USING ONLINE DELIVERY CAN ENHANCE THE CAMPUS STUDENT

LEARNING EXPERIENCESARAH HONEYCHURCH

ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT ONLINE LEARNING

• Using technology is bound to enhance the student learning experience

• Students are all digital natives nowadays

• “I’ll just convert my F2F course …”

• “I need to free up some of my time …”

• “That’s an admin job, not an academic one …”

STRUCTURE OF TALK

• Examples of recent blended learning experiments

• Brief evaluation of each

• Some conclusions

BLENDED LEARNING: POS PSYCH & CERE

• 5 x 2 hour F2F “lectures”

• Twitter “back channel”

• PMWiki web pages

• Reading lists

• Lecture slides

• Moodle course

• Group wikis and forums

• Assessed by Group wiki pages and 2 hour exam

• Jigsaw Classroom: collaborative learning facilitated by lecturer and TA

AUDIOTAGGING: PHYS & ASTRO• Lecture content is hard! Handouts provided, lecture provides

examples

• F2F lectures: audio recordings for 6 courses made available to enrolled students

• Beta version of audiotagging tool with demo by lecturer

• Students encouraged (prizes in some cases) to tag lectures (all tags were public)

• Students could “like” other tags

• Attempt to encourage Jigsaw-like interactions

VPAL: USING FACEBOOK GROUPS TO SUPPORT STUDENT LEARNING• Level 3 Maths and Comp Sci

• Level 2 Maths, Comp Sci and Physics

• Level 1 for all schools in Sci & Eng, plus general College group

• “Moderated” by LTC

• Students from higher years/graduates invited to join (dojo type model)

• Pre-registration: basic info about induction, advisers, skills test, reading lists, accommodation …

• Students began organising own F2F (induction, study groups, pub after the last exam)

• Ongoing: links to SLS drop ins and workshops, articles, cartoons, trivia

• Groups virtually self-supporting by this time of year

HOW DID THESE ENHANCE STUDENT LEARNING?

• Psych: students, not the lecturer, became the subject experts (with the help of Prof. Google)

• Wikis as a study resource for all students (students intended using other wikis as exam preparation)

• Twitter: Storify and TAGS (containing links to extra resources)

• Phys & Astro:

• International students could process information at their own speed (focus group comment)

• VPAL:

• home students were able to engage even when off campus

• Non-native speakers could take their time to respond

• Students could get quick answers to “how to” questions (usually from other students!)

• Inclusive environment for all students

CONCLUSIONS

• Online learning can enhance campus student learning experience but:

• Students are not digital natives (are visitors and residents better metaphors? (White))

• Need for careful scaffolding to support student engagement (neo-Vygotskian, Jigsaw)

• Design and delivery of (good) online learning is hard!

• Design before content: think about how to teach before asking what to teach (Mazur)

• Use appropriate pedagogies to make informed choices about available technologies