[e-learning]
You can do it!Author
Andrew Hill, LSN E-learning Co-ordinator and ILT Co-ordinator at Dunstable College. Also lecturer in web design and I run a small design studio in Milton Keynes, specialising in promotion and graphic layout.
Resource subject area
Any or all of the components of this project are suitable across the whole curriculum and can also be adapted by support staff - and students!
What prompted me to create this resource?
Students love using the internet and many now have their own web sites and blogs. A major focus of the e-learning programmes across the country is getting course materials on-line and promoting interactivity via the web. Virtual Learning Environments are, after all, just big web sites. Unfortunately this can make many tutors nervous as not all VLEs, or the tools needed to make their materials fit on them, are particularly simple to learn for everyone. Nor does the 'standard' offer always suit a tutor's purpose. I have watched a number of new applications being developed on the web and believe that they have now reached a point where they are reliable, easy-to-use and can create effective materials in terms of presentation and style, without any special skills being required.
How would it benefit learners?
Anything that provides more ready access to learning materials where students want them, when they need them, and which can also present them in a more modern way than transparencies or old-fashioned Office files, has to be of benefit.
How could it benefit colleagues or staff?
I watched the smiles form on tutors' faces as they see their old documents transformed into a web log and magically appear in a list on a VLE or web page. happy tutors are better tutors. Many also love to be able to tweak their images with the delightfully simple tools offered by image-editing software and no longer wonder if they'll be. This is also something that can encourage support staff to get more involved in e-learning.
How does it work exactly?
By the nature of this project, this is mostly explained along the way. In brief, Picasa has rapid image identification coding and utilises some of the structural search reflection techniques found in modern search engines. Match this with some clever and intuitive tools designed to meet what the esigners have found to be the most commonly required adjustments to images and you have a potentially excellent product. Picasa's real hit feature, though, is how it makes the business of transferring an image to its sister web log application a doddle. A multitude of erstwhile technical decisions are made for users at the click of a button. The other application, Pageflakes, uses the latest coding to enable pages to be built live in situ, rather than on a computer and uploaded via some FTP process which would require all sorts of extra knowledge and understanding as well, of course, a place to put them for others to see. A key feature of the Pageflakes application is its built-in RSS feed reader. Match this to Blogger's built-in feed maker and away you go.
What ICT skills are required for you to do it?
If you can type and use web browsers reasonably well, which must be an essential Basic Skill nowadays, you can do this.
What ICT resources are necessary?
If you don't need images then the whole thing can be done on-line - so any computer with a reasonable internet connection will do, boto prepare things and show them in class. Whilst there are also on-line image editors being developed too, none match Picasa yet, nor have its simple post to blog feature. This software needs to be downloaded and installed but that is a pretty quick and simple operation.
How does it work in practice? How can I measure its success?
I hope the site and linked resources demonstrate how this works in practice. Basically you organise your materials and then publish them and tell everyone who needs to know about them. Hopefully, they'll use and benefit from them. One measure of success would be increased satisfaction ratings from Student Perception Of Course responses. Another might be higher lesson observation grades or Inspection reports but these may be of questionable value as they depend to a great extent upon the observer having the necessary skills to identify good practice and, of course, it is very much down to how you use what you produce, not just the fact that you've produced them, will influence learning. You may be really fortunate and be able to compare pretty similar groups, one using your stuff and one not. This is not very scientific, though, in small doses but may produce a pleasant indication that something's working, provided that you are not asked why you kept the new stuff from the other group! In my view, there are too many attempts to 'measure success' with too little questioning of the dubious value of many of the statistics produced and subsequently promoted to justify government expenditure, usually shortly before an election. Let's just say you should simply know if it works and be content with that. Feedback is all.
If I did this again, what would I change or suggest?
I'd like to have the whole thing do-able on-line so hope it won't be long before the Picasa boffins come up with a really effective image editor that works without a download. Pageflakes can be a little temperamental from time to time and is still a new idea and I believe that there are significant developments in the pipeline which will enhance many of the slightly awkward features referred to in the project. Blogger is now firmly in the Google armoury but has encountered some problems switching from one type of log-on to another which should pass but may tempt me to look at some of the other blog tools available. The templates available were great at the time but I would like to see a wider range available, and some easier tweaking possible for things like adding your own permanent links and changing profile settings.
Further developments?
There are several directions for further development. Encouraging students or tutors to publish work in web format or as a blog is still seen in some quarters as a bit odd, or techy, or just plain risky as the whole world can instantly see what they write. They do have a habit of forgetting passwords too which can render editing a blog almost impossible unless they've set up a password reminder. So there is work to do on increasing the spread of involvement and even more focus on those to whom all this seems weird and not yet wonderful. There is still a need for widespread familiarisation of both groups with how to use images effectively and I have addressed this previously in an LSDA Q project. That may need updating and linking in with the broader picture to get people away from the inevitable need a picture, go to Google and hit images mantra. When RSS feeds can reliably bring in images and formatting then the field of web work will explode and there is a need to prepare for this as some feed readers are getting close to that now. Lastly, there is a need for more attention to be paid to the way support and admin staff work with data and present it. So often tutors may have imaginative approaches to sharing resources but implementation is delayed because they still have to do so much of the dirty work themselves, uploading a single file at a time to a VLE when a folder full would be much simpler for them, idiotic limits on the size of files that can be uploaded to college servers because no-one bothered to change some default settings. Letter size paper still being used by people who can't be bothered to check, or are bemused by the concept of, their printers' or software's default settings - things like these need fixing at base before we can develop with confidence on the web.
