At the University of Hertfordshire, we have had a fully functioning VLE - called StudyNet - for almost one year now. It is quite extensive and we have been strongly encouraged to use it. For this reason there are many examples of good educational use to be seen across the whole university. What seems to be lacking though are good general guidelines as to how the VLE can be used in a principled way to support learning. Some colleagues and I have therefore attempted to come up with a model that will help people to do this. In this talk, I presented our latest version of this model. I think it will be valuable for anyone trying to integrate on-line learning/teaching into any course or programme, whether they are using a VLE or a simple web-site.
Most VLEs offer a wide range of facilities and functions and, at first sight, they look very complicated. However, in simple terms, VLEs allow people to do things on-line that, we hope, will contribute to learning.
Who are the people involved? Basically, although many roles may overlap, I think they can be categorised as follows.
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What can the people do? What facilities does the VLE provide? Again simplifying, I think basically VLEs allow us to work with the following main areas (Adapted from Biggs, 2003, p. 227).
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In more detail, we can use our VLE for:
Managing learning.
The VLE gives us tools for managing learning.
- Communication facilities - notice boards, news, e-mail, etc.
- Facilities for tracking students
- Time management tools - e.g. calendar
- Management, administrative and support FAQs
Information storage, presentation and distribution
The VLE can be used for storing, disrtibuting and presnting information. For example:
- Back up: lecture notes, handouts, reading lists, assignments
- Teaching material
- Support FAQs
- Portal to additional on-line materials
Interaction
The VLE allows a certain amount of interaction through:
- Class discussion
- Sharing materials/ideas
- Collaboration (e.g. group work)
Assessment
Although not totally independent from the others, the VLE can help us with assessment by:
- Storing and distributing testing material
- Setting, submitting feedback of assessment
- Self-testing
- Record keeping
Putting these together, the following diagram shows the relationship betwen these features:
We now need to think about what exactly these people with these facilities can do to facilitate learning.
It is first important not to forget the wider educational context in which all learning takes place (adapted from Miller, 1983). We need, in any learning/teaching situation to take into account the following factors:
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Learner
Background.
Students come from different backgrounds and have had different experiences. We need to take this into account when designing the curriculum. Can the VLE provide a range of facilities for students with more varied backgrounds?
- Culture
- Age
- Sex
- Education
- Skills
- Experience
- Expectations
- Ability
Style.
Students have different preferences about how they want to approach the learning situation. Again, can the VLE help students with different learning styles?
- Cognitive
- Field dependence/independence (Witken, 1962)
- Holist/serialist (Pask, 1976)
- Activist/reflector/theorist/pragmatist (Honey & Mumford, 1982)
- Deep/surface/achieving (Biggs, 1993)
- Affective
- Alone/in groups
- Amount of structure
- Autonomy - procedural/personal/critical (Ecclestone, 2000) at levels of: management, processes, content (Benson, 2001)
- Perceptual
- Channel - auditory/visual/tactile
- Medium - verbal/pictorial
Teacher
Principles of good teaching.
All teaching should follow good principles. It is easy to forget when designing on-line materials. For example,
- Interest and explanation
- Concern and respect for students and student learning
- Appropriate assessment and feedback
- Clear goals and intellectual challenge
- Independence, control and active engagement
- Learning from students
(Ramsden 1992, 89, 96-)
Role of teacher.
What is the role of the teacher? How this role is seen will influence the design of the curriculum. It is too easy to simply use the VLE for transmitting information.
- Teacher-focused - transmitting information to students.
- Teacher-focused - students acquire the concepts of the discipline.
- Teacher/student interaction - students acquire the concepts of the discipline.
- Student-focused - students developing their conception.
- Student-focused - students changing their conceptions.
(Trigwell, Prosser & Taylor, 1994)
Learning
Conception of learning.
What is our conception of learning? What is the purpose of learning? Again, it is easy to use the VLE to simply provide facts and knowledge.
- Increasing knowledge
- Memorising and reproducing
- Applying
- Understanding
- Seeing things in a different way.
- Changing as a person
(Marton, Dall’Alba & Beaty, 1993
Theories of learning
How we think learning takes place will influence our curriculum design.
- Behaviourist
- Cognitive
- Humanistic
- Constructivist
- Experiential
Educational aims
Educational aims at national level
- What is the purpose of education?
- Why widen participation? Economic, personal, social?
At local level
- What is the purpose of a UH degree/ the course??
Evaluation
Role of evaluation in the curriculum
- Conceptions of how learning should be evaluated.
- What is the role of evaluation in the curriculum?
Environment
Place
Where does the learning take place? This can be more flexible on-line.
- Place
- Physical environment
- Conditions – noise, temperature
- Equipment
- Class size
- Facilities
- Support etc.
Time
When does the learning take place? Again use of VLE allows more flexibility.
- When – morning/afternoon/evening
- Fixed/flexible
- Everyone at same time or not
- How much
Teaching & Learning activities (TLAs - Biggs, 2003, p. 30) - Within this wider context, teachers and learners do things individually and together that contribute to learning. What they do may be divided up into the following categories (adapted from Gagné, 1985), although this might differ widely from subject to subject.
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Or in more detail:
Orientation
- Attention raising
- Awareness of objectives
- Motivation & interest
- Recall of prior knowledge
Presentation
- Presentation of material
Guidance
- Provision of learner guidance
Performance/Feedback
- Performance
- Enhancement of understanding
- Provision of feedback
- Reflection
Consolidation
- Enhancement of retention
- Promotion of transfer of learning
Assessment
- Assessment of performance
All this can be carried out either in a face-to-face (actual) situation or on-line (virtual) giving the viractual framework. Different teaching situations would use different balances of virtual and actual, but all would probably need a mixture.
Ideally the relationship between the actual and the virtual would be clearly worked out beforehand. Certain aspects of the course would be presented on-line and others face-to-face. However, provision would probably need to be made for ad hoc use of either the virtual or the actual environment.
Putting all this together, not forgetting the wider context:
To put this into practice, we need to think of the kinds of things that we and our students do that, we hope, lead to learning - the TLAs. This can be done in as much detail as necessary. Following on from that, not forgetting the wider educational context, we need to consider which of these activities can best be done on-line and which can best be done face-to-face. If we then think about the people involved and their roles and the facilities that our VLE gives us, we should be able to come up with educationally valuable on-line teaching and learning activities that might help our students to learn. In order words, we need to try to fill in the gaps in the following table. This is our next job.
| TLAs | Facilities | Viractual | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who | What | Virtual | Actual | |
| Orientation | ??? | ??? | ??? | ??? |
| Presentation | ??? | ??? | ??? | ??? |
| Guidance | ??? | ??? | ??? | ??? |
| Performance/Feedback | ??? | ??? | ??? | ??? |
| Consolidation | ??? | ??? | ??? | ??? |
| Assessment | ??? | ??? | ??? | ??? |
If you would like to see an attempt at a diagram that includes everything, click here, but I don't think it works.
Benson, P. (2001). Teaching and researching autonomy in language learning. London: Longman.
Biggs, J. B. (1993). What do inventories of students’ learning processes really measure? British Journal of Educational Psychology, 63, 3-19.
Biggs, J. B. (2003). Teaching for quality learning at university (2nd ed.). Buckingham: The Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press.
Ecclestone, K. (2000). Assessment and Critical Autonomy in Post Compulsory Education in the UK. Journal of Education and Work, 13, 141-162.
Gagné, R. M. (1985). The conditions of learning and theory of instruction. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Honey, P. & Mumford, A. (1982). The manual of learning styles. London: P. Honey.
Marton, F., Dall’Alba, G. & Beaty, E. (1993). Conceptions of learning. International Journal of Educational Research, 19, 277-300.
Miller, J. P. (1983). The educational spectrum: Orientations to curriculum. New York: Longman
Miller, J. P. & Seller, W. (1985). Curriculum: perspectives and practice. New York: Longman.
Pask, G. (1976). The styles and strategies of learning. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 46, 128-148.
Ramsden, P. (1992). Learning to teach in higher education. London: Routledge.
Trigwell, K., Prosser, M. & Taylor, P (1994). Qualitative differences in approaches to teaching first year university science. Higher Education, 27, 78-82.
Witken, H. (1962). Psychological differentiation. New York: Wiley.
Andy Gillett, Department of Inter-Faculty Studies, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, herts, AL10 9AB.
E-mail: A.J.Gillett@herts.ac.uk