The University of Derby wanted to widen participation and encourage flexibility in teaching and learning, something that is not always possible with face to face delivery. The university, which regards itself as a leader in the fields of e-learning and work-based training, decided to offer a BA in Business Studies that was delivered entirely online.  This degree is still offered as a full time course on campus, but the online course was intended to appeal to a different cohort of learners, particularly more mature students and those who were based overseas, who were not able to attend on a full-time basis.

Staff at the university were trained to write and deliver e-learning courses via the university’s VLE. This training represents a considerable investment by the university, especially since it has been ongoing following changes in the platform used for the VLE. The university also has a dedicated support team.

The project has delivered a number of benefits. The goal of increased participation ahs been achieved, since the course has been completed by students who probably would not have attended a full-time campus-based course. Some students who started their studies on campus have completed them online, which has prevented these students from dropping out of the course altogether. The university notes that student satisfaction levels are high and improving. Campus-based students can also benefit from access to e-learning materials to support their studies. The university notes that the staff have developed their skills during the project.

This project required a considerable investment in terms of staff time. Staff members have been required to undergo training, to set up the course and to facilitate its online delivery. It is perhaps not surprising that the university notes that some members of staff were initially reluctant to engage with the project and that managing staff workload has been an issue. The timeliness of staff-student interactions has also been identified as an issue, although it is not clear whether this is an issue associated with staff workload, or whether the fact that students may be in different time zones is an issue.

Difficulties in engaging staff in a project involving technology are often attributed to a “fear of the unknown”, but the issue of workload may also be a factor. This is a key consideration for any organisation introducing an e-learning programme.

Update – a few personal thoughts: The issues of staff time and workload seem to be appearing regularly in these case studies. I think that these are issues that are frequently overlooked by those who aren’t directly involved with the development or implementation of an e-learning package.

The school where I work recently subscribed to the My Maths website. There were suggestions that this would reduce staff workload, but in practice the time saved by not setting and marking one written homework a fortnight is more than compensated for by the time spent leaving feedback online; responding to student e-mails when they experience difficulties; providing drop-in support sessions and following up on any students who have experienced difficulties. Writing e-learning materials can certainly be time-consuming – but so can using them if interaction with students is involved.

This all sounds a bit negative, but that’s not my intention – I think my students have gained enormously from being able to access the materials on My Maths. It has been a significant innovation, but it’s not a time-saver.

The Veterinary School at University of Edinburgh operates two working farms, however a combination of the location of the farms and time-pressures experienced by the students resulted in limited access to these resources. Since a good knowledge of farming practices is key if students are to be able to offer advice on animal welfare or productivity, this presented a problem.

The solution was to create a virtual farm, linked to the real ones.  The virtual farm is made up of a collection of bespoke and commercial resources, delivered via a VLE. These resources include:

• general information delivered via newsfeeds and webcams
• statistical data from the dairy and sheep herds
• direct links to animal husbandry wikis
• text, picture and video demos of farm animal handling

A key feature of the virtual farm is that each student is allocated a set of “adopted” animals, for which they have access to a considerable amount of individual data. This was identified as being a significant factor in engaging students interest.

Running the virtual farm requires weekly input of information, news and data as well as managing any technical difficulties that occur. This represents a significant investment for the university, but it has allowed the VLE to develop beyond passively delivering information and has resulted in the students being able to use the resources offered to develop their skills effectively.

Update – a few personal thoughts: I’ve been intrigued by the idea of using virtual worlds, but as a maths teacher, this hasn’t seemed appropriate to much of the work I do with my students. I have been contemplating the idea of virtual field trips or online maths trails for a while, perhaps it’s time to stop contemplating and actually create one.

Sheffield Hallam University requires its first year social students to engage in personal/academic development planning, but found that most students failed to see any value in this activity. Rather than engaging in reflection, many simply completed (or even made up) the plan just before the deadline.

To address this, the university started a project that moved away from paper-based systems and explored ways of using e-portfolios to help students to “reflect upon and improve their learning.” The university uses a Blackboard VLE, which has the capacity to provide e-portfolios, but this was rejected as being unsuitable for the project. Instead, PebblePad was adopted. The lack of integration between PebblePad and the Blackboard VLE meant that the module tutor had to assume responsibility for the technical aspects of the project, however in future it is envisaged that the university’s technical support staff will take on this role.

However, PebblePad was perceived to offer many advantages, including being visually appealing; being portable; allowing students to choose to share aspects of their work with tutors or peers and facilitating collaborative work. The staff involved in the project were introduced to PebblePad via training sessions. Students were introduced  to it via an initial lecture, followed up by a supported group session in an IT lab.

At the time of publication, the success of the project was still being evaluated, but it was noted that PebblePad had proved popular with many students. Feedback from the students also suggested that the use of e-portfolios was allowing both personal reflection and effective collaboration to take place.

The study authors noted that experimenting with any new pedagogy is potentially time consuming and risky. Whilst this project had brought some benefits, there were some issues to be addressed. The first issue was that of cost, since unlike Blackboard, PebblePad was not centrally funded. A further issue was resistance amongst some tutors, although the authors acknowledged that this resistance often has a “sound grounding” in valid concerns. The solution offered was to allow more lead-in time before starting the project in order to allow time for full discussion as well as ensuring that sufficient staff training and student support is available.

Update – a few personal thoughts: I have a certain amount of sympathy for the students who didn’t value the personal development plan. Whilst I value reflective activity, I’m not so keen on imposed activity of this type.

On a different note, I’m interested by the fact that the faculty were able to make a significant investment by purchasing PebblePad rather than having to “make do” with the tools available within Blackboard. My impression is that most institutions like individual staff and departments to use the “authorised” tools. Perhaps part of the real innovation here is stepping outside that constraint.

The University of Glasgow offers a Scottish History module that attracts a diverse student body. The course must support those with no prior knowledge or experience of studying history whilst delivering sufficient challenge to first and second year honours students who are specialising in the subject. The course had previously made some use of a home-grown website maintained by secretarial staff, but it was felt that this site was largely ignored by students. To address this, it was decided to implement a Moodle VLE, in line with the adoption of Moodle across the university.

It was hoped that the use of the new VLE would improve access to course materials, improve communication between students and tutors and reduce photocopying costs. These aims may appear modest, but given that the staff had no prior experience of running such a site, these aims could be considered to be quite challenging.

The university provided voluntary training for staff, but this was not felt to be helpful since it was not specific enough and was held at inappropriate times. Instead, the lecturers involved elected to receive training from more experienced staff, usually on an informal basis and frequently using a just-in-time training model. Despite this lack of formal training, the staff were able to design the new Moodle site, populate it with learning materials and (in most cases) use it to communicate with their students.

Student feedback about the Moodle VLE was very positive, however a number of issues were identified.

There were concerns that allowing students access to all the learning materials could discourage attendance, however in practice this did not occur. The availability of the materials was judged to have enhanced the students’ performances in seminars and it was expected that asking students to use the materials to prepare beforehand would allow lectures to become more ambitious.

Making reading material available for the students had previously presented a considerable problem, but scanning materials resolved these difficulties, although this did require addressing issues of copyright by acquiring appropriate licences.

The aim of reducing photocopying costs was achieved, with a reduction of 50%; however it was noted that much of this had been achieved by passing the cost for printing onto students. This was felt to be an issue that still needed to be resolved.

Update – a few personal thoughts: I’m sure there a lot of VLEs that start out exactly like this – as a collection of resources. The study lists several factors that make it difficult to move beyond this stage: lack of time and lack of training being the most common. I suspect that these (together with the old favourite, lack of money) are probably the biggest barriers to the introduction of any new technology.