This is the fourth in a series of posts aimed at organisations and educational institutions who wish to overhaul existing learning programmes.

Active online participation

The early work of Etienne Wenger, Gilly Salmon and Nancy White* brought to the attention of educators interested in making use of online and remote technologies the benefits of online discussion and the formation of communities to promote learning.  There are a number of ways to engage learners and encourage active participation in an online space. These may include:

1. Support interaction with peers.

One of the strongest areas for engagement, but one that is often overlooked by course designers, is a space that allows learners to offer mutual support and build solidarity in order to increase motivation and reduce feelings of isolation and attrition. This is not the same thing as “cafes” or ice-breaker areas, which are usually unstructured and unmoderated chaotic spaces that often go off-topic. This is a place for learners to feel safe letting their hair down, asking for emotional help and admitting to anxieties.

A good way to approach this is to:

• make the space exclusive to the learners on a particular course
• encourage access by different cohorts to allow for mentorship of newbies
• make the space private from the stifling presence of authorities
• identify enthusiasts from within the peer group to facilitate, moderate and perform admin tasks
• suggest initial topics for discussion to show learners what’s appropriate and to get things rolling

2. Opportunities for questions and feedback

Make sure there’s a place for learners to ask questions and get help and feedback from course tutors and administrators. This should be distinct from the peer support area, which is not monitored by authorities, by focusing more on factual and procedural issues. The key here is to make sure this area is monitored daily and questions are answered promptly. This is a good place to build a FAQ in order to avoid answering the same common questions over and over, but you do need to be patient with repetition.

3. Easy access

The online space needs to allow participation at any time and on any reasonably late-model computer with an internet connection. As the internet gets more and more ubiquitous, most courses in the west can make this a requirement for participation, but be aware of what access issues learner may have, including geographical limitation and disabilities, before setting requirements.

4. Embedded online expectations (for blended courses)

Blended learning is often challenged by being primarily (and historically) a traditional face-to-face course that has online activities added to it as a poor relation.  To make the most of the online aspect of a blended learning course, the whole course needs to be overhauled and rebuilt according to which kind of activities are most appropriate for particular learning goals (please see the first post in this series: 10 First Principles).  The online aspect needs to be as embedded in the course design as the original face-to-face, and the two can be linked through multi-faceted (problem-based) projects, lead-in and follow-up discussions, etc.

5. Knowledge built, shared, recorded

Last but not least, a great benefit to online interaction is that it not only provides a place to build and share knowledge, but also to record it as a resource, evidence and posterity. Learners receive validation by peers, and the chance for participants to bring in their own experience and share good practice from work-based learning can continually develop and challenge ideas. This provides opportunities to expand on course content, and the improving knowledge and deepening understanding turned into a shared resource and reference/knowledge bank.  Developing a record of dialogue over time, discussions can be archived and the process of discussion available for future reference.

* Etienne Wenger, Social Learning theory and Communities of Practice: http://www.ewenger.com; Gilly Salmon, E-Moderation: http://www.atimod.com; Nancy White (Full Circle), Facilitation and Community-building: http://www.fullcirc.com/

This is just a selection of things to think about. Please add  your own suggestions for improving active online participation.

Posts in this series:
1. Updating Learning Programmes I: 10 First Principles
2. Updating Learning Programmes II: Assumptions that form obstacles (DL in HE)
3. Updating Learning Programmes III: Assessment
4. Updating Learning Programmes IV: Active online participation
5. Updating Learning Programmes V: 7 Recommendations

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Nancy Weitz

Nancy is Director at Architela and specialises in internet strategy, collaborative learning and user-centred design

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This is the third in a series of posts aimed at organisations and educational institutions who wish to overhaul existing distance and blended learning programmes.

Assessment

According to the Assessment Reform Group, a task force set up by the British Educational Research Association, formative assessment or “assessment for learning” is a key tool for raising achievement. Improving learning through assessment depends on the provision of effective feedback to learners and a recognition of the profound influence assessment has on motivation — learners need to learn how to assess themselves and understand how to improve (ARG, 1999).¹

Although assessment for learning is increasingly accepted in schools and had been at the heart of the tutorial model of Oxford and Cambridge, most resource-strapped universities have seen formative assessment decline in recent years. However, for distance learning programmes, formative assessment becomes even more important: with little or no face-to-face contact with tutors or facilitators, carefully designed assessment and feedback on assignments are key motivators and indicators of progress (Gibbs and Simpson, 2005).²

Gibbs and Simpson have suggested conditions for supporting learning effectively through assessment. Summarised, these are:

Tasks:

• A sufficient number of assessed tasks must be provided for learners to capture sufficient study time.
• These tasks must be engaged with by learners, orienting them to allocate appropriate amounts of time and effort to the most important aspects of the course.
• Tackling the assessed task must engage learners in productive learning activities of an appropriate kind.

Feedback:

• Sufficient feedback must be provided, often enough, in enough detail and in a timely manner (i.e., while it still matters to learners and in time for them to pay attention to further learning or receive further assistance).
• The feedback must focus on learners’ performance, on their learning and on actions under their control, rather than on the learners themselves and on their characteristics.
• Feedback must be appropriate to the purpose of the assignment, its criteria for success and to learners’ understanding of what they are supposed to be doing.
• Feedback must be attended to and acted upon by the learner.

It is becoming increasingly evident that assessment is a fundamental part of a learning intervention and should not be treated as an afterthought.  Learning activities within programmes can be created as opportunities for formative assessment and establish a feedback loop as key motivators.

¹ Assessment Reform Group. (1999). Assessment for Learning: Beyond the Black Box. University of Cambridge School of Education. http://k1.ioe.ac.uk/tlrp/arg/AssessInsides.pdf

² Gibbs, G, and Simpson, C. (2005). “Conditions Under Which Assessment Supports Students’ Learning.” Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. (pp. 3-31)

Please share your own experience with assessment and feedback.

In the next post, I’ll tackle active online participation.

Posts in this series:
1. Updating Learning Programmes I: 10 First Principles
2. Updating Learning Programmes II: Assumptions that form obstacles (DL in HE)
3. Updating Learning Programmes III: Assessment
4. Updating Learning Programmes IV: Active online participation
5. Updating Learning Programmes V: 7 Recommendations

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Nancy Weitz

Nancy is Director at Architela and specialises in internet strategy, collaborative learning and user-centred design

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This is the second in a series of posts aimed at organisations and educational institutions who wish to overhaul existing learning programmes.

Assumptions that form obstacles

There are often assumptions about teaching and learning embedded in university courses and programmes that can create obstacles to real innovation and change, especially for Distance Learning.  These assumptions are best laid bare in order to understand if they are valid and shared by everyone involved in programme design and delivery.

Often assumptions that get in the way of positive changes are silent legacies, inherited from historical conceptions of educational processes and subtly passed on to students who in turn learn to assume that “this is the way things are”. While the course designers and administrators may be open to new approaches, the teaching staff might be surprised by and resistant to the level of change required by them.

These tacit assumptions often include an emphasis on:

Content over process

This assumption holds that text and other materials that make up the content of the course are of primary importance, and students will take these away and learn them. We do not need to worry about the way students learn what we give them: it is their responsibility as adults to deal with this themselves.

Transmission over shared knowledge-building

This assumption holds that teachers, tutors and course designers are the founts of knowledge and students are there to absorb what they teach, memorise facts and ideas found in the textbooks and get steered towards correct answers. Students bring little or nothing of value to the course that might benefit either the content or the processes of learning.

Individual over group learning

This assumption, especially true in the Humanities disciplines, holds that learning has always primarily been about individual study. The lone student toils away in his or her room and only rarely interacts with other students. Learning is about listening to the teacher, reading texts and writing reports and essays, both of which are done alone and with maximum quiet concentration.

Independence over support

This assumption holds that DL requires a special type of student who can learn on his or her own without needing support beyond the rare contact with a tutor or programme coordinator to clarify a detail. It is a sign of weakness to ask for support, which might show the student to be unfit for the programme.

+++++

In reality, studies* show that:

Process requires as much attention as content

The way students learn is as important as what they learn. There is no single right way to conduct university education, and many factors surrounding the subject, the students and the environment will fit some processes better than others. A range of different processes can spark and retain interest and provide a wide variety of students with at least some ways of learning that they prefer.

Students bring a wealth of knowledge to a course

Shared knowledge-building helps to motivate and interest students and to bring improvement to programmes. Students are able to work with prior knowledge and push that further in practical and effective ways. Shared knowledge-building is a dynamic process that allows for immediate change and adaptation of programmes that may otherwise limp along until a formal review calls for revision of published materials.

Group learning motivates and engages students

Similarly, group learning offers new ways for students to work with knowledge, learn from each other and push themselves further than the materials or their own readings will allow. Group learning bolsters students with peer support and working networks. It also opens up the possibility for new and creative assignments that may model the kind of teamwork they experience on the job.

Distance Learning can provide high standards of programme support

Gone are the days of reliance on telephones and letters for contact between students, tutors and programme support teams. Online communities offer virtual classroom spaces and allow Distance Learning to take advantage of some of the best features of face-to-face learning, such as tutor-student contact. Poor tutor contact can stem from lack of clear expectations, training and/or remuneration for tutors – things that have nothing to do with learning and which have no place being embedded in the design of a programme.

* Vermunt & Verloop, 1999; Gagne, 1970; Johnson & Johnson, 1998; Jacques & Salmon, 2007

I’m sure there are other assumptions that create obstacles— please help by offering more from your own vantage point.

In the next post, I’ll tackle some of the issues surrounding assessment.

Posts in this series:
1. Updating Learning Programmes I: 10 First Principles
2. Updating Learning Programmes II: Assumptions that form obstacles (DL in HE)
3. Updating Learning Programmes III: Assessment
4. Updating Learning Programmes IV: Active online participation
5. Updating Learning Programmes V: 7 Recommendations

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Nancy Weitz

Nancy is Director at Architela and specialises in internet strategy, collaborative learning and user-centred design

Website - Twitter - More Posts