Tag: TELEDA

Top Tips for e-teachers

Sue Watling / / eteaching, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

I was asked this week for my top tip for moderating online discussion forums. It reminded me of a conference presentation I gave last year which offered Seven Top Tips for e-teachers. Here is refreshed and revised version.

Tip 1: banish myths of digital confidence

When it comes to digital ways of working everyone has different approaches. Many staff who teach and support learning might be less confident than you think but disguise it well. Incorrect assumptions about digital capabilities lie at the heart of most VLE failures. To teach effectively online requires more than technical competence, there are social , emotional and pedagogical challenges too so avoid making assumptions about attitudes and practices with regard to online spaces.

Recommends. Build in time for an online course induction. Have a draft or practice activity before the real one. Get students to interact. Encourage sharing aims and feelings about working online. It’s helpful for new e-learners to know others might also be nervous about what lies ahead and beneficial for e-teachers to know about these hopes and fears. Avoid seeing social media like Facebook as indicator of  the prerequisite digital literacies required or effective use of VLE.

Tip 2: avoid mis-communication

We’ve all had emails which leave you thinking ‘What do they mean by that?’ The absence of face to face clues makes it easier to misinterpret virtual messages. eteachers need to know how online communication has different rules. You can expect expect silence through reluctance to engage or over-enthusiasm dominating a forum. Be prepared for the possibility of receiving mixed messages and always think before you click the send option in particular if the subject is sensitive or  contentious. Better wait an hour if feasible or ask a critical friend to look over it first. Once online always online.

Recommends. Discuss the advantages of digital text with students, for example how you can practice, reflect, edit, check spelling then paste the finished content into the Text Editor when ready. Have a net-etiquette guide, either given or constructed during induction. Include the standard advice such as  avoid ‘shouting’ with capital letters, using emoticons convey emotions and not being rude or offensive. Make it clear if you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face don’t say it online and if you would say it face to face it still might not be appropriate within a learning environment.

Tip 3:  expect identity blur

What do you call an e-teacher? It sounds like a bad joke but is a serious question. You hear tutor, trainer, moderator, facilitator, instructor but never e-lecturer. The status of teaching online isn’t as high as it should be considering the skills required for managing it effectively. e-teachers have a shift in identity from ‘Sage on the Stage’ to the less visible and more silent ‘Guide on the Side’; the loss of accustomed status and practice can take time to get used to.

Recommends. eteaching is complex and challenging but a valuable expertise in its own right. It requires revisiting pedagogies and practices and for some this may require an exploration of the scholarship of teaching and learning . Done well, VLE offer powerful tools for widening participation and enhancing the student learning experience. Be proud of your e-teacher status and take every opportunity to share your new knowledge and skills with others.

Tip 4: use activity based content (ABC)

Online resources have to work hard to guide, motivate, enthuse and excite students as well as retain them through to the end of the course or module. Blended or flipped learning requires a redesign of the curriculum along socio-constructivist principles with lots of opportunities for interaction and activities. Creating opportunities for communication and collaboration are essential for maintaining and completing an effective online learning journey.

Recommends: set up groups with forums, blogs or wikis and offer a choice of activities based on key texts or issues. Get students doing what they do in social media such as searching for and sharing resources. Ask them to comment on the contributions of others and synthesise core ideas. Do this through posters or mind maps. Create presentations with slides, audio and video. Allocate students to groups and ask for peer reviews and feedback summaries.  Avoid replicating lectures with 50 minutes of talking heads, coughs and sneezes. Instead, chunk lecture content into smaller pieces interspersed with formative assessment questions. Be inclusive and always provide multimedia transcripts or text equivalents to suit all learning preferences.

Tip 5: put up effective signposting

eteaching and e-learning are different experiences to being in seminars and lectures. elearning is often carried out in isolation and it’s easy to forget how a VLE like Blackboard might look like to a new user accessing it alone. Without the physical presence of tutors or peers, it becomes easy to misread instructions or get lost and then confused in a mass of links and resources, so effective signposting through content and activities is essential.

Recommends. Be clear about learning outcomes and ways to demonstrate them through formative and summative assessment. Be sure your students know what is expected from them, in particular with regard to their online interactions. Give contact details and appropriate times to get in touch through the VLE. Agree response times. Arrange some synchronous activities. Have a weekly virtual drop-in session.  Check links are not broken. There is nothing worse than seeing a 404 message. when you want to access a key document.   Post weekly summaries which look backwards and forwards. Do this at the same day and time.  Keep everything within two clicks from the Home page.

Tip 6: go do a MOOC

Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC) offer free opportunities to see other eteachers at work as well as experience first-hand the loneliness of the long distance learner. You can dip in and out of courses and observe ideas for designing content and enabling communication. Make notes on the diversity of presentation formats and their quality. How important is a professionally produced video compared to the knowledge being disseminated. A webcam might be as effective as a TV Studio.  Open Educational Resources (OER) are also worth investigating. These are educational materials made freely available through a Creative Commons licence.

Recommends.  Build activities around discovery of open educational resources. Ask students to explore MOOC in their subject area, write a short critical review and share their findings. Visit Coursera, Khan Academy, Udacity or FutureLearn for MOOC and JORUM or MERLOT for OER.  JISC offer OER information as well as lists of repositories. Look up Creative Commons licences. Some support re-purposing as well as re-use. Build activities around searching and evaluating free online content. Use social bookmarking like Delicious or Diigo tor a Twitter hashtag to collect links and share them with others.

 Tip 7: experience the Pedagogy of Uncertainty

Sometimes e-teaching can feel like communicating with a big black hole. A major challenge is not knowing what to expect. eteachers don’t always know who their learners are – other than their names – or whether or not they will engage with activities. If not, you have to figure out if they’ve got lost or simply lost interest. Either way you need to bring them back to the VLE. Disengagement might be through miscommunication or misunderstanding. Following the these tips will help avoid common errors. Check out the recommendations below.

Recommends: Be honest from the start. eteaching isn’t an easy option but the rewards are worth it. VLE offer inclusive opportunities to widen participation in higher education, in particular for those with multiple time commitments. They can enhance on-campus experiences through encouraging independent and accessible learning at times which suit individual students.  Revisit pedagogical approaches to virtual learning. Try Salmon’s Five Stage Model and broad range of e-tivities. Look up Laurillard’s Conversational Framework between tutors, students and peers. Consider the Community of Inquiry approach of Garrison and Anderson, built on the Community of Practice model put forward by Lave and Wenger. Explore the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning  through a digital lens. The future of higher education will be increasingly digital and e-teaching a more essential craft and skill, one which is well worth persevering with.

Looking back looking forwards and some future dust

Sue Watling / / PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

I’m not sure what’s worse. Taking annual leave for your research and not getting any done or spending your annual leave ill in bed. When is a fail not a fail? Maybe when a plan changes trajectory. More research interviews this week. Interviews mean transcription – on average  half a day for each one – but I can’t think of a better way to get research re-engaged.

The challenge of digital competence has concerned me for some time. The sector wants to see technology enhancing student learning. Which is fine. I passionately believe in the affordances of VLE to widen participation and accessibility, but while the literature is full of accounts of elearning and student digital expectations, the eteaching aspect is all too often missing. Decisions around Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) rest on assumptions of digital capability – I call these the myths of digital competence – and like attracts like leaving few opportunities to expose the true diversity of digital practice. TELEDA brought together the sure and the less-sure when it came to learning technologies. It highlighted digital divides on campus where academics have traditionally viewed ICT as a burden and a barrier to practice or  managerialist tools for the 3 e’s – economy, efficiency and effectiveness (Becher and Trowler, 2001:13) but  TELEDA’s stress on reflective practice encouraged deeper approaches to what digital pedagogy and online collaboration really means in unchartered places where theory meets practice face on.

Transcribing the interviews I’m reminded of just how much digital attitudes and practices are as individual as we are. In the way handwriting and fingerprints are unique, so are the ways in which we approach and utilise online environments. This makes a one size fits all approach impossible and with so little common ground, the process of data analysis also gets complex – this is qualitative research in 50 shades of grey compared to the more quantitative black and white binary.

The research is progressing – albeit slowly – and there is a growing sense it is making a difference. The soapbox will soon be travelling again. I’m presenting on the digital university at this year’s SHRE Conference, at the Higher Education Stream at BETT in January and have been invited to give the Keynote at the Making Research Count Network for North West England.  Meanwhile the summer draws to a close and a new academic year is in sight. All over the country digital devices are being purchased and prepared for learning, staff know Blackboard is ready and waiting for them to log on and the inevitable dust is waiting to gently settle on the PhD again.

#BbWord15 part four; the three C triangle of institutional adoption of technology

Sue Watling / / #Bbworld15, conference, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

At #BbWorld I presented and took part in a panel on Institutional adoption of technology; a double opportunity to disseminate early research findings. Last year on the west coast for BbWorld14, an 8.00 a.m. slot was considered an advantage but not on the east coast, as I was told afterwards. Here people take time to get going first thing so we suffered a bit from numbers. Having said that, it was a large room and there were lots of questions, plus what has been really rewarding this week is the general interest from everyone I spoke to about the subject of institutional adoption.  In the panel session I talked about TELEDA, how its multiple layers offer opportunities to experience Blackboard from the student perspective, while the stress on critical reflection – transferring the experience to individual teaching practice – appears to be developing an evidence based shift in the way academics view Blackboard as a technology for enhancing the student experience.

I recorded the presentation the night before using Camtasia Relay on my laptop. This is available to everyone on the University of Lincoln network. Download it from the Software Centre and it’s a quick way to record a narrative over PowerPoint slides. I opted for providing captions because apart from being inclusive, I appreciate their value. I find it hard to learn by sound or image and prefer words instead. There lots of reasons why alternative formats benefit the learner experience but creating captions take time – there ‘s no way  around this. It demands a shift in attitude and practice. In the same way you wouldn’t upload a textual learning resource with half of it missing, audio and video transcripts are an integral part of the whole resource. Relay provides automatic captioning but you only have to switch on YouTube captions to see the nonsense voice recognition generates and Relay is the same.

cartoon showing an individual fighting with a wall of technology

This is the first slide of my presentation. I tell people this is me because as anyone who works with me will confirm, if the technology can go wrong its me it goes wrong with.

Right now I’m experiencing familiar frustration. The video is stuck in Relay. I can’t find a way to embed it into WordPress. Maybe I can’t? I don’t know. There’s no one to ask for help and I’m feeling pressured. I know what I want to do. I know it should be achievable but I can’t see how to do it and I’m running out of time. Does this sound familiar?  If you are a digital education developer then you’d probably be ok. If you are an academic who views technology with a mix of awe for its capabilities but fear and dread with regard to your own confidence then you’ll identify with this. It’s part of the massive shift needed to adopt VLE. Without empathy then support is useless.

cartoon showing a newly hatched chicken reverencing a paradigm shift

So back to the presentation. This is what I did with the how and the why of it.

 Plan of my research into digital adoption

I’m three years into the data collection, on the final set of interviews. Digital adoption is complex and involves at least three criteria; capabilities, competence and confidence.

3 C's of digital adoption, caababilities, competence and confidence

Underpinning these three C’s are other findings which the data analysis appears to support. These are listed in the image below. It’s the final bullet point which I think lies at the heart of on-campus digital divides between those with the three digital C’s and those without. The literature shows how e-learning and the student experience has been privileged over the staff experience. While some say e-teaching is implicit in e-learning, I would argue than unless it is made explicit there is a risk of making assumptions about baselines and starting points, which in turn will lead to initiative failure. TELEDA research findings
PS Finally worked out the connection between Relay and WordPress and embedded the code below – which gives me the message ‘Security Error’! If the technology can go wrong then it’s me it goes wrong with….

#BbWorld15 my bags are (not yet) packed, am (not quite) ready to go

Sue Watling / / Blackboard, conference, digital literacies, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

I’ve finally uploaded my presentation for the Blackboard International Conference #BbWorld15 taking advantage of the time difference to interpret Thursday US as Friday UK. Phew! It’s been a bit of a rush. I’ve adapted two of my favourite slides to talk about institutional adoption of technology – this time drawing on TELEDA to explore the academic perspective. Not everyone views technology in the same way. Some colleagues who teach and support learning are fine with exploring and experimenting  – they use a range of technology and understand how it enhances and empowers the student experience. Others are a little less enthusiastic and I know how they feel. Anyone who works with me can see if the technology can go wrong it’s me it goes wrong with. Me and the Digital don’t go together too well. It’s hard work but generally worth it because for me the benefits outweigh the challenges.

TELEDA has shown the value of experiential learning when it comes to getting up close and personal with VLE like Blackboard. Internet access has posed a challenge to traditional notions of what it means to be an academic. It isn’t enough to put content online and hope for the student to arrive and engage with it. To create successful online education involves relearning the pedagogies of face to face teaching and applying them to the digital environment instead. It can be done but it takes time and time is the one thing we are all short of.

Many people still make assumptions about digital capabilities. This risks initiative failure for example when establishing baselines of digital capabilities we need to talk to the digitally shy and resistant – not just the innovators and adopters- and it would help to shift from a technology-training  approach to a teaching-pedagogies one. Blackboard support needs to be contextualised so it’s relevant and meaningful – one way is to apply the experiential learning cycle – relocate staff as students on VLE – give online tasks and build more critical reflection. Opportunities like TELEDA suggest more explicit ‘teaching-not-training’ links with CPD/staff development activities could be useful. The TELEDA research indicates this aids the shift from Blackboard as repository to Blackboard as generator of learning activities. Bring on Blackboard World2015. Lets see if anyone else agrees!

proverbs

#uogapt elearning, eteaching, eliteracies part one

Sue Watling / / conference, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

photo (6) I left Greenwich reinspired. Conferences do this to you. Fill your head with new ways of thinking and seeing the world. You’re enthused and want to capture and share the experience. I left with ideas about how to be more creative, make greater use of multimedia, re-engage with Twitter, turn blog posts into videos, recreate TELEDA as a MOOC, then went back to work and was reminded of the divide between thought and practice. Developing digital capabilities and competencies takes time and there is never enough. The early rhetorical promises of educational technologies to cut costs and increase efficiency missed completely the need to learn and polish new ways of working.

The 13th Academic Practice and Technology Conference was at the University of Greenwich on 7th July. The location was unique – the only university to be on a National Heritage site – The Old Royal Naval College – built by Christopher Wren on the side of the River Thames and next to the Cutty Sark, now encased in an ugly glass visitor surround and box.

The naval college consists of four courts. The famous Painted Hall in King William Court was closed to visitors because Kiera Knightly and Joan Collins were filming so I stood under an open window in neighbouring King Charles Court, home of the Trinity Laban School of Music and Dance, and listened to Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition played on a solo piano instead. It was magical.

The conference was in Queen Anne Court. Titled Flipping the Institution: Higher Education in the Post-Digital Age, the welcome text included reference to not all students being comfortable or sufficiently skilled to engage in post digital environments. I was there to say the same about academics and how the subject of staff digital confidence has become a case of elephants (in the room) and emperors (new clothes). We don’t talk about it but we should. I presented some themes from my literature review and data analysis:

  • The focus of the educational technology literature is on the student as elearner rather than academics as eteachers – yet eteaching is the corollary to elearning.
  • The literature of elearning is predominantly about success stories – yet we know there’s more to be learned from studying failure
  • The experience of those who are not great technology advocates is missing – resistance and reluctance are not being explored
  • Making assumptions about digital ways of working is risky and may lead to failure The diversity of different starting points is rarely recognised
  • Digital literacies are complex – they mirror us as individuals, everyone approaches virtual environments in different ways, so models and frameworks need to be flexible to accommodate diversity (and start from zero)
  • Academics need time and space to become e-teachers and engage with digital pedagogies as well as gain digital confidence – not good news when everyone is squeezed and stretched but staff development has to protected in particular when it comes digital ways of working 
  • Everyone wants students to have the best possible experience – but not everyone sees technology as a way of achieving this
  • It would help to shift from training models of competency to teacher education programmes; TELEDA shows the value of an approach which is structured around experiential learning and critical reflection and  TELEDITEs take their TELEDA experience into their practice.

One of the outputs from the three years of TELEDA development has been what I call the Myths of Digital Competence. They go something like this:

  • Not everyone owns a mobile device or has access to an up to date computer off campus.
  • Not everyone realises apps like BB mobile don’t give full functionality
  • Common technical support advice is to use another browser but not everyone knows what browser they’re using or how to change to a different one
  • Not everyone can get photos off their camera or phone onto a computer
  • Not everyone can use a text editor or turn text into a URL
  • html view is useful for tweaking, trouble shooting or getting the embed code from YouTube but not everyone knows you can do this or how to do it
  • The majority of academics don’t have access to a webcam or microphone – or a quiet place to record a narration

More about the presentations by Jonathan Worth, Robert White and Helen Beetham in elearning, eteaching, eliteracies part two.

#uogapt Preparation for Flipping the Institution conference at Greenwich

Sue Watling / / conference, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Preparation for conferences requires boundaries. Limits on minutes and slides demands conciseness as key messages are extracted and difficult decisions made about what to leave behind. The parts you present are only ever a fraction of the whole story.

Flipping the Institution is at the University of Greenwich on 7th July. The deadline for uploading presentation slides is 29th June. As always it’s a tight squeeze.  Not only in terms of preparation but because the guidance says ten slides only. I confess to not counting the  introduction and conclusion and hope I will be forgiven.

Not being a fan of the Prezi slide and glide style, I’ve stayed with PowerPoint, using pictures rather than all text. I’m not sure how it will work but will find out on the 7th!  Preloaded presentations are being made available in advance for participants to decide which sessions to attend. My concern is if the pictures will tell the story out of context so I’m hoping the preload includes note fields. It’s like making lecture content available before the event. It takes away any elements of surprise so in spite of the value I understand reluctance to do so.

I often think of presentations as a journey; beginning with who are you, where you’re from and why you’re there, followed by the problem, what you did it and why you did it, then the results, their implications and lastly a summary pulling it all together. That’s the plan and these are the headlines from each slide.

Introduction

1. For many people working with technology can be a challenge.

2. technophan or technophobe – digital divides on campus.

3. The literature identifies a need to support academic staff to engage with digital ways of working.

4.. Introduction to my research using the poster from a recent Show and Tell event.

5. Four key themes from my literature review of the field of educational technology.

6.  To move forward sometimes benefits from looking back, in this case to the NCIHE report into the future of higher education (Dearing Report 1997).

7. Data analysis suggests four key themes emerging.

8. Myths of digital confidence influence how support is provided.

9. Data surprise; unexpected findings.

10. Quotes from the data analysis.

Summary and conclusion.

Looking forward to 7th July 🙂

 

Flipping the institution as a risk?

Sue Watling / / blogging, conference, digital inclusion, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Flipping the Institution: Higher Education in the Post Digital Age  happens July 7th at the University of Greenwich. It’s the 13th Academic Practice and Technology (APT) Conference and the focus is on the challenges facing the post digital university in the post digital age. My presentation is ‘e-learning, e-teaching, e-literacy; enhancement versus exclusion’. Like my ASCILITE paper on e-teaching craft and practice, it takes the staff rather than student perspective, much of which has derived from the TELEDA courses. These offer a privileged insight into the influences on colleague’s attitudes and behaviours towards technology. Not only have they highlighted the divide between the technology innovators and the rest of us, they have reinforced how our use of technology is personal – it reflects how we are – which makes the development of any consistent approach a challenging prospect.

I don’t claim to be an innovator or early adopter to use the language of Rogers (2003 5th ed). Anyone who works with me knows if the technology can go wrong then it’s me it goes wrong with. I’m an advocate because of its potential  for widening participation, for flexible 24/7 access and for users of assistive technology. Digital data has the potential to be customised to suit any individual requirements but in order to achieve this, resources and environments have to support inclusive practice and the principles of universal design.

TELEDA2 – Social Media and e-resources – is nearly over.  The Learning Blocks are finished, portfolios have been submitted and as the whole TELEDA experience draws to a close, I’m looking back over the past three years. It’s been a roller coaster trip full of highs and lows which I guess is in the nature of innovation.  Each course included an inclusive practice learning outcome:

Reflect upon, and demonstrate a critical awareness of inclusive practice in relation to online teaching and learning resources, communication and collaborative working with and between students

This was my way of raising awareness of the value of online learning. Sometimes this worked. Sometimes it didn’t. TELEDA has given much to reflect on with regard to my own practice. It suggests a key challenge facing the post digital university in the post digital age is the amount of resistance towards the use of virtual environments as anything other than electronic pin boards as well as widespread misunderstandings around issues of accessibility.

e-literacy is complex. It’s personal and political. When it comes to technology for education I realise I’m in a different place. We all are. The way we see and use technology is an extension of how we live and everyone is unique.

If e-learnng and e-teaching are to have value there needs a shift in ethos towards seeing virtual environments as enablers rather than chores. Technology fads arrive driven with the enthusiasm of the few. Always there is the hope of a magic key which makes a difference to perception and use.  I started out seeing the flip as an opportunity to revisit enhanced use of VLE like Blackboard. Not I’m not so sure. I wonder if the risk is to return to seeing the VLE as a place to store content, rather than the interactive, collaborative and equitable learning experience it has the potential to be.

Getting the blogging habit back

Sue Watling / / blogging, PhD

habit image from swarajyamag.com

Habits can be hard to break. It took me years to stop smoking. The line between addiction and habit is blurred. I’ve blogged for years. It was my soap box, work record, window on the internet, my weekly reflective habit. Then it stopped and now I’m struggling to get the blogging habit back.

It’s not as if I’m short of words.  Me and my laptop have bonded these past few weeks. In a threesome with the settee, I’ve written tens of thousands about VLE, critical realism, digital education, e-teaching and more.

But the blogging habit broke.

As I fell – slip – trip -snap – into the world of broken fibulas and fracture clinics, my life fell apart too. Become immobile in the winter and your world shrinks. I couldn’t even get to the allotment. My grape vine still needs pruning! In theory, this loss should have created space for blogging.  I could have become a blog-a-day woman. Instead of scrabbling to fit a blog post into Friday mornings I had blog freedom. And I used it to stop blogging.

It was as unexpected as the trip itself. A trip of the non-travelling kind. You can make a metaphor out of most things in life, but I’m not too sure what to make of this. I missed the pin point where something sticks. A blog is a map; it’s where I pin things down each week. Usually with regard to digital inclusion, TELEDA, my PhD, or some digital scrap which has intrigued me.

Something magic happens when you take a thought and reproduce it in words. It works verbally – a la rubber duck syndrome – and it works when you recreate an experience in writing. There’s a flash of insight or resonance which is part of the whole learning experience. A regular blogging habit is an alchemical opportunity to focus on something which has happened and study it more closely.

I need to break the habit of not blogging and get the blogging habit back!

Bringing the Me to CPD; developing a reflective imagination

Sue Watling / / EDEU, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA), Virtual Learning Environment

mobius strip image froom http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2010/01/13/search-vendors-working-the-content-food-chain/

For many colleagues, the process of reflection is unfamiliar. In the Sociological Imagination C Wright Mills calls sociology the process of ‘making the familiar strange’.  TELEDA tries to find ways to ‘make the strange familiar’. They sound like oppositional concepts but Wright Mills suggests tools which can be  applied to both. He calls the sociological imaginations a ‘quality of mind’ for uncovering relationships between history and biography, for challenging the accepted and asking critical questions. Reflection is about our actions (history) and ourselves (biography), it requires taking these actions apart and challenging the accepted by asking the critical ‘Why?’ and ‘How?’ questions. Reflective writing involves the familiar and the strange in a Mobius Strip type of duality.

Reflection is both description and analysis. It’s taking apart the surface experience to see what lies beneath. The two processes are one and the same but different. The alchemy lies in the action because critical reflect ion on practice reveals insights and understanding which were not there before. Reflective journals record narratives of learning journeys; fixing details and events which would otherwise be forgotten.

When time is tight, CPD activities are the first to go. As the ToDo list gets heavier, the tasks we do for others take priority over those we do for ourselves.  Whether it’s HEA accreditation or one of EDEU’s Teacher Education courses it’s less DIY and more DDIY – Don’t Do It Yourself.

Colleagues on TELEDA are amazing; they juggle immense workloads alongside a range of activity based content and the reflective journals show how challenging this can be. I feel guilty about adding to their stress with each gentle reminder of absence or silence. Learning online has the invisible touch. Without a face-to-face timetable, a VLE slips under the surface of consciousness and the longer the lack of participation, the harder it is to re-engage.

Ormond Simpson’s research into retention for online learning is not cheerful reading but the loneliness of the long distance learner has to be experienced to be believed. All e-teachers face the challenge of maintaining motivation and participation in a silent, mostly invisible environment.  VLE are where the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of digital education is realised.  It’s the experiential learning which makes TELEDA successful but it also increases the risk of failure.

CDP is like digital literacies; there’s no-one-size-fits all model and it’s different for everyone. This is a strength and a weakness. Strength because it invites you to make time for yourself and weakness because no one has enough time to give. We have to find the ‘Me in CPD’ so it isn’t the first thing to get squeezed out but becomes a process we hold on to. To rediscover the value of reflective learning and make opportunities to develop a reflective imagination. Like TELEDA itself, the process of reflection is experiential – you have to do it to find out how useful it can be. 

Flipping the classroom; e-learning for the digital university

Sue Watling / / accessibility, digital inclusion, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

The Simpsons image of a flipped classroom image from http://constructingkids.com/2013/09/11/why-flipped-learning-still-only-runs-version-1-9/Time for renewed interest in Academic Digital Literacies is nigh. The principles of flipped learning are one of the ten reports in the OU’s third edition of Innovating Pedagogy. Suddenly the flip is all the rage, It’s popping up in conferences and being talked about in high places. It’s too early to say if interest in the flipped classroom go the way of other initiatives – flip in and flip out – with the transmissive lecture remaining a key pillar of a higher education experience – but if not, then the VLE’s time might finally have arrived.

Flipping learning involves releasing content prior to lectures. Reluctance to upload slides and notes before lectures still exists but the practice has been a recommendation for some time. Research shows it supports learning and fears of students not turning up can be allayed by keeping relevant content back for the face-to-face experience. The preferred medium for flipping is video; either recordings of lectures or alternative lecture-related resources with contact time being used for interactive discussion and group work.

There are a number of reasons why current interest in the flip might catch on:

  • The ability to rewind and repeat: internationalisation is often cited but while this might be helpful for those with English as a second language, user controlled video is useful for all.
  • Changes to the DSA: starting September 2015 this will require institutions to revisit the provision of teaching resources. Accessible text, image, audio and video, which can be customised to suit the user requirements, has long been a strength of digital materials. Flipped learning is an opportunity to revisit the design and delivery of online content and ensure inclusive practice guidelines are followed.
  • The Single Equality Act: requires a proactive approach; no one should have to request content in an alternative format – it should be provided from the start.
  • User generated content: increasing quality of video and audio recorded on handheld mobile devices, and presented via free video editing apps, supports low budget ‘good enough’ production. DIY multimedia has become a reality.
  • Academic digital literacies: the learning curve is getting steeper for those still reluctant to engage in digital ways of working but institutional interest in flipped learning may well lead to recognition that the adoption academic digital literacies requires investment in CPD time and resources.

Closer to home, Lincoln is installing a streaming media server with a site-wide license for camtasia relay; software supporting screen capture and voice over. Editing functions are limited but you can top, tail and chop. A multimedia powerpoint has become perfectly possible with educational licenses for the full Camtasia Studio less than £100.

Lincoln also has Blackboard Collaborate with the ability to record live synchronous video teaching with an interactive whiteboard, sharing desktop and internet tour facilities. A webcam, microphone and speakers is enough to get you started.

Lastly, there is the new Inclusive Digital Educational Resources working party which I’m chairing; under the Learning Support and Environment Standing Group. The remit is to come up with a set of recommendations to feed back to the Education and Student Life Committee for ensuring the digital learning environment at Lincoln is a fully accessible digital university.

Flipping the classroom might well become e-learning for the 21st century university.