Preface
Are you preoccupied with planning for tomorrow’s lecture and the assignments that need to be graded by next week? Are you also vaguely aware that you could be using the online technologies available at your institution for a bit more than distributing PowerPoint slides or podcasts of your lectures? Perhaps you have no time and little inclination to even think about other online options you could pursue.
Or are you new to teaching, with a few hundred friends on your social networking site, fascinated by the use of microblogging to keep in touch, and excited about using online technologies for education? The possibilities might seem endless, but how do you merge what you know about learning and teaching with what your Head of Department requires and what you would like to explore? Maybe you are still working on your PhD, or have finished it and need to publish, and are pulled in too many different directions at the same time.
The speed at which new options for online teaching and assessing are emerging is breathtaking and the prospect of keeping up with them may seem overwhelming - and perhaps not worth the effort. One of the few certainties in the current higher education environment is that the tools available for extending the depth and breadth of teaching will continue to grow and diversify, underpinned by economic and social forces which impact on all major institutions, including universities. The extreme expectations associated with the promise of virtual universities have proved unrealistic but there has nevertheless been steady progress in the development of university policies, standards and infrastructure relating to online learning. The rate of progress is usually a few steps (or more) behind those who are pushing the boundaries of learning theory and practice to enhance online learning and assessment.
The latest opportunity and challenge to face university teachers interested in online learning has been the emergence of software that supports group interaction (Shirky, 2003). O’Reilly (2005) called this ‘Web 2.0′ to differentiate it from the static, non-interactive websites and proprietary rather than open source applications associated with Web 1.0.
This social software includes wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, social networking services, and virtual worlds. It has the potential of taking online pedagogy into largely uncharted territory, given the extent of online interaction between users, and between users and content, that it allows. At the same time it is important to remember that this is just the most recent manifestation of the evolution of online communication tools (Allen, 2004). While the technologies for engaging students online are developing, the principles underlying good teaching do not change with each new technological opportunity - the new tools simply provide new ways of implementing them.
Most teaching staff who have established some form of online presence in their teaching are likely to have used one of the proprietary learning management systems (also known as virtual learning environments) that emerged in the wake of the World Wide Web, with their array of easy-to- use and easy-to-assemble web-based tools. However, these systems are often used in a minimalist way for distributing information to students rather than for exploring and taking advantage of new ways of teaching. Their teaching and management emphasis can detract from a focus on the learner.
While some teachers are ready to seize the opportunities that online technologies offer, many reject them because of lack of interest, priorities in other areas (such as discipline-related research), adherence to conventional teaching methods, or lack of time. Increasing staff workloads and the time and commitment required for upskilling to understand and implement the possibilities available in technology-based learning environments are deterrents even when staff members would like to explore them. If you are interested in the potential of using technologies in your teaching or assessment, but have been discouraged for reasons such as these, this book provides a simple introductory framework to guide you.
Who is this book for?
This book is for you if you are looking for a quick and easy start to teaching online that is grounded in principles of good teaching practice from higher education. You don’t even need to know too much about the technologies that are available to you, though whatever you do know will no doubt be helpful. We have assumed that you are responsible for teaching a particular subject or course and that you are working primarily as an individual, thinking about introducing technology into your teaching or assessment using systems and resources that are easily available to you.
You might identify with one of the two teachers profiled at the beginning or you may be somewhere in between. You are unlikely to be a technophile with specialised knowledge of online teaching who is already immersed in the use of new technologies. You might be undertaking a teaching qualification that includes online teaching as part of the course, or you could be teaching in areas other than higher education as the principles we cover transcend particular fields of education. Most of all, this book is for you if you are passionate about improving learning, have not yet explored the potential of the online environment for teaching and assessment, and are looking for a simple and practical way to take this step.
What is this book about?
The book is about the key points that you need to consider as a teacher if you are interested in using online teaching or assessment strategies to improve your students’ learning. Although the selection and integration of technologies is part of this process, your planning needs to begin and end with educational considerations that may already be familiar to you.
In this book we aim to draw on some of the key ideas that are currently influencing the theory and practice of higher education, and combine these with some of the central ideas from the field of educational technology, to produce a simple and accessible planning framework for introducing online teaching and assessment which is focused on the needs of the learner. You do not need to be unnerved by the volatility of the educational technology landscape as the principles informing this framework are much less subject to change than the technologies themselves. Although the functionalities of emerging technologies offer different ways of interpreting these principles, and will certainly have implications for the way you teach, using them to guide your planning should remove any anxiety you might have about where and how you should start.
Structure of the book
To work through this planning process, the book is structured in the following way.
In Chapter 1 we ask you to think about your views of how students learn and we introduce two key learning theories that have influenced the fields of higher education and educational technology. We then ask you to consider the nature of good teaching in higher education, the characteristics of your students, your characteristics as a teacher, and your learning and teaching context. This information, together with any particular issues or problems that you have experienced, or opportunities that you can envisage, which you think might be addressed by an online learning or assessment approach, will help you to identify the kinds of learning objectives that you will use to guide your planning. The contextual information and the objectives will allow you to determine the kinds of technologies that will be of most use to you. We then briefly consider the need to reconceptualise your teaching to suit the online environment. We conclude the chapter by summarising the key principles we have covered so far, and the main aspects of planning that you should have considered up to this point.
In Chapter 2 we focus on the technology options that are available to you. We begin by considering the affordances offered by various media and technologies and how these relate to different kinds of learning objectives. We then cover some of the main technology applications that you may be able to consider, including ‘first generation’ and subsequent internet technologies. We note the role of institutional policies and infrastructure in determining your options and the kinds of support, management and administrative issues that you may need to consider. You should then be able to decide on your options, building on the decisions you have already made at the end of Chapter 1. This ends your needs analysis. The next decisions you make will involve detailed planning for online learning design and development.
Pedagogical considerations will continue to drive the design and development decisions that you make in the context of the technologies you have chosen. In Chapter 3 we return to the objectives you have identified to determine the learning activities and the assessment tasks that you will design. We draw on some additional theoretical perspectives which may help you to conceptualise the individual and collaborative learning activities that you might include, and to inform the way that you structure learning activities, resources and support for your students. We also address feedback principles, options and issues which you will consider further in relation to assessment in Chapter 4. We then focus on integrating your design elements and note some key development issues which may influence your ability to implement your design. The chapter concludes by highlighting issues you may need to address in supporting students and in managing and administering online learning.
Chapter 4 begins by asking you to think about your reasons for assessment, taking a broad view of the nature of assessment, including its formative and summative functions. We also ask you to think about who might have a role in assessing, particularly given the opportunities that the online environment offers for self, peer and group assessment, and assessment by others. We cover some basic assessment design principles, again grounding these in ideas about good practice in higher education. Then we focus on the main uses of the online environment for assessment, identifying some opportunities and challenges relating to each, and some of the key issues you may need to consider if you are assessing online. As in Chapter 3, we conclude by drawing your attention to issues you may need to address in supporting students and in managing and administering the online environment, in this case when it is used for assessment.
In Chapter 5 we introduce evaluation, although, in reality, evaluation needs to permeate all the previous stages. We consider some evaluation concepts, and suggest some ways that evaluation can be integrated during the design, development and implementation of your online environment, placing it in the context of quality control, and again drawing on theoretical principles and models from the fields of higher education and educational technology. We review some methods for evaluating online learning, teaching and assessment and then focus on the design of your evaluation plan, taking into consideration the purpose and audience of your evaluation and issues that you might need to address in managing, implementing, reporting and acting on the results.
Finally, in Chapter 6, we summarise the planning framework that we have built up over the previous chapters. We emphasise its appropriateness for accommodating new technologies, and new ways of teaching as they emerge, because it is built on pedagogical rather than technological foundations.