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Jumping the Hurdles: challenges
of staff development delivered in a blended learning environment
Karen M Fitzgibbon Prof. Norah Jones
Humanities and Social Sciences Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Glamorgan University of Glamorgan
New developments in e-learning
and increasingly sophisticated learning technologies are beginning to
make a major impact in U.K. Universities. There has been a growth in
e-learning both in universities and in commercial training organisations.
Universities in the UK are approaching a crossroads as a result of technological
advances and their impact on teaching. It is clear that universities
need to change to accommodate the impact of technology on learning.
It is not just the case that students are provided with greater access
to materials on-line but alongside this it is necessary for academics
to re-evaluate their teaching and pedagogic models. Whilst we
recognise the need to engage with the new learning opportunities that
online learning brings, we also recognise the crucial part that staff
development plays in making such a change a positive experience for
academic staff. There is convincing evidence (Salmon, 2000 and 2002,
Laurillard, 2002) that the role of the lecturer needs to be re-examined
in the context of on-line learning.
The aim of the paper is to explore the impact of the introduction of an e-learning project on a university's staff development processes. The paper is structured into three sections, the first of which outlines the development process of an e-learning initiative. In the second section the model of teaching and learning is examined and finally challenges to change are explored.
The core activity of the case study University (University of Glamorgan) is traditional delivery of courses at the University campus and through agreements with its Associate and other Partner Colleges in the further education sector. It has now been decided to build on this successful experience and to work with partners in the public, private and voluntary sectors to widen the accessibility of the University's Business and Management courses through new methods of delivery. This is being piloted through the E-College Wales (ECW) initiative.
E-College provides the additional flexibility of training and support through on-line entrepreneurial programmes.
If the University is to be successful in taking advantage of the new opportunities offered by e-learning, then the strategy it adopts to realise this goal needs to include staff development considerations. As Robinson (1998: 34) emphasises:
‘Strategic staff development needs to be:
Robinson goes on to add ‘the
starting point for any staff development strategy is the support of
senior management followed by the definition of a purpose, policy and
plan.’
For this project staff development needs were assessed at the outset of the project, a somewhat different approach for Glamorgan. Rowntree (1998: 231) discusses the pressures in managing ‘up front’ staff development. ‘[Open and Flexible Learning] OFL projects are often set up in a hurry… The timescale may seem too short to prepare people in advance’
It was important to ensure
that staff who would be working on the project should have the opportunity
to learn the skills associated with e-moderating, but also have an opportunity
to experience working in this very different learning environment.
This is further emphasised by Benfield (2000: 6)
‘using online communication
requires a strong conscious effort, planning, forethought, time… One
of the best things that any teacher intending to go online can do is
take an online course themselves.’
Thus we put in place a staff
development programme to help staff accommodate the new environment.
At this stage in 2000 there were very few examples of staff development
programmes supporting e-learning initiatives. Gilly Salmon at the Open
University had just developed a model for teaching and learning on-line
and we enlisted her help in developing our staff. Salmon devised a staff
development programme for us based on her model in order to help inform,
what at that stage, was a group of naïve and inexperienced e-moderators.
BlackBoard was the chosen managed learning environment (MLE) which provided
the platform for communication. The course was designed placing great
emphasis on asynchronous discussions.
The model of e-moderator training
was centred on the learning framework put forward by Salmon (2000).
This framework has five distinct sequential stages of development comprising
a series of tasks, referred to by Salmon (2000) as e-tivities. The five
stages are as follows:
Stage One: Access and Motivation
It is essential that students are able to gain access quickly and easily to the managed learning environment of BlackBoard. The School provides technical help through a telephone help line in addition to tutor support via email and telephone.
Stage Two: Forming Relationships On-line
Students becoming more familiar
with the new environment are able to 'socialise' on-line. However, the
familiar cues from oral and non-verbal communications are missing and
new patterns of socialisation emerge. Although it could be argued that
the student experience is diminished because of this it could equally
be argued that there are fewer distractions and more equal opportunities
for participation. The tutor in this phase ensures all students contribute
although he or she needs to be aware of some students biding their time;
Salmon (2000) refers to this as 'browsing'. It is clear from Salmon's
experience of on-line learners that as chatting on-line increases a
sense of belongingness develops. Tutors are able to help facilitate
this amongst other support activities amongst, which are promotion of
mutual respect between participants, defusing problems and offering
advice, guidance and academic counselling.
Stage Three: Information Exchange
In addition to the module content
tutors prepare Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) sections for ease of
reference. Advice on academic issues is also provided.
Stage Four: Knowledge Construction
The expectation at this stage
is that students interact with each other in more participative ways,
constructing knowledge for themselves and helping each other in clarifying
academic issues. The tutor becomes less involved and contributes when
necessary.
Stage Five: Development
Students now become more responsible
for their own learning and generally will need less support. At the
higher levels of under graduate and post-graduate studies the skills
of critical thinking and the ability to challenge the givens are in
evidence at this stage.
Thus tutor involvement changes
through the stages; in the first stage technical and academic support
may be equally important whilst thereafter, academic support increases
up to and including stage three and decreases thereafter.
The model for teaching and
learning on-line remains an area where an improved level of understanding
is required and further research should be undertaken Kearsley
(1999). Salmon (2000) bases her model on extensive experience with Open
University students and corporate clients. It will be interesting to
see whether the model is generalisable to first year undergraduates
on the E-College programme. Staff have been trained using the Salmon
model but are now being encouraged to reflect on their experiences during
the first year.
The First E-Moderator Course
The first e-moderator course was offered from September to November 2001, and was moderated by Gilly Salmon and David Shepherd. The first group consisted of 36 full time staff from the University and Associated Further Education Colleges. The authors were students on this first course. The course was successful and 27 members of staff completed the course. The course not only provided training in the skills of e-moderating but also gave tutors the insight into what it felt like to be an e-learner. At the end of the course the authors critically reflected on the experience and introduced a number of changes in preparation for the next course on which we would become the e-moderators.
The changes introduced were as follows:
The third and fourth developments
show above altered the nature of the module delivery from wholly on-line
to a blended delivery model, a development which required evaluation
in order to test its suitability.
Some of the reflections from
the first e-moderating group are summarised below:
‘I think this course has
been useful in lots of ways:
has helped me realise that it can be almost pleasant communicating via
computer and
that techniques such as summarising and feedback are crucial’
‘Despite having struggled
to keep up with the course at times, it has provided me with an insight
into a wide range of considerations to be taken into account, from both
e-moderator and student perspectives. At times, I was able to appreciate
the frustrations that student will undoubtedly experience with software/navigation/repetition
of e-tivity content’
‘I think that the course
took a while to warm up but overall I think that I have enjoyed it.
I would have rather smaller groups because I have not read all messages
posted and wish I had the time to do so. As a leader in the beginning
I felt that I was getting to know a few people but the pressure of work
and a dodgy computer resulted in me being a follower.’
Whilst only providing a snapshot of the experiences, these reflections
do reinforce the subsequent experience of many of us as e-moderators,
highlighting the value of the e-moderating module as preparation for
the on-line teaching experience.
The revised staff development
programme was offered September until December 2002. There were 24 full
time members of staff consisting of experienced tutors from HE and FE.
During the second training
programme, the authors began to identify emergent issues for both the
staff undertaking the training and the University as a whole. The next
section of the paper reflects on our learning from this staff development
programme and offers some insights into the challenges of on-line staff
development. As Robinson (1998: 43) points out ‘While particular
training activities and events may in themselves be effective, their
impact can also depend for success on factors outside the control of
staff developers’.
Reflections from the second
group
‘I feel more confident about
being an E Tutor now because I know exactly what is expected of me’.
‘I feel more confident in
using the system and am beginning to feel less guilty about being the
last one to complete activities. Such was my haste that I goofed with
2.6 - if I'd read the material thoroughly I would have understood what
emoticons are. The saying more haste less speed springs to mind. I found
2.3 challenging as it's difficult to convey the right message without
sounding patronising. Overall I'm much happier about my role’.
‘ I would like to thank you
for your help and support during the course and I must say that it has
changed my view and I am now a convert to this way of teaching and learning.
I did not think I would say that when I started. It was not that I possessed
a closed mind but I just did not think there was any substitute to conventional
methods of learning and the motivation a good teacher can give in a
classroom situation. In actual fact, it is possible, as you Norah and
the team have proved very successfully.
Thank you for being patient with me and for your help, support, advice
and guidance. It is very much appreciated’.
The Challenges
Time
When we first began to address
the challenges which ‘time’ represented we quickly realised that
this was a complex issue with many facets. Comments from staff
who had undertaken the course such as ‘finding the time is difficult’
revealed many different aspects of the experience that the course provided.
Some staff felt that they should receive some kind of remission from
other activities whilst taking part in the training course, a model
adopted by some participants in the LeTTOL Learning to Teaching On-Line
project (Kirby, et.al. 1997). However, we also identified issues
of the timing of the course provision itself. The two courses
had both run during September and October. This was due to the
fact that the actual on-line enrolling students would commence their
engagement with the on-line learning materials in November and we therefore
needed to train the staff prior to the enrolment of the students.
However, in practice, many staff were already working under intense
pressure due to enrolment duties and induction of their on-campus traditional
delivery students and generally preparing for the new semester. Finding
the time really was an issue for them. Staff who had been engaged
to work with on-line students only, did not have this issue to contend
with. It is important for future cohorts of staff that we identify more
suitable dates to start the course.
A further time-related issue
is the length of the training programme. For the first cohort,
staff were given six weeks to complete the programme. Most staff
met this deadline and only a few required a little extra time to complete
the final e-tivities. When the second cohort commenced, we allotted
six weeks once more, but on reflection we feel that a longer time period
would provide more opportunities to introduce ‘live’ aspects mirroring
more closely the actual e-moderating experience. We intend therefore
to lengthen the time allotted for the next cohort. We are not
alone in this decision to lengthen the programme. The LeTTOL
project originally allowed 60 hours for 2 OCN credits (from May –
July) but had to extend this 12 to 16 weeks (Kirby et.al. 1997).
The authors (who were the e-moderators
for the second course) also experienced time-related challenges.
We were each allocated 3 hours per week to support and monitor the students.
This became inadequate and often we would spend more than eight hours
per week in the moderation of discussion forums or monitoring participant
contributions. In contrast LeTTOL tutors have 60 hours teaching
time for each group of 12 students – the same amount of time as is
allocated to the students to complete the course. There is a further
issue here related to the success with which the student e-moderators
engage in on-line activity; Salmon (2002: 162) describes it as follows:
‘However, note that the
more successful you are at achieving good participation in the e-tivities,
the more the response and summarizing time from the e-moderator will
rise. Our own little catch-22!’
This mirrored our experiences
of moderating the students for examples summarising the e-tivities took
up to two hours to produce (almost the total time allocated for that
week of e-moderating).
The pace of learning and waves of student activity and inactivity also contribute to the roller-coaster time and task management experiences of the e-moderator. Students worked through the tasks at differing speeds and at any point of time some students were ahead but some were well behind schedule. The student controls the pace of the learning but this adds to the work of the e-moderator for example in attempting to provide summaries and archiving responses. Our course statistics revealed that whatever the time of day or night, whatever the day of the week, someone was on-line. This is of course one of the reasons why on-line learning is so successful, the complete freedom it gives to learning anytime, anyplace, and anywhere. However, it also demonstrates why e-moderating is an extremely different teaching experience to that of the traditional on campus delivery experience. On campus, academic staff expect some quiet times of the day (e.g. before 9am and after 4.30pm) and some times during the week.
Once you are working as an e-moderator, the structure of your working day changes. One of the authors remembers the day when she arrived for work shortly before 8am, checked her voicemail and picked up 10 messages which had been left overnight (not an unusual load for a course leader), dealt with 18 or so emails from staff and students on campus, went on-line to monitor the forums from the group of on-line students she was moderating and then remembered that she was actually meant to be in front of a group of on-campus students and she was already late for the class! Brabazon (2001: 6) makes a similar observation about the lack of time she now has for research when on campus.
‘My story is not
unusual. But this change in the pattern of my working day –
within four years – has reduced and decentred intellectual tasks to
competency and generic skills.’
The final time-related issue
for on-line moderators is the amount of time required in checking and
fine-tuning the on-line learning materials participants will engage
with. Dependent upon the institutional approach, this may require
the academic to actually make the changes themselves, or go through
a team of instructional designers, editors and so on before the changes
can be made. The number of discussion board messages and emails
generated by the on-line students meanwhile will be growing ferociously
until the problem is addressed!
Induction
In addition the importance
of a good induction programme should not be under estimated. Salmon
(2000) advises against face to face meetings during induction, but we
have found that this is more effective for our blended learning approach.
We have found that a face to face induction day helps improve student
motivation on-line and helps in creating on-line socialisation. The
induction was well received by the students and they all thought that
this should be an obligatory part of the e-moderators course. We have
also introduced a mid-course face to face feedback meeting and a half
a day final reflections meeting.
Technology
One of the most important features for any e-learning course is secure technology Laurillard (2002. When the second course started the University was using version 5 of the chosen MLE, which provided a stable platform for on-line teaching and learning. Two weeks after the commencement of the second course the University moved from version 5 to version 6. There were defendable reasons for the change; the timing of the decision was partly made because full time students would not have engaged in learning until early October. The e-moderator course already underway was overlooked and as a result there were two weeks of disruption. Students were unable to gain access to the MLE and when they did, it quickly became apparent that the platform at this stage was unstable. The technical staff at the University were placed under enormous pressure to provide quick fixes until the MLE license provider solved the problems. The students on the e-moderator course at this time were in Session two of the course and the primary objective of this stage is to develop on-line socialisation. Salmon (2000) places great importance on this phase claiming that the creation of on-line community in this phase is critical to effective on-line learning.
Thus, as a result of the problems
with the software the work of the e-moderators increased. Even more
effort was put into communicating with the students in order to keep
them motivated. This was partially successful but four students withdrew
from the course at this time. Students’ comments on this experience
highlight the effect of technology failure on motivation.
‘Well I have certainly had a taste of what it is like to have problems with the system. My e-mail is at last working, so I can now communicate with the rest. I have had experience of feeling totally alone. The system seems to always be down when I have time to work. This will help me to understand my student’s problems’.
‘We all had a good lesson
during this part of the course. The frustration caused when systems
fail. Perhaps a good thing to experience on a course like this. At least
we know how the students feel!’
Another issue regarding technology
is the way academic staff perceive the use of technology in their teaching
role. Furnell et al (undated: 4) make the point that ‘[academics]
may feel intimidated by the technology and therefore regard this as
a barrier to the whole issues of ODL’ . The training of course developers
and module writers represent another group of staff whose staff development
needs must not be overlooked.
Developing New Teaching Skills
A further challenge that e-moderating brings is the heightened awareness of the impact of messages posted in an on-line environment. Benfield (2000: 1) stresses that ‘There is a need to develop an on-line ‘voice’ or persona, and to use language thoughtfully.’ The e-moderator has a very powerful presence on-line and as such misuse of humour, a sarcastic tone or ill-phrased posting has the potential to dramatically affect the participants’ levels of contribution. We are careful to monitor both our own practice on-line and the language used by our students. We have evolved a system of ‘shadowing’ on-line groups which enables one e-moderator to act as the e-convenor (posting messages, responding to threads, monitoring contributions and managing the conferences themselves) and one e-moderator who visits every now and then acting as a voice of support to the e-convenor. We wouldn’t expect to do the same in our face to face teaching. Salmon (2000: 35) confirms the need to adapt face to face teaching practices for the on-line teaching experience
‘I conclude that face-to face facilitation skills, while having many of the same attributes as online e-moderation, are insufficient in themselves to ensure successful interactive conferences.’
Lewis (1995) offers an example of the outcome of prolonged discussions between academic staff and their strategic director concerning the future learning environment of their university. ‘Instead of identifying the positive aspects of their likely future roles, the staff feared the removal of the skilled teacher from the centre of a university education’. Furnell et al (undated: 4) also address the role of the academic in the on-line learning world, making the point that
‘ODL could be used as a vehicle to undermine the role of the lecturer – i.e. once all of the relevant course information is available online, it could be delivered without further intervention from the lecturer, leading to a situation where his/her services are no longer required’.
The Glamorgan experience has
so far been a very positive one. Staff have been encouraged to
develop course materials rather than being required to do so.
Most of those volunteering to develop on-line materials have subsequently
been motivated to join a course such as the e-moderating module under
discussion, and whilst challenges and issues are undoubtedly present,
they have been overcome by the desire to succeed in this very different
teaching medium.
Selecting participants
None of the cohorts of learners so far inducted onto the e-moderating module have been selected – they have all volunteered. Consequently, the mix of experiences, roles and technical ability has been broad amongst all the groups. We have not yet seen a need to divide groups into those with previous on-line experience, those with limited technical ability, those who teach, those who support teaching and so on. It could be argued that the diversity of such a learning group reflects a typical on-line teaching experience – a mix of cultures, backgrounds and reasons for choosing a course – and this can be seen as a strength of this approach. The LeTTOL Project Report (1997:14) supports this
‘the tutors agreed, that at this stage in the project, they were not going to restrict interested colleagues from joining the course by a rigorous selection in terms of IT skills’.
However, it is also possible
that staff with previous on-line experience may wish to further develop
their on-line teaching skills in a group of similarly experienced colleagues
as opposed to sharing their expertise with novices, or that those with
limited technical skills would feel more comfortable in a group consisting
of those with a similar level of ability. We will endeavour to
meet the needs of such learning groups as they arise.
One of the University’s targets
is that all academic staff will become engaged to at least the basic
level with the new technologies in the medium term (2001-2003). To underpin
this it will be necessary to develop a strong expertise platform in
Schools to enable peer supported targeted staff development. It is anticipated
that learning and teaching groups will be key players in this respect.
It is intended that staff development
is taken on board not only by academic staff but support staff, students,
validation panels, external examiners; in fact all stakeholders across
the range will have to adapt to this change. E-delivery will become
a significant part of the delivery process although it is unlikely,
at least on campus, to entirely replace traditional methods.
The importance of staff development for on-line learning has been highlighted throughout the paper and this issue is one that has been stressed by others e.g. Robertson et.al. (2002: 6) claim that
‘The sooner professional
development in teaching and learning with ICT is incorporated into all
aspects of quality assurance in higher education, the sooner good practice
will emerge and the less uncertain and confusing the future may be’.
We are developing the opportunities
for e-learning staff development in a number of areas. The e-moderating
module under discussion in this paper will be developed as a credit-rated
module at post-graduate level. This in turn will form a core of
a post-graduate qualification in on-line learning also currently being
developed by the authors. Finally, our reflections and experience
with the various groups on this e-moderating module have lead us to
believe that a further module in advanced e-moderating skills is also
required. This will incorporate ‘live’ scenarios for students
to respond to, thereby giving them a more realistic experience of the
role of the e-moderator.
With these new initiatives
well underway, the future for this staff development e-learning programme
seems assured. The small team of e-convenors is growing and we
look forward to continuing to contribute to the University of Glamorgan
E-College initiative to develop on-line learning. This initiative provides
a significant opportunity for the University to evaluate the development,
delivery and assessment of E-Learning and to create a pedagogy and andragogy
for this form of education.
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