baptista Nunes, and I am a Lecturer in Information Management in the Department of Information Studies at the University of Sheffield.

My current research is focused on the areas of Educational Informatics and Information Systems.

In recent years and in terms of Educational Informatics, I have been particularly interested in the WWW as a learning environment. I am primarily an information systems researcher and, therefore, I am interested in instructional systems design, web-based educational environments design, web based learning environments for active and distance learning, conceptual models for WWW educational environments, networked learning and computer-mediated communication.

In terms of of Information Systems, my main interests are information systems analysis and information and data modelling. Additionnally, I'm a keen observer of developments in computer-supported collaborative work environments, e-business ( including intranets and extranets) and teleworking. More broadly, I have a general interest in organisational behaviour and management of change.

For more information visit:

Friday, September 03, 2004

Academia - Tim Barker

Barker, T. (2003) Collaborative Learning with Affective Artificial Study Companions in a Virtual Learning Environment, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Computer Based Learning Unit, School of Education, The University of Leeds. (pdf, 12Mb, Note: active links in the Contents to appear ASAP, apologies.)
Abstract.This research has been carried out in conjunction with Chapeltown and Harehills Assisted Learning Computer School (CHALCS) and local schools. CHALCS is an ‘out-of-hours’ school in a deprived inner-city community where unemployment is high and many children are failing to meet their educational potential. As the name implies CHALCS provides students with access to computers to support their learning. CHALCS relies on many volunteer tutors and specialist tutors are in short supply. This is especially true for subjects such as Advanced Level Physics with low numbers of students. This research aimed to investigate the feasibility of providing online study-skills support to pupils at CHALCS and a local school. Research suggests that collaborative learning that prompts students to explain and justify their understanding can encourage deeper learning. As a potentially effective way of motivating deeper learning from hypertext course notes in a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), this research investigates the feasibility of designing an artificial Agent capable of collaborating with the learner to jointly construct summary notes. Hypertext course notes covering a portion of the Advanced Level Physics curriculum were designed and uploaded into a WebCT based VLE. A specialist tutor validated the content of the course notes before the ease of use of the VLE was tested with target students. A study was then conducted to develop a model of the kinds of help students required in writing summary notes from the course-notes. Based on the derived process model of summarisation and an analysis of the content structure of the course notes, strategies for summarising the text were devised. An Animated Pedagogical Agent was designed incorporating these strategies. Two versions of the agent with opposing ‘Affectations’ (giving the appearance of different characters) were evaluated with users. It was therefore possible to test which artificial 'character' students preferred. From the evaluation study some conclusions are made concerning the effect of the two opposite characterisations on student perceptions of the agent and the degree to which it was helpful as a learning companion. Some recommendations for future work are then made.

SILA Beta 1.0 Screenshot.

(see www.synthoids.net)
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