May 2007 - Volume 6 Issue 2
Papers
- Louise Cooke - An enquiry-based assessment strategy for the study of global information ethics
- Ted Sarmiento et al - Enterprise skills for undergrads - never too early to start?
- Siobhan Devlin - Investigating the effect of language and culture on student interaction with and in WEBCT
- Jakki Sheridan-Ross, Gill Harrison, John Gray - Groupwork: strategies adopted by students
- Rose Papworth - Using e-learning to help employers contribute to work placements
- Margaret Kendall, Nicola Wakefield, Rachel Delbridge - Enhancing the library and information management curriculum through reusable learning objects
Editorial by Alan Poulter
University of Strathclyde
Occasionally you chance across something that changes your world view. I had always assumed that the current tools for e-learning (VLEs, conferencing, email etc) were the most effective for purpose. However recent research sponsored by JISC reveals that this may not be so. Young learners use a battery of technologies – mobile phones, MySpace, YouTube, blogs, wikis, chat/IM - instinctively. Yet we expect them to use a different set of technologies for learning. Why should learners junk all the contacts, knowledge and experience they have from their ‘native’ e-environment and use a different one for education? Why ‘network’ inside a VLE when MySpace is more convenient?
How do the papers in this issue address this new vista? Cooke reports on a well-received course on global information issues. Students, working in groups, choose countries to examine and make presentations on to the rest of the class. Assessment was mainly by an individual reflection on the whole experience. Students found reflection hard: so why not make them keep blogs? The groupwork was via VLE but:
“There are also some concerns that the increased popularity among students of social networking tools such as Instant Messaging and MySpace reduces the impetus to take advantage of university-based communication systems such as discussion forums on the VLE. This will exert a negative impact on the tutor’s ability to monitor group progress and participation, making it necessary to ensure that such discussion forums offer ‘added value’ through active tutor participation in offering formative feedback.”
So do we need VLEs just for the control they give us? Sarmiento et al report upon a problem-based learning scenario constructed for first year students, to induct them into entrepreneurship. Group working again was used (and exhibited ‘free loader’ problems): why not let students use social networking sites to form and manage groups? Support was provided through lectures and seminars: what about YouTube and IM? Devlin explores the interaction of language use and cultural expectations on a VLE. Again, the artificiality of the VLE used is a major constraining factor. Sheridan-Ross et al investigate group work strategies used by undergraduates and one of their findings is that:
“The technology used by students could be regarded as of a personal and familiar kind – text on mobile phones, email and online chat using MSN Messenger. The study clearly highlights the preferred methods of communication that students adopt.”
Papworth reports upon the use of an open source blogging tool, Elgg, to enable better communication between lecturers, students and placework supervisors. When students are on placement there was no opportunity for three-way communication. Elgg was a great success in addressing this. However its use was developed further by participants:
“Some students used the Elgg facility to add RSS feeds – this was a surprise, as they hadn’t been specifically asked to do this. They mentioned that they would find such an aggregator useful in their studies. It has to be noted here that both students and employers are IT literate to start with, and use facilities such as ‘My Space’, MSN, search engines and e-mail on a regular basis.”
Kendall et al created re-usable learning objects (RLOs) to support part of a course in law librarianship. Much effort was expended in creating the RLOs. Some were re-usable on other courses. In total only a small proportion of a full course was covered. Why is there not more support for pooling RLOs, rather like an educational version of Flickr? Hopefully these papers will serve to provoke thought about a possible new wave of changes in e-learning.
