A decade on, and it’s still Groundhog Day: questioning research on technology in higher education

Martin Oliver, London Knowledge Lab
m.oliver@ioe.ac.uk

The author

Martin Oliver is a reader in the Faculty of Culture and Pedagogy at the Institute of Education. His research interests include the impact of new technology on roles and practices within higher education (including how this changes what students learn and do), evaluating ICT use and the development of theory and methodologies in the field of e-learning.

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Abstract

It has been suggested that there is an ongoing failure to learn from previous research and policy about technology use in Higher Education. This paper explores this claim, critiquing policy and practice around curriculum design and delivery, using ideas about tacit practice and the lived (or performed) curriculum. This reveals a consistent focus on tangible elements such as materials, at the expense of ephemeral but vital aspects of curriculum practice, supporting claims about a lack of progress. However, a more optimistic interpretation may be possible, viewing this instead as a consistent way of understanding new technologies as they arise.

Keywords

Technology, Higher Education, curriculum design, curriculum delivery, tacit practice

Audio Slideshow (click arrows bottom left to move slides)

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Transcript

Slide 1 (Title Slide)
This paper is the development of a talk that I gave as a key note at the C-SAP conference in London on January 16th 2009. The conference was called The Virtual University: The Social Science critiques of learning and teaching in the age of digital reproduction. This version of the paper is just over 40 minutes long, and is structured in a series of sections. Firstly I’m going to review existing literature to identify issues and concepts that will be useful in the critique that follows. In particular I want to pay attention to the question of whether any progress has been made in our understanding of the relationship between technology and the curriculum. Next, these ideas will be applied to series of policy related documents developed in the UK context concerning technology and Higher Education. Then I’ll apply the same concepts to develop a critique of traditions of research internationally in this area, and I’ll end by drawing conclusions for the possibilities for progress in this area.

Slide 2
My starting point is two quotes taken from a paper by Cornford:

‘The university’ is a highly heterogeneous institutional ensemble, which exists primarily in the heads of people who constituted it, and in a myriad of locally negotiated practices and interactions. This university, as an institution, often only appears to exist ‘virtually’.

The second excerpt is this:‘The very notion of information, which sits at the root of the notion of a virtual university and its ability to abstract from the place – the specific, the parochial – contains within it a powerful incentive to formalise, to standardise, to make explicit, to make concrete’ [Cornford, 2000]

So one idea I want to draw out from this which is going to be quite important for the rest of the paper is the idea of tacit practice, the idea that there are things which happen in people’s day to day work which aren’t talked about, maybe even can’t be talked about but which might be quite important for them to do their job. Taken together, I think these two quotes offer an interesting dynamic. On the one hand we have a picture of conventional Universities, which are understood as actually something more virtual than we usually assume to be. Less about the bricks and mortar and more about the practices which are often going to be tacit and more about what the people who make the University have about their practice. The view of the Virtual University on the other hand, takes for granted information, and shows how in order to make a Virtual University you have to turn that into something which can be represented, it can be specified, it can be standardised in some way. So in a lot of ways, the idea of the Virtual University is about making things more concrete than they used to be. It’s this complexity I want to draw out throughout this paper. While it might be useful to have this idea of a Virtual University on one hand, an idea of a very concrete University on the other, these are in effect ideal types rather than real cases. Now that framed my positioning of this talk within the conference. To frame this paper specifically though, I wanted to drawn on a quote from another source.

Slide 3
This is from a paper by Terry Mayes and the quote I wanted to use is as follows:

'In the film 'Groundhog Day', the protagonist is forced to experience the events of a single day over and over again. He is free to act in any way he chooses, but whatever he does the day always finishes in the same way.'

And then later in the same paper:

‘Part of the fascination of this predicament is the awful familiarity of this experience: so often one feels caught in a flow of events which will unfold in an entirely predictable way.'
[Mayes, 1995]

Slide 4
He goes on to say:

'People who have been involved over any length of time with educational technology will recognise this experience, which seems characterised by a cyclical failure to learn from the past. We are frequently excited by the promise of a revolution in education, through the implementation of technology. We have the technology today, and tomorrow we confidently expect to see the widespread effects of its implementation. Yet, curiously, tomorrow never comes. We can point to several previous cycles of high expectation about an emerging technology, followed by proportionate disappointment, with radio, film, television, teaching machines and artificial intelligence.'

It’s worth pointing out that Terry Mayes made these observations in 1995 at the time he’s very optimistic about a new technology that was emerging and which might give the opportunity to break out of these cycles, and that was multimedia. Clearly, we are no further on now that we were then; we’re still experiencing cycles even if they are about new technologies every time.

Slide 5
So what’s going on? Why are we still experiencing these cycles? In part the answer seems to be about how we start to make use of the technologies. We tend to be very aware of it when something goes wrong. For this reason, problems with our practice things that aren’t familiar to us, things we don’t quite know what to do with become very visible, they become foregrounded; they’re the focus for attention. By contrast, anything with which we’re quite comfortable, anything that’s working well we don’t tend to keep in focus and it tends to drift into the background. In relation to technology what this means is; we’re very aware of all the technologies we haven’t quite worked out what to do with yet. But the ones with which we are comfortable, such as email, photocopying, pens, all these things are taken for granted as part of our daily routine. We’re no longer aware that we’re using them in quite the same way that we are with say, Web2 technologies which are far more familiar to us. Now this is actually a problem for research because all the things which are well embedded, all the things which we might want to learn from it’s actually very hard to get people to talk about because they’re actually no longer aware of the role they play in their practices. However, in many ways this is a good thing. If people were to focus on the technology rather than what they are trying to achieve with it, they wouldn’t be able to get on with their jobs. This notion of tacit practice is one of the two sets of ideas I want to work with in the paper. In the second one, we have to look at the idea of curriculum.

Slide 6
I’m going to draw on some work that I did with course leaders and other teachers, interviewing them about their idea of what the curriculum meant. In their conversations they talked about the curriculum in several different ways. I mean for some it was completely absent, they didn’t talk about the curriculum. For others when they talked about the curriculum what they talked about was the syllabus, the listed topics. Others moved to a more holistic view of what the curriculum was and started talking about that list of topics in context as a course, a plan. Others went a step beyond that and also talked about pedagogy. So, the ways in which that particular course plan could be instantiated in classroom practices. Others went further still and talked about the context around that; ideas of the hidden curriculum, about values, meanings, purposes and so on. Now those ideas form quite a neat, nested model with a simplistic notion of the syllabus in the middle, building to a more and more holistic picture. Interestingly though, these people described a disjunction between their plans, all those formal specifications and informal contexts, what the curriculum ought to be like, and what happened when they actually started to teach it? They spoke about something that they called a lived or a performed curriculum, so this was less about plans and more about performances. They would talk about creating spaces; they would talk about responding to their students. They would talk about opportunities for interaction, and all of these things they stress were not things that could be planned out in detail in advance because they had to emerge from the interactions that they had with other people.

Slide 7
Next I want to take these ideas about the curriculum and use them as an analytic tool to examine some of the policies that have been put in place around e-learning. There have been at least four decades worth of policies around the use of computers and Higher Education. An analysis by Conole et al [2007] suggest that these have come in four phases. The first of these saw computers primarily as tools, mainly within the science curriculum. The next phase started to look at these in relation to curriculum more generally, and specifically looking at home grown resources. The early TLTP projects are a good example of this. The later TLTP projects and subsequent policy initiatives have positioned technology use much more as an emerging part of the mainstream curriculum. Mainstream learning and teaching rather than something separate from it. The fourth phase that they identified positions technology use as something which should be directed by strategies, whether national or institutional. It’s in marked contrast to earlier phases which looked at technology use much more as an emergent phenomenon driven by people’s practices. Here the emphasis is on specification, control and in many cases standardization.

Slide 8
I’m going to look now in a bit more detail about what exactly it is that is said about technology within policy. For the first example of this I want to look at the Dearing report. The discourse analysis [Smith and Oliver, 2002] of the way that technology was talked about in the Dearing report showed several interesting things. Firstly, students were portrayed almost exclusively as passive. The only exceptions to this was when they were choosing a course, and courses were described exclusively in that context in terms of their costs and outcomes. But apart from that, students were described as being 'developed'. Lecturers were not talked about as teachers. Instead they were talked about as materials developers. This was positioned in a very positive way for example there was phrasing such as ‘enshrining the core of their teaching’ in the materials that they were working on. And technology itself was talked about mainly in terms of its ability to provide access to information.

Slide 9
Now turning back to the ideas of tacit practice and of curricula described earlier, what you see is quite an impoverished picture of the curriculum in terms of this particular piece of policy. The curriculum is seen primarily as a syllabus. The outcomes are specified, its costs are specified but it’s just bought and consumed, and many of the discussions of pedagogy in relation to technology are relegated to an appendix on resource based learning. And that appendix is primarily economic in focus. There is very little sense in this of the experience of learning, and very little sense as well of the practices of teaching.

The next document I want to examine is taken from the E-University. Now the E-University UK was a government backed initiative which tried to set up a new institution working in an entirely virtual way which it was hoped, would reach entirely new educational markets.

Slide 10
A business case for this was put together by Price Waterhouse Coopers [2002], and within appendix three they talked about what they described as learning products and services for the E-University. I want to read an excerpt from this:

'As the learner progresses through the courseware, there is the opportunity to ask questions by selecting the associated ‘chat’ channel in the toolbar. In response, a chat window opens and the learner is greeted and invited to describe the assistance sought, in text form. The person who answers the questions is part of a call centre and is specifically trained to answer questions about the courseware. […] If the mentor is unable to answer a question, it is referred to a tutor with superior subject expertise, who returns a full answer to the learner by e-mail within a set period.'

Slide 11
If anything, the sense of the curriculum you see in this document is even more impoverished. Extensibly, there is a way to interact with tutors but this is paired down to a minimum; it’s the point of last resort for learners. They are actively discouraged from turning to expert tutors because expert tutors are costly and this is a business case. Again the emphasis seems to be squarely on accessing and perhaps internalising information. There’s very little sense of the politics around this, the processes that students have to engage with in order to produce that kind of understanding for themselves, and teachers' expertise is framed primarily in terms of the understanding of the subject not in terms of the practices of teaching, but it’s minimized because it’s just too expensive to provide in a cost effective way. The consequence of this is that any sense of tacit practice, any sense of professional wisdom has been stripped away, in order to ensure that the process is as efficient as possible.

Slide 12
The next document I want to look at is produced by the DFES [2003], towards the unified e-learning strategy. Now some of the writing in this is full of hyperbole. Here’s an excerpt:

E-learning exploits interactive technologies and communication systems to improve the learning experience. It has the potential to transform the way we teach and learn across the board. It can raise standards, and widen participation. It cannot replace teachers and lecturers, but it can enhance the quality and reach of their teaching, and reduce the time spent on administration. It can enable every learner to achieve his or her potential, and help to build an educational workforce empowered to change. It makes possible a truly ambitious education system for a future learning society.

The claims being made in this section are wildly excessive; the causal power attributed to technology seems to know no bounds. On the face of it, people are being marginalised; technology is the thing that’s doing all this change. It’s also causing problems in that it’s setting itself up to fail. It’s impossible really that technology can have this causal influence on the system. That’s the point of the Groundhog Day metaphor earlier; technology has been expected to deliver these things time and time again and it’s consistently failed to do that. However, even though there are aspects of this which are quite excessive, there is something quite important in the way that technology is described. It’s positioned as something which people are using. The idea that teachers are something which can’t be replaced for example says something quite important about the expertise that those people have.

And indeed it’s quite important that it really had a vision.

Slide 13
There are various things within there which could be seen as part of this: individualised learning; personalised learning support; collaborative learning; tools for teachers and learners to innovate; virtual learning worlds; flexible study; online communities of practice; and quality of scale.

The document talks about teachers and professional teachers, as people who have expertise, who develop their practice who are able to innovate, and also positions them as members of communities, and there is a sense there of social knowledge which is conspicuously absent in many of the other policy documents.

Slide 14
It’s interesting to contrast this which was a consultative document, to the actual policy which followed on from it [DfES, 2005]. A lot of educational value ascribed to technology within the policy concerns motivation rather than learning per se. Education in fact is described as something of a problem, something which people don’t really want to engage with. And yet they do seem to want to play games. So the reasoning seems to be that if we put games into the curriculum we’ll solve the problem. Needless to say this is woefully simplistic. The rest of the discussion of technology focuses on fairly familiar themes by this point; things like efficiency. There’s also discussion of access to information, preparing people for face to face meetings but not really allowing them to communicate with each other through technology, and some passing mention to things like authentic experiences such as fieldwork enabled through web cams. Quite how using a web cam enables an authentic fieldwork experience isn’t explained.

Slide 15
Even though the consultative document had a strong sense of people and communities, the sense of curriculum that’s provided from the policy that follows is strongly oriented to progression through structured materials. There is some sense of a lived curriculum but it’s restricted entirely to face-to-face interactions; it doesn’t happen outside the classroom context, and there is only a marginal sense of there being anything tacit about professional practice.

Slide 16
The last document I want to look at is the submission about e-learning that was sent to the Denham committee [Cooke, 2008]. The focus of this submission was on virtual education, and it was talking about the development of a corpus of open learning content, material that would be quality controlled, coherently organised and supported by national centres of excellence. There’s a strong sense of the importance of investment, and e-infrastructures. The way teachers were talked about was very similar to the Dearing report. They were not talked about primarily in terms of their teaching practice or their professional wisdom, but in terms of the need for them to be adequately skilled and making an effective, imaginative widespread and critical use of the materials that were being produced. Their expertise was seen in many ways as a problem rather than a resource. There’s a strong focus on educational information strategies, and in terms of learning there was some mention of digital literacy.

Slide 17
The messages around the use of technology were interestingly mixed. Some aspects of it were seen as fairly positive, others particularly negative. So for example, interactive online tutorials were seen as an asset, whereas things like Google and Facebook were seen as bad or at least superficial practices. Again this positions knowledge as access to information, and particularly controlled and mandated information. The other problem with this is there is no strong disciplinary critique, of the way in which Web 2 technologies might be used just a preoccupation with things like copying and pasting from Wikipedia.

However some aspects of Web2 were seen in a more positive light. Aspects of Web2 which were seen as particularly positive included its interactivity, the open and participatory model on which it was built, its association with communities such as communities of scholars, and the fact that students expected it to be there. Other interesting points that were made included the idea that technology was primarily a way of enabling blended learning and the way that it would achieve this was by freeing time for real contact, suggesting that real contact didn’t happen through technology. And also some interesting analogies between some of the materials that were produced through this initiative and text books, suggesting that teachers could come at this in a critical way, and make selective and informed choice of the material they wanted to incorporate into their teaching.

However the message that was fore grounded, even in the title of the submission, was about the sense of international competitiveness. The argument in the document was that we need to develop open educational content as a country, because other countries are doing it. The strange thing about this is, if educational content is open, and other countries have provided it, surely there’s no need for us to invest time and money doing exactly the same kind of thing? It’s also interesting to consider this alongside the wider development in Web 2. There you have a view of knowledge production as distributed, always anarchic, certainly social. Here the emphasis is much more on the production and quality assurance, in other words the control of materials in a centrally mandated collection.

Slide 18
Once again there’s a sense of the primacy of materials over processes. This seemed to be a problem in education and the way to solve this is producing more materials. There is talk about teachers needing to be imaginative, but the implication of that is that currently they’re not being imaginative. Again this risks positioning teachers in a very negative way according to a deficit model. However, it should be noted that it is possible to interpret this in a more charitable way. If the assumption behind this is 'there’s a concrete problem, a lack of materials around which tacit practice can be constructed', and if it’s assumed that the concrete materials being provided will enable a lived experience to follow on from that, this could be seen in quite a positive way. However, the focus within the document remains on the materials. Again it’s a sense of curriculum as resources, as syllabus, rather than as something richer and experienced by people.

Slide 19
I want to make a few points to sum up this first section.

Some things remain constant across these policy related documents. There is an ongoing pre-occupation with the material and with the formal. There’s a strong orientation to an information based model of learning or at best, resource-based and this persists throughout these policy based documents. There are some broader accounts but they seem to have been harder to sustain. And certainly in the move to formal stipulation through policy rather than consultation, they tend to be downplayed. Why is this? There are some problems. Tacit practice as we noted at the start is hard to represent. And again, not everything that is representable is computable. The result of this is a considerable gap between people’s practices and the kind of technologies that can be created and brought in to support them.

Slide 20
So I argue that there are these consistent problems within policy in the area. What if anything is different in the context of research?

Slide 21
It’s certainly fair to say there are similarities. There is a long tradition of work around the use of technology in relation to the curriculum. There’s a similar pre-occupation with explicitness and with computability and certainly a failure to learn from the past.

Slide 22
One obvious point of reference is instructional design. Now this is a tradition of research that’s largely arisen within America. It has its roots in designing training programs for the military during WW2. For a long time it had a strong preoccupation with behavioural outcomes, and it took a structural and quite reductive view of knowledge. The field has broadened out beyond this since the introduction of constructivism as a point of reference but nonetheless there is a strong orientation to standardisation, structuring and formalisation [Oliver, 2004].

Slide 23
The consequence of this is that the curriculum is treated primarily as a form of syllabus. Pedagogic design is often important, but students are positioned as people to whom things are done. There is often a sense of technological determinism in that technology is the thing that’s doing this to students. And there’s a complete denial of the importance of tacit knowledge of teachers as expert practitioners. For example Merrill, who’s a key component of instructional design has talked about resting power away from so-called subject matter experts (SMEs).

This rather dismissive way of talking about teachers shows some of the politics around curriculum design and the various ways in which groups can position themselves relative to each other around curriculum design as a practice. Now it’s perfectly possible that some of these concerns are quite legitimate. That in many ways it would be desirable to have others, not just academics, involved in the curriculum design process. Traditions such as this have arisen for a reason. Nonetheless, we can still question whether the arguments being put forward are credible. Certainly positioning teachers as subject matter experts in this way means that the problem is reduced to quite a simple one of knowledge elicitation. Subject matter experts have information drawn out from them which others then codify and produce as instructional materials.

Constructing the curriculum in that particular way means there’s no longer any need for the designers to engage in the complexities of the discipline. They don’t have to be disciplinary experts to produce disciplinary materials. The benefits to instructional designers of claiming this, and therefore saving themselves the time that would be needed to fully engage with the discipline, the concepts, the epistemologies that underlie it, is quite obvious.

Slide 24
In recent years similar issues have arisen in relation to reusable learning objects [Littlejohn, 2003]. Put simply, reusable learning objects are any kind of thing that could possibly be used to support learning, with information attached to it. The idea of this information (which is formally called metadata) is that the objects can be found and then used by other people, so there is are easier way to incorporate them into new practices. And this raises a number of questions. First of all, how should you represent pedagogy? Should pedagogy be represented in relation to these objects at all? What information do you need to give (if any) about the context in which they were used? How large should these objects be, and what does large mean in relation to a learning object? Is it the number of words, the number of concepts, the amount of time it will take for people to work through it? There are always issues with reusable learning objects like how large they should be and how much contextual information is included because the trouble is, on their own these resources are just ‘stuff’. It’s only really when they’re related to learning objectives or particular teaching approaches or groups when they start to have a pedagogic value. And the question is, if they have no intrinsic pedagogic value, what’s the point in incorporating them into some repository of learning materials?

Slide 25
Now the metadata that’s used for these objects has been formalised by national and international bodies. One of the classic examples of this is the IMS learning design specification. Metadata in this case is specified as ‘a generic and flexible language that is designed to enable many different pedagogies to be expressed’.

Slide: 26
In relation to the issues in this paper this immediately causes some problems. As it’s already been argued, tacit practice is very hard to represent. This suggests immediately that the tacit elements will not be represented and therefore some of the most important parts of professional practice will not be associated with the learning objects that are shared. Another important issue is that this is a standardised language which is then given to people to describe their practice. In other cases their practices will be described on their behalf by somebody else who is an expert in the use of these languages. In either case, a standardised cross disciplinary language is being used to specify disciplinary practices. Questions immediately follow about whether the language is in fact rich enough to achieve that.

These kinds of concerns have led Steven Downes who’s known as one of the leading proponents of reusable learning objects to question whether the idea of reuse is actually compatible with the idea of learning design [Downes, 2009]. His argument essentially, is that once you’ve taken away the content from the structure, the structure itself is meaningless. Downes discusses the example of: 'first read this, try and understand it, complete a test, and if you don’t pass the test successfully go back and read it again'. Formally expressed, this would be A, then B, then A or not A. Now that might work as a computable formulism but it isn’t very informative to anyone coming to it for pedagogic inspiration. His response is that redesign might be a better phrase than reuse, and in that there’s a recognition that the tacit knowledge, the expertise, the professional wisdom of the practitioner is an important component of the design process.

Slide: 27
Another thing that arises from policy but is also strongly represented in recent research involves personalisation. However the exact meaning of this is ambiguous.

Slide: 28
There are at least two ways in which this word is being used. The first is for learners to be able to record the things they’ve achieved in some kind of e-portfolio or repository that’s theirs, that provides them with some sense of coherence in their educational journey over time. This understanding of the term is particularly important in work around student transitions, lifelong learning and the development of students' identities. Again, this is something that is oriented very strongly to things. It’s obviously able to record educational outputs, but these are used as a proxy for educational outcomes. Understood in a broader sense, that includes personal development, tacit experience and so on. Nevertheless, it’s important to recognise that these are being used in quite powerful and quite constructive ways, in terms of things such as formative assessment, the development of learner identities, and so on.

Slide: 29
The other sense in which this word gets used is in relation to what might be described as ‘the teacher in a box’. The idea is that there is some machine readable pedagogy associated with the resources such as learning objects, and that then this is used in order to present an appropriate material to learners in a timely manner. The selling point of this is the idea of instruction being adapted to the users of the system. A good case for this can certainly be made in relation to learners who have some kind of impairment, and in this sense there’s some very valuable work which can be done in terms of selecting appropriate materials and helping learners to interact with these in appropriate ways. For example if you have a very visually rich curriculum and you have a learner who has a visual impairment, there are going to be problems unless materials are very carefully selected.

However the broader debate around personalisation of materials tends to operate in relation to the selection particular content for particular learners in relation to their preferences. A lot of this work draws on the idea of learning styles as a point of reference, and there are various problems with this. One of the most obvious is that learning styles have been roundly criticised for example in Coffield’s review [Coffield et al, 2004] of the literature which showed that there was very little consistency of validity in the way that these models operated. It’s also interesting to draw a comparison with the work on intelligent tutoring systems which took place in the field of artificial intelligence between the 80s and mid 90s. This work involved developing increasingly sophisticated models of the learner so that relevant content could be presented to them in a timely way.

Eventually however, it’s been largely abandoned as being impractical and unworkable in all but very few cases, with the exceptions being in areas where it’s just too expensive or too dangerous to train people, such as with pilots learning to fly, or in areas where there’s already a strong formal model of the domain, such as teaching based in mathematics.

Once again we see a problem here in terms of ignoring the tacit parts of professional practice, reducing the whole of the teaching process to a computable model.

Slide: 30
Within the UK there’s been the development of a related strand of research work which has been described as designing for learning. In part the research into designing for learning is a reaction against the formality of learning design. Rather than taking a very computational model of how things should be developed, the idea is that it starts from looking at practice and goes on to ask about how this could be represented, and whether those representations can be formalised computationally. The idea behind this is that rather than automate the design process entirely, practitioners are left in charge of the design process, but computational devices help them in terms of preparing or organising or managing the materials they’re working with. There are two examples of this that I want to draw on. One of them is the London Pedagogic Planner, the other is a tool that goes by the acronym of PHOEBE.

Slide: 31
Now the reason for selecting these two is that they offer contrasting perspectives on how the design process can and should be supported. PHOEBE works by giving practitioners a way of describing their practice, it’s largely qualitative, it’s intended for use in an informative way, it gets them to describe what they intend to do and then flesh out those designs prompting them with questions which is designed to stimulate reflection on their practice. By contract, the London Pedagogy Planner provides a way of modeling practice. It does this by asking practitioners to describe their work in a formal way, providing quantative measures of tasks, time spent on them and so on. This formulism allows the models to be handled computationally, and suggests that it would be possible to create runnable designs. In other words specifications for curricular the machines could actually put into operation.

Slide: 32
This computational model is a very appealing idea in some ways; it has a great elegance to it. There are clear analogies to Bigg’s idea of constructive alignment [Biggs, 1999], in that learning outcomes should be linked to assessments, these should be linked to teaching approaches and the whole thing should be tied together in a way that leads the learner through a coherent, structured and organised process. Almost as a side effect of this, you’re able then to generate costings of courses in a much more precise way than you would be otherwise. If teaching hours are specified, and a cost per hour for a teacher can also be entered, calculations can quickly be run off about break-even points in terms of things like student recruitment. The other possibility, as I mentioned, is that the outputs from a system like this could be entered into other systems that might then be able to run them. Things like the Learning and Activity Management System or LAMS has been discussed as one possible system for taking designs like this forward.

Slide: 33
However the downside of this is that the designs need to be specified in a very coherent and integrated way. As this formal language isn’t something that practitioners will be used to working with, the efforts involved in getting their informal designs into this formal specification will be quite considerable. So although this has computational power and a great elegance about it, there’s a considerable gap between implementation through the London Pedagogy Planner and many people’s conventional practice.In this sense, PHEOBE is much more forgiving, in that people’s simple narrative descriptions of practice are much easier to produce. Therefore it offers a step towards developing a formalism, rather than requiring practitioners to make the leap straight from practice to formal descriptions of practice in one go. Of course the downside of this is that they don’t necessarily have to resolve the inconsistencies in their practice. By representing their practice in a familiar but messy way, they can leave it more or less as-is. However, arguably providing some kind of narrative can help people move people move towards a more formal account of their practice. In that sense this first step with PHEOBE is a useful transitional one to produce something more formal at a later date.

The other advantage is that this fits more with the conventional practices around curricular design. There are real problems in terms of the politics of the curricular design process. For example, Millen produced a paper which looked at how academics produced reading lists for their courses [Millen, 1997]. Her argument is that these are not simply a collection of useful resources that are attached to a course: instead they do useful work in terms of positioning the course and the teacher of the course in relation to other courses in the area, in relation to other academics and particularly academics whose work is drawn on for the course, and to academic peers who may need convincing of the credibility of the course teacher. Whether or not it may be desirable to try and rule these elements out of the curriculum design process is among the things that people nonetheless face in their academic practice. A system that doesn’t allow them to engage with these will prevent them from doing parts of the academic work that they need to do to sustain their professional identity. [Oliver, 2003]

Slide: 34
I want to turn now to an older tool, which also fits broadly within this tradition of designing for learning. Media advisor was produced a few years ago and the idea was it provided a very simple way of modeling people’s curriculum practice. The first step was that they described their teaching approaches by rating them against a cut down version of Laurilard’s conversational framework. They then specified a number of hours that they were going to commit to each of these teaching approaches, and the output was a bar chart which gave a proportion or an emphasis of their teaching approach on different elements of that framework. So it would tell them whether they were concentrating primarily on dissemination for example, or whether they were supporting discussion, primarily and so on [Oliver and Conole, 2000]

Slide: 35
The idea of this was not to provide hard and fast guidelines about what teachers should or should not be doing. Instead, it was development to help support staff development and quality assurances processes. Academics used it to develop rough plans, or else to start their own processes of reflection. The model itself was merely a means to an end. It was not considered to have strong validity as a representation of the course, instead its primary function was to offer a representation, no matter how bad, that may then get academics thinking about whether this was or was not the kind of course they wanted to commit to. As a research team we had been asked whether or not average values for lectures could be provided, for example to characterise typical educational practice. However, the way in which the theory was so simplified and the multiplication of things that weren’t really numbers in order to generate proportions led us to steer people away from placing any great faith in the numbers themselves.

Slide: 36
However the model, no matter how flawed, was useful in a number of contexts. Some academics found it very useful as a way of starting to engage their managers who seemed to be quite keen on numbers, with the complexities of curriculum design. Others wanted to use it as a rough and ready check of the internal consistency of what they were doing, or as a spur to reflection. Others used it to sketch out possible options for the possible development of their course, then to think about the difference between where they were currently, and where they would end up. And finally people found value in the way that this provided a very simple language to start describing their teaching practice.

Slide: 37
Now unlike formal meta-data, no strong claims were made that this was a way of describing all teaching practice. Instead, academics were brought together as part of a workshop, asked to describe their own practice using this tool, then produce a development plan and agree a way forward as part of curricular redevelopment initiatives. [Oliver and Conole, 2002]

Slide: 38
What was really interesting however, is the way that these models prompted discussions within the course team. Typically members of the same course team would turn up with models that looked slightly or in some cases very different from each other. This was because in practice, their teaching was actually quite different from each other. However they’d never had to explain this to anyone else before, nor had they attempted to represent it. So these differences had been hidden. These differences were then used to prompt discussions which started to explore some of the previously tacit elements of practice, and which opened up the possibility of talking about the lived curriculum as opposed to just the planned one. In other words these models were useful not as a specification for the curricula, but as a point of departure. Tacit practice was made explicit, but this was as a means not an end. The end to which this was put was the negotiation of future practice.

Slide: 39
Now briefly I just want to mention the idea that implicit in this process was something about models having a rhetoric of their own. These models were representations of practice, they were created in a way that described practice and this was useful for spurring discussions. However, the model also embodied a set of claims about the world. Specifically in the case of Media Advisor these claims were that the conversational framework in its simplified form was a way of representing pedagogy and also that contact hours were useful as a way of specifying courses. Now obviously both of these assumptions could and should be critiqued. In this case that was one of the reasons why the tools we used in preparing people for a face to face workshop where they could go on to discuss their own practice. More generally though, this raises questions about the way in which these computational models are read by others. When faced with the output of one of these systems for the first time, the real question is about whether we know how to make sense of it, how to read that representation of pedagogy. Questions should also be asked about the visibility of the assumptions that underlie the model. If the system simply has to be adopted, if it’s not open to critique from a different pedagogic or a different disciplinary perspective, then this will cause problems rather than opening up opportunities for people to explore their own assumptions, their own tacit practices and see how these differ from other people’s.

Slide: 40
I’d like to frame this in terms of the idea of consumers and producers of the outputs of these tools. Arguably the person who has the most to learn from a toolkit like this is probably the person who has to develop it in the first place. They have to engage with a range of different possible representations of practice, and come to an informed position about which of these they’re going to choose as the basis for their design. If we can engage people who otherwise might be positioned just as end consumers of these tools, as co-designers, as for example having to engage with the assumptions underlying the tool so they represent their own practice rather than having someone else’s representation given to them, this could open rich new possibilities for sharing knowledge and understanding about teaching practice. However at a practical level, requiring people to do this would obviously add to the burden of the redesign process and is likely to be seen as a hindrance rather than an asset.

Slide: 41
I want to move now to draw some conclusions about this. The first thing to say is that consistently across the analysis of policy, and again echoed within the processes of research, it’s clear that we haven’t solved all of the problems of curriculum design and we really still don’t understand fully how technology should be used to support curricula. However, I want to suggest that there’s quite an optimistic way of looking at the situation. Every time a new technology is developed, and incorporated into education, we need to make sense of it again in terms of our own teaching practices. In almost every case, managing information is going to be the quick win. It’s hardly surprising then, the first step with most of these technologies has been to focus on course materials. Although in each case people might try and move beyond this, taking a richer account of the curriculum and of the tacit practices of the people who produce it and of the experiences of the students who engage with it, we have to recognise that this is hard, it’s complex and it isn’t always going to be successful. However the point may not be to reach a perfect representation of the curriculum for each new technology that arises. Instead, it might be more useful to look at the points where difficulty arises. Looking back across the things that have been reviewed for this paper (for example in terms of the policies that have been looked at) issues like personalisation come up repeatedly. This is because it’s well recognised that it’s hard to design curricular for a diverse group of students. The important thing then, is not necessarily to solve this issue because the issue may not be solvable, it may just be an issue that we have to live with on an ongoing basis. For example we will always have diverse groups of students. Trying to engage with this issue with the new technology however, gives us two things. First it gives us some short term help in terms of dealing with this problem now. Secondly it may give us the opportunity to develop a fuller understanding of the issue so that the next time that we have to engage with it, for example the next time that we have to integrate a new technology into our teaching, we’ll be in a better position to do so because we have a richer understanding of what we’re doing.

Slide: 42
However that’s not to say we should grow complacent. Clearly there are things that we should and could be doing better. If we accept the argument that there have been cycles of development and that these problems keep coming up, then by developing an awareness of how these cycles progress we should be able to progress further, faster, each time. For example being aware that the information management aspect is just a quick win, and needs to be got over before more interesting work can be undertaken, should mean that in future when new technologies arise we should start to look beyond this initial point to more interesting questions about engaging people, developing knowledge socially and so on.

Additionally, we should be in a position to learn from the past and from our own past mistakes. If we’re able to remind people of where things like this have happened before, we may be able to learn from analogy and bypass some of the mistakes that have been made previously. Strategically this should put us in a stronger position. If we’re able to engage with cycles of technology development and appropriation in a more informed way, we may be able to steer this process so we end up in a position that’s more interesting educationally than we would get to otherwise. Obviously what we count as interesting depends on what we think is important, and this starts to raise the questions about values and purpose that underlie the educational endeavor.

Finally then, what remains is not a set of easy answers, not a set of recipes about how we could or should accept technologies. Instead it’s a list of issues and themes and values, things that are important in terms of our educational practice, such as an awareness of the lived experience of the curriculum rather than merely its formal planning. These issues and values then form the basis of critique, and the important thing is to sustain this critique. This isn’t something that can be done once to rectify the mistakes of the past, this is something that needs to be done on an ongoing basis so that we can recognise the new mistakes we make. Returning to Terry Maye's paper, well over a decade old, the most important conclusion to draw may not be a fatalistic one, that we’ve failed to understand how technology should be used in the curriculum, but instead an optimistic one that in spite of this length of time that we continue to struggle, we still haven’t given up critiquing and developing our ideas.

References

Biggs, J. (1999) Teaching for Quality Learning at University. SRHE and Open University Press, Buckingham.

Coffield, F., Moseley, D., Hall, E., Ecclestone, K. (2004). Learning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning. A systematic and critical review. London: Learning and Skills Research Centre. Available at www.lsda.org.uk/files/PDF/1543.pdf

Conole, G., Smith, J. & White, S. (2007) 'A critique of the impact of policy and funding' in Conole, G. & Oliver, M. (Eds), Contemporary Perspectives in E-Learning Research, 36-52. London, Routledge Falmer

Cooke, R. (2008) On-line Innovation in Higher Education, Report to the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. Available at: www.dius.gov.uk/policy/documents/online_innovation_in_he_131008.pdf (accessed 12 April 2009).

Cornford, J. (2000) 'The virtual university is … the university made concrete?' Information, communication and society, 3 (4), 508-525 Available at: virtualsociety.sbs.ox.ac.uk/pick/pick6.htm. (accessed 29 April 2009)

DfES (2003) Towards a unified e-learning strategy. Available at: www.dfes.gov.uk/highereducation/hestrategy/pdfs/DfES-HigherEducation.pdfDfES (2005) Harnessing technology: transforming learning and children's services. Available at: publications.dcsf.gov.uk//DownloadHandler.aspx?ProductId=DFES-1296-2005&VariantID=Harnessing+technology&

Downes, S. (2009) Design, Standards and Reusability Available at: www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=54

Littlejohn, A. (2003) Reusing Online Resources: a sustainable approach to e-learning. London: Kogan Page

Mayes, J T (1995) 'Learning technology and Groundhog Day'. In Strang W, Simpson V B, Slater D (Eds): Hypermedia at Work: Practice and Theory in Higher Education, University of Kent Press, Canterbury.

Millen, J. (1997) Par for the Course: designing course outlines and feminist freedoms. Curriculum Studies, 5 (1), 9-27.

Oliver, M. (2003) 'Curriculum Design as acquired social practice: a case study'. Paper presented at the 84th Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago.

Oliver, M. (2004) 'Metadata vs. educational culture: roles, power and standardisation'. In Land, R & Bayne, S. (Eds) Education in Cyberspace, 112-138. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Oliver, M. & Conole, G. (2000) 'Assessing and enhancing quality using toolkits'. Quality Assurance in Education, 8 (1), 32-37.

Oliver, M. & Conole, G. (2002) 'Supporting Structured Change: Toolkits for Design and Evaluation'. In Macdonald, R. (Ed) Academic and Educational Development: Research, Evaluation and Changing Practice in Higher Education, 62-75. SEDA Research Series, London: Kogan Page.

Oliver, M. & Dempster, J. (2003) 'Embedding e-learning practices'. In Blackwell, R. & Blackmore, P. (Eds), Towards Strategic Staff Development in Higher Education, 142-153 Buckingham: SRHE/OU Press.

Price Waterhouse Coopers (2000) Annex 3: Learning products and services for the e-U. Available at: www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2000/0044/00_44a3.pdf pp23-24

Smith, H. & Oliver, M. (2002) 'University teachers' attitudes to the impact of innovations in ICT on their practice'. In Rust, C. (Ed), Proceedings of the 9th International Improving Student Learning Symposium, 237-246. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development

Quality matters: making commodities and manufacturing knowledge in the virtual university

Jonathan T. Church, Arcadia University Churchj@arcadia.edu

Podcast/performance version of a paper delivered at the C-SAP conference, ‘The virtual university? Social science critiques of learning and teaching in the age of digital reproduction’, London, UK

The author

Jonathan T. Church is an associate professor of anthropology, and faculty in residence and liaison to Arcadia Online at Arcadia University, Pennsylvania, USA. He has researched and published on collaboration and changes of role identity in instructional design teams, intellectual property and the commodification of higher education, and the neoliberal management of knowledge by university institutional review boards. He also has extensive fieldwork experience in the Shetland Islands and has published on the political reimaginings of ‘traditional’ identity. His current research on the Shetland Islands is focused on internet usage and dialect revitalisation.

Abstract

From the vantage point of an ethnographically informed critical reflection, this presentation charts the subtle shifts taking place around the neoliberal management and control of knowledge in the production of online courses within higher education in the United States. Manufacturing the virtual university requires the collaborative production of instructional designers, information technologists, multimedia designers, and the professoriate now newly designated as the SME (subject matter expert). Within these daily collaborations the professoriate internalise a discourse regarding assessment, outcomes, quality, instructional design and pedagogical behavior that increasingly aligns their professional identities with processes of the marketisation of knowledge

Keywords

neoliberalism, faculty identity, instructional design, virtual university, assessment culture

Transcript

Editorial note: Small adjustments have been made to this published transcript with the author’s permission

Introduction

From the outset, let me point to two arenas of specificity regarding the creation of this essay. My ethnographic vantage point is mostly contextualised within the archipelago of institutions of higher education within the middle Atlantic region – one of the densest areas of universities, colleges and community colleges within America. I am hoping, of course, to say something of relevance to you today, but much of that relevance may not relate to the similarities between systems so much as to how larger neo-liberal trends of marketisation and commodification instantiate themselves with the local particularities of specific university settings within national trends of higher education (Canaan and Shumar, 2008).

During the process of constructing this essay, there have been numerous moments when I have been rather startled as to where I have arrived. You know those uncanny moments I think we all have when you leave your home in the morning only to arrive at your place of work with very little remembrance as to how one has actually got there. Well, I have had a lot of those moments during the last decade, where I have been a traditional teaching faculty member, a cultural anthropologist and an interlocuter within the daily work world of instructional designers and technologists. Let me illustrate this with three short vignettes as a way of presenting the major themes I want to address.

Three neo-liberal moments

Vignette 1

A decade ago I served on a technology taskforce along with members of another faculty that had been identified as ‘early adopters’: information technologists, librarians, the vice-president of enrolment management, and members of administrative and service staff. We drafted a strategic analysis of the university’s current and future technology needs that was submitted as a supporting document to the accreditation committee. From these meetings, a relatively rare consensus developed among institutional stakeholders that prioritised investment in information technology so as to lay the groundwork for a virtual university. At one particular meeting I was asked to imagine what type of university policy on intellectual property would increase faculty productivity. What type of default position on intellectual property would allow us to surpass the bricks and mortar restrictions of the actual university and build the foundations of the virtual one, the University of the Future?

The administration was roughly divided as to whether the actual university must own all the intellectual products of the virtual university because these products were the bricks and mortar of the virtual one. Only through investing in costly technological infrastructure, pedagogical support and faculty training would there be a virtual university in the first place. What would happen if a faculty member created web-based technology that was crucial to students successfully completing a major and, for whatever reason, this faculty member left? Could they really take this product with them? What would happen if they were recruited by the competition? Were faculty members really ‘free agents’? Shouldn’t the university own it all? Shouldn’t faculty be required to sign some form of non-compete agreement that had become so typical of hiring contracts in other sectors of the high tech industry before the dot com bubble burst?

Other administrators vehemently argued that there were so few technological ‘high flyers’ in the faculty that the problem wasn’t owning the products of those who were, but of bringing the other faculty members along, of changing the university culture. Here, I found myself interjecting in agreement: ‘If faculty were going to participate in the virtual university, sure they would need tremendous initial support of material resources from the university, but this participation required such a commitment of time, labour and learning from the faculty – often to their detriment in light of the traditional and conservative university culture as found in the system of promotion and tenure – that this type of behaviour, of entrepreneurial spirit, should be rewarded even more with protections of intellectual property. If not, then what incentive would faculty have for participation? Why should they invest?’

Within six months of this meeting I had drafted an intellectual property agreement that guaranteed members of faculty rights over their own intellectual creations, even the most mundane. This agreement received tremendous support from the administration as it was seen as the first step towards creating a virtual university. But I was left with a profound sense of disquiet and the disconcerting taste of my own words: ‘entrepreneurial spirit’, ‘incentives’ and ‘investments’. What had happened to the shared intellectual commons in this neo-liberal moment of my own internet dreaming?

Vignette 2

A few years ago I became the faculty member in residence at my university’s online distributive learning unit. As a gold-plated tenured faculty member, senior colleagues are willing to openly discuss their fears of teaching online. As one of ‘them’, senior and with a reputation of being a social irritant to the university administration, I am approachable. I was discussing two odd consultations with faculty I had had that day with my colleague, the dean of this administrative unit.

The first consultation that day was with a very senior colleague with few technological skills. He had required an enormous amount of instructional designer time and collaboration to even begin outlining the development of a course. When I asked about course goals, objectives, assignments and assignment rubrics for students, he shot me these quizzical sad looks. Not only was the technology a foreign language, but the language of outcomes and assessments was too. His concern was how to give the same quality course to students online as to those he had taught face to face for years. By this he meant something different than I. He didn’t mean the transmission of knowledge or subject matter expertise, but rather how would students experience a course with ‘him’ – a reputed master teacher. How would an online course not just be a course on a specific topic within English Literature, but a course imbued with his half-century of scholarly mastery. How would students get a taste of him and really savour that knowledge?

The second consultation was with a junior colleague from the health sciences. Her concern was how to make an online course interactive when the students had no prior disciplinary knowledge. A problem-based learning strategy, common in online learning for the health sciences, just didn’t seem appropriate. She wasn’t concerned about the ‘tastes’ of knowledge, but simply about whether she could engage students in such a way as to accomplish a clear set of articulated course goals and objectives. She was technologically astute and steeped in a professional identity of goals and assessment, but I was concerned that the course which she created would completely lack a sense of personalisation. I feared it would be too plain vanilla for the type of boutique market niches my university has. I tried to give her strategies to ‘spice up’ her course, and yet leave it modular enough so that another instructor could easily take it over in the future. As I discussed these two different cases with the dean, we lamented the distributive learning unit’s inability to refuse instructional design support. Online health sciences are a growing market and have more potential to generate revenue than a literature course, especially given our scarce resources. We discussed using the Quality Matters™ rubric, an assessment tool to help ensure that courses have the proper amount of modularity and personalisation, institutional branding and scalability, so that we have a ‘high ROI with our SMEs’ (a high return on investment with our subject matter experts) – another neo-liberal moment. What tastes of knowledge do we now season our universities with when we design courses like differently flavoured crisps?

Vignette 3

Barack Obama had won the presidential election just a few days before and I’m sitting at a banquet table in Orlando, Florida, listening to Terry Anderson give an interesting keynote speech about social software and open-source resources used for the collective and the networked construction of online learning objects. There seem to be over a thousand attendees this year at the annual Sloan Consortium conference. Sloan-C bills itself as a consortium of ‘institutions and organizations committed to quality online education’ (Moore, 2005: 1). As this is Orlando, the conference facility is huge, and I have a sore back and shuddering headache that comes from too much coffee and too many sessions. When I came to this conference a few years before, the major theme that dominated the conference was how to get faculty on board and how to gain institutional legitimacy for online learning. Like past years, many of the attendees are instructional designers or administrators of online programming at various institutions. There are relatively few attendees from elite universities, but many from state university systems and smaller private universities like my own. The informal theme of this past year’s conference was different. Rather than how to get faculty on board, the theme was what to do with them once they were: how should they be managed, and how should the quality of their pedagogical process be controlled. From specific conference sessions to hallway conversations, it is clear that traditional faculty is the problem. While they might know their subject areas, they often don’t have any expertise in teaching, and this lack is exacerbated in the online environment.

As I sit listening to Anderson talk about the need for open educational resources, I am struck by how odd his discussion of the formation of prodsuage models of intellectual property for the collective formation of an unruly intellectual commons seems in this environment, where most attendees are expressly competing with each other to get more student marketshare. Anderson’s inspiring vision of transformed pedagogy seems like a rallying cry, and the crowd listens raptly when he mentions a plethora of Web 2.0 tools to create networks and collectivities. His deeper vision of a profound emancipatory pedagogy, an open education for all, seems somewhat lost on most attendees; however, the moral cloak of being emancipators is held onto tightly by the attendees. As the talk ends, an instructional technologist turns to me: ‘This stuff is so cool; we just need to package it correctly.’ Another neo-liberal moment, where emancipation is seen as correctly timing the right product to market.

The creation of procedural morality: quality as control

For almost a decade, my daily professional life within the American academy has been situated between being ensconced within a traditional academic department and being an interlocutor among instructional designers and technologists. If the early administrative dreams of the virtual university were ones of digital diploma mills where the professoriate were simply ‘work for hire’ regarding intellectual property (Noble, 1997), by the turn of the millennium these dreams had melted away. The reality of transferring traditional courses to the online environment confronted the fact that by the end of this process there simply wasn’t much actual property to own. What became clear from the marketing vantage point is that students, like heritage tourists, were purchasing an online experience of the presentation and interaction with expert knowledge, not merely the subject matter expertise of the professoriate.

Facing the McDonaldisation (Ritzer, 1993) of higher education is a pressing problem for administrators. How does one ensure the coherent ‘branding’ of a university so that the consumer perceives the ‘value added’ of attending a particular one and doesn’t only respond to price sensitivity? How does one market the symbolic pedigree of the university when modularity leads to plain vanilla pedagogy? Without going into detail, I want to make clear that this issue is quite dependent on where any particular university falls within the competitive and symbolic universe of higher education in the United States. Many community colleges use price reduction as their marketing strategy and brand opportunity (plain vanilla is good because it is cheap), while small liberal arts colleges must maintain a pretence of symbolic eliteness by fitting information technology into their mission statement and brand identity, value-added boutique marketing. As administrators pushed for accountability and quality control, they have also attempted to support faculty pedagogical production through creating a cadre of instructional technology professionals to guide faculty in ethical practices that maintain brand identity. The administrative desire for instructional technologists to collaborate with faculty on the instructional design of courses is seen as promoting the ‘ethical behaviour of faculty’ by ensuring a high quality education for students as indicated by surveys of student satisfaction. In many institutions like my own, to create a plain vanilla course is not only perceived as indicating that one is manifesting lazy and unprofessional behaviour, it is also symptomatic of professionally unethical behaviour. Often instructional technologists suggest that, while many faculty members may be wonderful instructors and facilitators of learning, these members don’t actually know what they are doing or why it might work within a given situation. Faculty members are subject matter experts, but not educational experts. They need support and ‘professional development’.

In the contemporary virtual university, manufacturing knowledge now requires the collaborative production of instructional designers with expertise in online pedagogy, information technologists with infrastructure expertise, multimedia designers, and the professoriate now newly designated as the SME (subject matter expert). Online pedagogical experiences require not just the presentation of knowledge, but also the particularities of institutional branding, the strategic production of online student interactivity, the leveraging of appropriate technologies and the assurance of assessable quality control so that courses are both replicable and scalable and often packaged within ‘programmes’. Courses have become collaboratively produced modular platforms that are piloted by the SME and then turned over, in many cases to adjunct faculty.

The recent widespread adoption of information technology within everyday pedagogical practice has led to a tremendous push by administrations for best practice standards and transparency within the faculty production of online courses. Administrations have often rhetorically requested placing ‘students’ needs first’, appealing to faculties’ ethical responsibilities as professionals as a point of leverage by which to procedurally audit the creation of these experiences to guarantee both quality and instructional branding (Church, 2008).

It is at this crucial intersection that instructional technologists have been able to insert themselves as ‘experts’ and symbolic equals to SMEs by using rubrics of measurable quality to assess the ongoing construction of an online course. One of the most significant rubrics emerging as a national standard is Quality Matters™, a review process that originated within the University of Maryland system so as to formulate strategies to insure interinstitution quality assurance among various branches of HE within that state system. Now a fee-based service provider, Quality Matters™ trains online branches of institutions to utilise the rubric in a constant peer-review process. In other words, Quality Matters™ formulates a quality assurance rubric and trains institutions to train faculty members to peer review each other’s courses. The whole point of the exercise is for members of faculty to learn how to assess their online pedagogical objects according to the language of instructional design that both create conditions of self-assessed quality assurance and self-directed market orientation. Like so many other rubrics of best practice in HE, Quality Matters™ is often used as the daily charter by academic administrations and units of distributive learning to establish a procedural morality for the formation of faculty professional identities.

Conclusion

As Canaan (2008) has persuasively argued recently, neo-liberalism in HE within the UK takes on ontological grounds as it is produced by the daily citations and reiterations of auditable practice by which one acts out one’s professional subjectivity. What quality assessment procedures do is require the constant production and repetition of normative forms of auditable evidence about teaching, research and administration. They make us do what they want us to become. For Canaan, following on from Judith Butler (2004), the repetition created by managerial fiats and procedural moralities from above forms the grounds of their resistance because, in the performative constitution of a certain form of professional identity, these require the exclusion of one’s other identities, one’s other subject positions. That is why our evaluative reports to our masters above always have that ‘as if’ quality (Garcia, 1999), as if one really ever acted the way our self-evaluations say one did: not likely. For Canaan, there are grounds for hope and resistance to the manner by which the quotidian of neo-liberalism structures our professional subjectivity within that which is excluded. Canaan has hope because there are grounds of identity within each of us, and places to establish collaboration between us by which to set an emancipatory compass and strike a different orientation to pedagogy and social justice.

I am much less hopeful, and maybe that is because of the exceptional conditions of neo-liberalism within the US academy, mandated less by the state than by the marketplace. As I have suggested elsewhere (Church, 2008), in the construction of professional identities, especially for faculty, neo-liberal discourse couched in terms of the ‘ethical self’ acts more like a gyroscope than a compass in orienting the production of knowledge towards the manufacturing of property. For in the globalised and reterritorialised world that neo-liberalism has wrought for more than quarter of a century, individual identity is tied to institutional demands, individual anxieties and imaginative struggles with fashioning a professional self. Within the increasingly audited and assessed conditions of higher education in the US what is so terrifying about this gyroscopic orientation is how seamlessly inscribed the logics of marketisation have become the daily measurement of striking the right balance in the formation of a professional identity and pedagogical practice.

I see this every day as faculty members anxiously deal with their insecurities as they come to our ‘shop’ to learn how to get online. Using Quality Matters™ as a design standard and a baseline for a project management timeline, we have them take an online course on the principles of instructional design so they know what is like to be an online student and so they learn a discourse of goals, objectives and assessment. We give them a design template and a modular unit plan. We sit with them every step of the way. We lessen their tremendous anxieties, their sense of being out of balance and out of control, by giving them a set of strategies and tactics, not just technologies. We teach them how to teach online, and we teach them that they didn’t know how before. We tell them that their end-product will be of high quality and appropriately institutionally branded, and it is. Survey ratings of student satisfaction, of engagement and of interaction are extremely high. Our faculty members are grateful that their peers have helped them become better instructors and often mention that teaching online has positively changed the way they teach in their traditional classrooms.

To keep our balance in such changeable times, and hence to return to the gyroscopic metaphor mentioned earlier, most members of faculty, including myself, have internalised a discourse regarding assessment, outcomes, instructional design and professional behavior that aligns them with processes of the marketisation of knowledge regardless of political persuasion. Rather than see the neo-liberal governance of the university as administrative fiats from above (the compass), I have tried to show, from one vantage point, how neo-liberal governance intertwines with what Lemert and Elliott (2006) suggest is a new individualism, of flexible orientation and reflection on practice that is oriented towards the market. Through the utilisation of peer-review processes, like the Quality Matters (QM™) rubric, the logic of successful pedagogy as the output of high quality marketisation of knowledge is being internalised within the professional identities of many of us who teach, and who teach others how to teach, in an online environment.

References

Butler, J. (2004) Undoing Gender, London: Routledge.

Cannan, J. (2008) ‘A funny thing happened on the way to the (European Social) forum: or how new forms of accountability are transforming academics’ identities and possible responses’, in J. Cannan and W. Shumar (eds.) Structure and Agency in the Neoliberal University, London: Routledge.

Canaan, J. and Shumar, W. (2008) ‘Higher education in the era of globalization and neoliberalism’, in J. Cannan and W. Shumar (eds.) Structure and Agency in the Neoliberal University, London: Routledge.

Church, J. (2008) ‘Managing knowledge: intellectual property, instructional design and the manufacturing of higher education’, in J. Cannan and W. Shumar (eds.) Structure and Agency in the Neoliberal University, London: Routledge.

Garcia, A. M. (1999) ‘Multiculturalism: an ‘as if’ phenomenon’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 12 (3), pp. 299–310.

Lemert, C. and Elliott, A. (2006) Deadly Worlds: The Emotional Costs of Globalization, New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

Moore, J. (2005) The Sloan Consortium Quality Framework and The Five Pillars, Sloan-C™: Needham, Massachusetts.

Noble, D. F. (1997) ‘Digital diploma mills: the automation of higher education’. Available at: www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issues31/noble/index.html (accessed 29.4.2009).

Ritzer, G. (1993) The McDonalization of Society, Pine Forge Press: Thousand Oaks, California.

Placement blogging: the benefits and limitations of online journaling

Steven Curtis, Barrie Axford, Alasdair Blair, Caroline Gibson, Richard Huggins, Philippa Sherrington
s.curtis@londonmet.ac.uk

The Authors

Steven Curtis teaches international relations at London Metropolitan University and employs a reflective group blog as part of his module, ‘The new diplomacy’ (http://newdiplomacy.blogspot.com/). He is co-author of International Politics: An Introductory Guide (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming) and co-editor of The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics: Placement Learning, Citizenship and Employability (C-SAP, forthcoming), both with Alasdair Blair, and appears in the film, Innovations in the Teaching and Learning of Politics (www.politicsatuniversity.com/innovations.html).

s.curtis@londonmet.ac.uk

Barrie Axford is professor of politics at Oxford Brookes University. His research covers theories of globalization, new media and politics, and forms of networked transnationalism. He is currently writing a book on globalization theory and is working on an edited volume on culture and globalization.

Alasdair Blair is professor and head of department of historical and social studies at De Montfort University. In addition to his pedagogic research interests, he has written six books and a number of articles on British foreign policy and European integration. He has just finished writing International Politics: An Introductory Guide with Steven Curtis.

Caroline Gibson was project manager of The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics. She is currently the manager of the Reinvention Centre’s undergraduate journal, Reinvention: a Journal of Undergraduate Research (www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/research/cetl/ejournal/) and is undertaking an MA in Social Research at the University of Warwick.

Richard Huggins is assistant dean, social sciences and law, Oxford Brookes University. He is currently completing a book on UK approaches to drug use and control (Willan, 2010) and working on the third edition of a jointly authored textbook, Politics: An Introduction, for Routledge.

Philippa Sherrington was project director of The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics and formerly associate professor of European politics in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. She is the author of The Council of Ministers: Political Authority in the European Union (Continuum, 2000) among other publications.

Abstract

The use of weblogs (blogs) as student learning journals has become increasingly popular in class-based courses, but little attention has been given to their use in supporting experiential learning activities off-campus. This article explores the advantages and limitations of placement blogging which emerged from a major research project on placement learning for students of politics. It found that blogging can encourage reflective learning due to its public nature. The article includes short videos of post-placement interviews in which students discuss issues surrounding their use of online journaling.

Keywords

blogs, learning journals, reflective learning, placement learning

Blogging on The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics

The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics was a three-year project involving the Politics departments of the University of Warwick, Oxford Brookes University and Coventry University, which explored means of embedding placements in the undergraduate Politics and International Relations curricula. In contrast to the dominant models of placement learning employed in these subject areas in the British Isles, we devised very short placements of only five to 16 days in length and adopted a research-based approach (Curtis et al., 2008, 2009; Sherrington et al., 2008). Students were placed with a wide variety of political actors and organisations, including MPs and MEPs, local and regional government and non-governmental organisations and voluntary groups. The project team negotiated the placements with the placement providers to ensure the experiences met the desired learning outcomes. The placements ran during term time and most were local, although a small number of students went to London or Brussels. In total, we sent 36 students on placements in three rounds of 12 students at a time over three successive terms/semesters. To evaluate the project we conducted semi-structured videotaped interviews with 28 of the students, from which we have extracted clips to illustrate the key points of this article. We also distributed questionnaires six months after the placements had ended and had access to the students’ written work.

The placements were assessed through pre-existing level 2 modules, which were amended where necessary (see Table 1). Although only some of the students were assessed through a reflective journal, we required all students to keep a log of their experiences. As every student at the University of Warwick is provided with a personal weblog (blog), we chose to have students blog about their experiences, rather than use a paper-based journal or Microsoft Word template, in order to experiment with ‘online journaling’ (Mills, 2001). A group blog was set up on the University of Warwick website for students at the other universities. Initially, we did not anticipate that blogging would make a significant difference to students’ reflections. Interestingly, for all her attention to different formats of learning journals, Jennifer Moon seems to indicate that blogging is a largely neutral medium, at least as far as any possible impact on reflection is concerned (Moon, 2006: 55-6). Besides, our main efforts were devoted to setting up and running placements, along with producing partnership agreements and health and safety documentation. However, in the post-placement interviews following the first round of placements, we quickly discovered that the medium matters (Curtis et al., 2009: 66-7). The remainder of this article discusses what we found in terms of both the benefits and the limitations of placement blogging.

University	Module	Assessment of placement (% of module)
University of Warwick	Politics in the United Kingdom	Report linked to placement (20%), with mandatory post-placement interview and reflective journal (0%)
Oxford Brookes University	Independent study module	Report related to placement (100%)
Coventry University	The new European Union	Reflective journal (15%)
	Contemporary British politics	Essay linked to placement (25%)

Problems with paper-based placement learning journals

Our research into the assessment of placements across the British Isles found that placement tutors generally agree on two things: students on placements should be required to keep a learning journal (or log or diary or portfolio) to record and reflect on their experiences; and the paper-based journals or Word documents that are the usual medium for recording reflections are deeply unsatisfactory. We discovered a number of common problems with paper-based or electronic journals, which gelled with our rather limited previous experience of using learning or reflective diaries.

Colleagues reported the frequent suspicion that learning journals were completed (or in some cases commenced) immediately before the submission deadline. Rather than record and reflect on their experiences while on placement, many students wrote their journals after their placements had finished. We also found the common complaint that reflective journals are often only superficially reflective, with many students turning in predominantly descriptive accounts of their experiences. In addition, David Woodman (forthcoming) has raised concerns about the overly personalised, almost confessional accounts of learning that students produce with this form of assessment, where the emphasis tends to be on managing feelings rather than reflecting on practices.

Paper-based journals also provide little opportunity for formative assessment. While loose-leaf journals in class-based modules and courses allow journal entries to be circulated and commented on by lecturers and fellow students (for example, Armstrong et al., 2004: 3, 10), this does not generally hold for placement journals where the students are not in direct contact with their peers and tutors. Providing formative feedback on paper-based journals would have been a particular problem with our approach to placement learning, as students were on placement for very short periods of time (for example, for one week during reading week).

The advantages of publicity

While we do not claim that it is a panacea, blogging allows us to redress many of the problems with paper-based journals. The elements of publicity and novelty are of key importance here. While the blogs of students at the University of Warwick are publicly accessible, we required our placement students to ‘lock’ their blogs so that they could be accessed by only the project team and their fellow placement students. They were also able to restrict access to the project team only when discussing sensitive or confidential issues or mentioning people by name. On occasions we requested that students conceal certain comments, such as recording what a politician said about his party leader. While they were not public in the widest sense of the word, the students’ blogs could be accessed by the project team members and placement students at the other universities involved in the project, so they were writing for an audience, many of whom they didn’t know well, if at all (their ‘public’).

Blogging seemed to unlock something in most of our students and freed up their writing (one referred to it as her end of the day ‘self-expression session’). It was clear the students realised they were writing for an audience; instalments often began with the words ‘Hello everyone!’ Their entries exhibited great flair, creativity and humour due to the awareness that they were in a sense writing for publication (Armstrong et al., 2004: 4, 8, 10, 12; Curtis et al., 2009: 67; Stefani et al., 2007: 136-42), and they were able to include other materials such as digital photographs. The public nature of blogs also discouraged students from focusing excessively on their feelings; instead, they wrote about and reflected on their experiences of the politics that was going on around them. The student in the first video describes how he found blogging to be a form of release, but reveals that he also kept a personal paper diary for his more private thoughts.

Video 1

Because our students knew that their tutors were likely to be reading their blogs, they were encouraged to keep their reflective journals up to date and write more expansively, thereby producing a better record of what they did and experienced. When some of the students fell behind with their blogs, we prompted them to continue by email. As noted by the student in the next video, most students reported that they quickly forgot about many of the activities they had been involved in, so the daily posts on their blogs proved very important when it came to reflecting on their placements for essays and reports later on.

Video 2

Some students went further and used their blogs to work through and develop ideas for their assessed essays and reports, as the student in this video explains.

Video 3

His comments confirm Moon’s concern regarding the assessment of reflective journals:

'The reflective writing in a learning journal may be considered as an assessment method but often it is really more of an aid to learning. For example, often when it is used, reflective writing is the ‘raw’ material of learning. It can be at the equivalent stage to the notes that are taken before an essay is written, or lecture notes. You could almost say that the reflective writing of some learners is their ‘personal curriculum’ in a written form. We do not expect to assess learners’ notes. We ask them to reprocess their notes into an essay or report … In this sense, if we assess the reflective writing directly, we are assessing only the relatively unprocessed (raw) material.'
(Moon, 2004: 156)

Given the extensive reflections and material most students recorded in their blogs, this notion of thinking of online journals as raw material for essays and reports rather than as forms of assessment in their own right is persuasive.

Finally, blogs enabled communication among the students on placements. As the student in the next video comments, she was able to read what the other students on placement were doing and to compare it to her own experiences.

Video 4

The group blog we set up for the Oxford Brookes University and Coventry University students made a difference in this regard. They could easily locate and access each other’s blogs since they were listed together, whereas in the first round of placements the University of Warwick students used their own individual blogs and had to hunt for those of other students (cf. Stefani et al., 2007: 138-9). As one Warwick student commented:

'Through the Warwick blog site you have to find people’s blogs and what have you. But if it’s there when you log on then at least you see Dave’s entry then you can … you know, you might read it, find it interesting, and want to comment on it.'

In rounds two and three, all students used a group blog. However, as we will see below, we found that the benefits in terms of interaction, commenting and collaborative learning were strictly limited.

Remote monitoring of placements

Besides ameliorating some of the problems associated with paper-based journals, we discovered some other benefits of placement blogging. In terms of the organisation of placements, blogs had the advantage of allowing us to track in detail the progress of placements while adopting a light touch approach in terms of their management. Blogs permitted the rapid identification of problems, allowing us to intervene immediately as soon as something went wrong; although, due to the clear-cut partnership agreements we negotiated with placement providers, we needed to intervene on only two occasions.

In the first round of placements, we read the following in one student’s blog:

'[The placement provider] suggested that I did not have to come in to the office every week in order to complete the project as it could be completed either at home or on campus using the internet facility there. This means that I do not know when I will be required to go into the office, whether it is likely to be a fortnightly thing or not …Like the previous time he said he would look into arranging a monday at [the placement provider’s office in London] however as yet he hasn't done [sic] contacted the people involved.'

It was immediately apparent that the placement provider had departed from the learning opportunities we agreed in the partnership agreement. We contacted the student first. In this case, the student took a very mature attitude and recognised that, as the office he was placed in was understaffed, the placement provider would be too busy to fulfil the terms of the agreement. Rather than have us contact the placement provider or accept our offer of an alternative placement, the student decided to complete the placement but reverted to the non-placement pattern of assessment for his module. Owing to the student’s decision, our intervention didn’t go beyond asking him which course of action he wanted to follow.

Our second intervention came after reading the following posting by a student placed in Brussels. (This isn’t a good example of the style students adopted in the blogs):

'i made a firend today, there are lots of ppl here doing short placements and im goin to go sight seeing with her on friday as i ahve the day off!'

As we had financed the student’s travel and accommodation from the project budget, we were very keen that she should experience a full week of political activity in Brussels. We contacted the placement provider, requesting that she be given some activities to engage her on the last day of her placement.

We were fortunate that these were the most serious problems we had to deal with. However, they demonstrate how problems can be identified and dealt with as soon as they arise when students record their experiences online. With short placements this is essential; otherwise, placements will be over before any problems can be rectified. But it is also beneficial for the management of longer placements. For example, on year-long placements on sandwich courses, visits by tutors often do not occur until three months or more into the placement. By that stage, students will be set in a routine and the expectations of students and placement providers alike will be fixed, making it difficult at that stage to push placements in the direction of better learning opportunities.

Only one of the 28 students we interviewed said that he would have liked to have been visited during his placement. The others argued that remote monitoring enhanced their sense of ownership of their placements, along with their feelings of autonomy and responsibility. Many felt that this sense of personal responsibility and efficacy would have been undermined by a visit from a tutor checking up on their progress. In this video, two students express typical opinions on this issue.

Video 5

Spurring deeper reflection

Following US examples of paper-based and electronic journaling (Cooper, 1998; Mills, 2001), in the final round of placements we experimented with commenting on the students’ blogs, posing questions to get them to reflect further on their activities and the events unfolding around them. Two students from different universities were placed with MPs at the time of the debate in the House of Commons on the renewal or replacement of the Trident nuclear missile system and were therefore dealing with similar issues. A member of the project team left comments on their blogs, asking them to assess the importance of letters from constituents in informing MPs’ decisions on how to vote on the issue and suggesting a number of questions the students might like to ask those around them.

Among our other interventions in blogs, we asked students to reflect on and research the value of traditional political procedures, institutional resistance to new technology, and whether written questions from one MP to another are more about making political points than acquiring information. We found that tutor comments yielded significant rewards in terms of student reflection and learning and the enrichment of their placement experiences.

The limitations of online journaling

However, as we indicated above, blogging is not a panacea and we discovered a number of limitations. Although all students were required to keep a blog as part of their involvement in the project, some students exhibited minimal commitment to blogging when it did not count toward the assessment of their modules (cf. Moon, 2006: 15). In such cases, it was not uncommon to find blogs comprising just two or three short entries, which tailed off toward the end of the placements. But this was not an issue for students whose journals were summatively assessed.

Some students found the process of blogging too onerous. At the end of a busy day, they reported that the last thing they felt like doing was going online to record their thoughts. One student was unable to master the technology, and so reverted to keeping a paper-based journal (which displayed all of the problems noted above). Another student declined to keep a blog on the grounds that she was one of two students placed with a city council and she didn’t want the other student from another university reading her thoughts about the placement. For this student, an audience including one person in particular made blogging an exercise that was a little too public. She too kept a paper journal, which was almost entirely descriptive and superficially reflective.

A further limitation relates to an issue with blogging which we have named ‘Creed’s complaint’, after the character in US version of the TV series The Office. Creed, who has no analogue in the British version of the show, asks a colleague to create a blog for him which is in fact just a Word document on his desktop. He thinks he is blogging to the world, but instead he is merely creating a private document (view the clip at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=z9dqckcQQZw). Along these lines, a number of our students raised the concern that no one was listening. As one put it, ‘Is anybody going to read this?’ This makes the matter of tutors commenting on students’ blogs all the more pressing, in order to reassure them that they can be heard in cyberspace.

Finally, given the importance of responding to postings, it is a little disconcerting that we discovered a complete absence of communication among our students via blogs. They posted no comments on the blogs of their peers. This confirms the findings of other studies on placement learning where students did not support each other at all, contrary to what one might expect given the unconventional nature of this form of learning (for example, Smith et al., 2004: 200-1). Our use of blogs at least provided a means for students to communicate with each other while on placement and our students frequently read each other’s blogs; but they would not comment. Some research into classroom blogging has demonstrated that not commenting on others’ blogs is a more general problem with the medium in an educational setting. Responding to postings is a central part of blogging, but it seems that when blogging is embedded in an educational context students may refrain from commenting (Armstrong et al., 2004: 8, 10; but see Lohnes, 2003; Stefani et al., 2007: 141). Indeed, the idea of commenting on the students’ blogs had not occurred to the members of the project team until we learned of the US experience.

Our students worked well together in the various exercises and activities in the pre-placement briefings, and in the briefings for rounds two and three we emphasised that students could comment on other students’ blogs and support each other through the medium. Indeed, the most popular part of the briefings was a meeting with former placement students. The students found it helpful to learn from the experiences of fellow students who had already been on placements. But these elements of sharing, support and co-operation evaporated when it came to blogging. Despite Generation-Y’s educational background of ingrained collaborative learning (Jones, 2009), we found that, when on placement, students thought of themselves as independent learners, as the concluding video demonstrates.

Video 6

Conclusion

The use of blogs had a clear and significant impact on the management of placements as well as on the quality of student writing and reflection, which we attribute to the public nature of blogging. While it is possible to create a blog on most virtual learning environments (VLEs), the benefits are likely to be reduced as VLEs are fairly restrictive in allowing students only to post plain text and are not open to anyone outside the module or course cohort (as David Carraher has put it, ‘There is a firewall around the classroom’ (Carraher, 2003)). By comparison with the more public blogs our students used, Blackboard blogging is closed and clunky. And students tend to view VLEs as top-down, tutor-controlled forms of communication (Richards and den Dulk, 2007: 6). Therefore we recommend more publicly accessible blogs. Indeed, one of us is currently experimenting with a fully public blog to support class-based learning.

It may be possible to overcome some of the limitations we encountered. For example, students might be encouraged to interact and comment on each other’s blogs if the posting of constructive comments formed part of the assessment. We would certainly encourage tutors to comment on their students’ blogs, not only to stimulate more in-depth reflection, but also to dispel the concern raised by a number of the students and expressed by a member of the project team that they might be ‘blogging into thin air’.

References

Armstrong, L., Berry, M. and Lamshed, R. (2004) ‘Blogs as electronic learning journals’, e-Journal of Instructional Science and Technology. Available at: www.usq.edu.au/electpub/e-jist/docs/vol7_no1/currentpractice/blogs.htm (accessed 10.1.2009).

Carraher, D. (2003) ‘Weblogs in education’. Available at: http://213770.blog.51cto.com/203770/35620 (accessed 21.1.2009).

Cooper, D. D. (1998) ‘Reading, writing, and reflection’, in R. A. Rhoads and J. P. F. Howard (eds.) Academic Service Learning: A Pedagogy of Action and Reflection, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 47–56.

Curtis, S., Axford, B., Blair, A., Gibson, C., Huggins, R., Sherrington, P. and Francis, K. (2008) ‘Rethinking placement learning’, C-SAP Newsletter, 13, pp. 16–18. Available at: www.c-sap.bham.ac.uk/resources/publications/newsletters/issue13.pdf (accessed 24.1.2009).

Curtis, S., Axford, B., Blair, A., Gibson, C., Huggins, R. and Sherrington, P. (2009) ‘Making short politics placements work’, Politics, 29 (1), pp. 62–70.

Jones, H. (2009) ‘Re-hash or mash-up? Assessing Generation-Y in cyberspace’, The Virtual University? Social Science Critiques of Teaching and Learning in the Age of Digital Reproduction, C-SAP conference, London, 16 January.

Lohnes, S. (2003) ‘Weblogs in education: bringing the world to the liberal arts classroom’, The NITLE News 2 (1) (Word copy supplied by author).

Mills, S. (2001) ‘Electronic journaling: using the web-based group journal for service-learning reflection’, Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 8 (1), pp. 27–35 (Word copy supplied by author).

Moon, J. A. (2004) A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning: Theory and Practice, London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Moon, J. A. (2006) Learning Journals: A Handbook for Reflective Practice and Professional Development (2nd edn.), London: Routledge.

Richards, M. J., and den Dulk, R. (2007) ‘My professor has a blog? Blogging for teaching and managing an academic department’, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, 12 April. Available at: www.allacademic.com/meta/p197132_index.html (accessed 21.1.2009).

Sherrington, P., Axford, B., Blair, A., Curtis, S., Gibson, C. and Huggins, R. (2008) ‘Research-led placements in politics: a new approach?’, European Political Science 7 (2), pp. 175-85.

Smith, K., Clegg, S., Lawrence, E. and Todd, M. J. (2004) ‘Fostering autonomy through work-based experiences: challenges for university educators and students’, LATISS: Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences, 1 (3), pp. 189–204.

Stefani, L., Mason, R. and Pegler, C. (2007) The Educational Potential of e-Portfolios: Supporting Personal Development and Reflective Learning, London: Routledge.

Woodman, D. (forthcoming) ‘Up close and personal: some issues in the assessment of placement learning’, in A. Blair and S. Curtis (eds.) The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics: Placement Learning, Citizenship and Employability, Birmingham: C-SAP Monographs.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Higher Education Funding Council for England through its Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning, which funded the three-and-a-half-year research project entitled ‘The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics’ on which this article is based (project no. FDTL 16/03). Further information about the project can be found at the project website: www.politicsinaction.ac.uk. We are especially thankful to the 36 students whose experiences formed the basis of this article and who gave us permission to quote from their blogs and display the videos of their post-placement interviews. Finally, we would like to thank our US friends Sarah Lohnes and Steve Mills for responding to our requests for copies of their articles, which are not readily available in the UK despite the existence of the so-called information superhighway.

A private revolution: how technology is enabling students to take their work home

Dr Debbie Holley, London Metropolitan University
d.holley@londonmet.ac.uk

Dr Martin Oliver, Institute of Education
m.oliver@ioe.ac.uk

The authors

Dr Debbie Holley is principal lecturer at London Metropolitan Business School and a university teaching fellow. She has a part-time secondment to the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in Reusable Learning Objects (www.rlo-cetl.ac.uk). Her research interests are engaging students within a blended learning curriculum, student e-portfolio developments and the use of Web 2.0.

Dr Martin Oliver is a reader in the Faculty of Culture and Pedagogy at the Institute of Education. His research interests include the impact of new technology on roles and practices within higher education (including how this changes what students learn and do), evaluating ICT use and the development of theory and methodologies in the field of e-learning.

Abstract

It is widely believed that technology is enabling students to engage with their education in new and innovative ways, both inside and outside the formal learning environment. However, many e-learning interventions do little to change existing classroom practice. Moreover, when practices do change, we currently have little evidence about the ways in which individual students manage their access to materials outside the classroom, or the meanings they ascribe to their engagement with online resources.This problem is contextualised in relation to literature on the politics surrounding the strategic ‘push’ to e-learning. Issues such as deficit conceptions of widening participation, exclusion and surveillance are identified. The paper builds on this review with a study of students who are engaging with the curriculum in the online environment but are failing to take advantage of face-to-face class contact time. This is achieved using a set of Biographic Narrative Interpretative Method (BNIM) case studies. This method generates narratives about students’ actions – or lack of them – in terms that are meaningful to them.The paper concludes by arguing that technology is not ‘permitting’ students to take their work home so much as requiring them to do so. This has changed how students engage in education, but in a way that complicates the process rather than improves it. As the cases here reveal, students may have to struggle to create a context in which they can learn successfully – and this applies just as readily to learning online as it does to classroom study.

Keywords

BNIM research method, pedagogical Issues, evaluation methodology

Introduction

This paper sets out to seek a richer understanding of the student experience outside the classroom using a phenomenological approach, where the meaning of the lived experiences for individuals about a concept or phenomenon is explored (Cresswell, 1998: 51). Weighed down by shorter teaching semesters, overwhelming assessment and under-resourced staff, technology is not disrupting learning in ways that are overt – instead, our research indicates that individual students have to renegotiate their own private learning spaces. It is here that the disruption is occurring, not ‘out there’ in the formal domain but ‘in here’ in the informal learning space, and sometimes learning is happening in spite, rather than because of, technology.

Literature review

The political context

Our analysis starts with reference to a speech made by David Blunkett, when he was secretary of state for education, at Greenwich University in 2000, where he firmly positions e-learning and the needs of ‘UK plc’ within a globalised economy. The increasing political intervention in higher education was justified from a governmental perspective as meeting the needs of a global ‘knowledge economy’ (Hodge, 2002), enabling the UK to compete within the international trading environment:

'The powerhouses of the new global economy are innovation and ideas, skills and knowledge. These are now the tools for success and prosperity as much as natural resources and physical labour power were in the past century. Higher education is at the centre of these developments. Across the world, its shape, structure and purposes are undergoing transformation because of globalisation … World class higher education ensures that countries can grow and sustain high-skill businesses, and attract and retain the most highly-skilled people … It is therefore at the heart of the productive capacity of the new economy and the prosperity of our democracy.'
David Blunkett, Secretary of State for Education, Speech at Greenwich University, 15 February 2000 (http://cms1.gre.ac.uk)

In the UK, the use of central funding to promote a competitive and expansionist market in further and higher education has already radically altered the culture of many institutions. Governmental policies that were intended to enhance the quality of higher education have added to a process of centralisation initiated by Margaret Thatcher from 1979 (see Sinfield et al., 2004; Burns et al., 2006). In particular, pedagogy, once purely the concern of the academics directly involved in course delivery, has now become an issue for strategy. Smith (2005: 104-5) comments:

'Politicisation and systemisation of e-learning appears endemic, as policy and funding pursue large scale development to harness potential in this area. For those in the field, Blunkett’s speech had some daunting overtones, ‘big business’, ‘big aspirations’, ‘well rehearsed’ in relation to the national and global benefits of e-learning.'

Thus we can see that government views central control over e-learning as a key strategic initiative in moving ‘UK plc’ forward in the competitive global economy. Conole, Smith and White (2006) suggest the most important policy report of the ‘new labour era’ phase of e-learning development was the Dearing Report (NCIHE, 1997). This report set the main macro-policy context within which further government policies were situated. It was the culmination of a systematic review of higher education, and made a series of recommendations which have influenced the focus and direction of many ICT projects. The report included an appendix examining new approaches to teaching and the associated cost structure of teaching methods. The document is significant as it explores a rationale for enhancing the student experience through the use of resource-based learning, set within the framework of the unit cost per student – as student numbers increase, the cost per student falls and the total cost stays within public spending constraints (Dearing, 1997: Appendix 2). The economic model of unit costs takes pedagogy away from the expert tutor, the subject specialist, and places it firmly in the hands of management. The report authors all seem of the view that the ‘radical’ changes they propose will be positive, and this is consonant with later government pronouncements ostensibly seeking imaginative approaches to funding ‘to invigorate the e-learning market, address the gaps and quality of e-learning content, and drive pedagogic innovation’ (www.dfes.gov.uk/2005). Such assumptions have, however, been shown to be over-simplistic (for example, Clegg et al., 2003).

However, there has been no apparent acknowledgement of the changes brought about by widening participation, or that learners are no longer a homogenous group of privileged middle-class 18-year-olds drawn from the top 7 per cent of homes but are globally recruited from a competitive marketplace. Indeed, rather than the fresh thinking that such a student body might propel, the choice of measures utilised to engage this diverse group is increasingly made by management (or at least passed on from funding councils via management), embedded in strategies and regulated by quality assurance procedures (Holley et al., 2006). This so-called agenda of ‘modernisation’ for higher education could be seen in turn as being part of a wider debate around performance and quality, where performance indicators provide management with both a technology and a ‘rational’ justification for exerting increased bureaucratic control (Kirkpatrick and Lucio,1995).

Pedagogic implications of policy

With pedagogic choice becoming a matter of strategy rather than tactics, the choice of teaching techniques becomes a matter of serving functional agendas of efficiency (more students equals cheaper – see, for example, Smith and Oliver, 2002). Noble’s argument (2001:3) about the commodification of education – ‘educational experience that has been disintegrated and distilled into discrete, reified, and ultimately saleable things or packages of things’ – now warrants reconsideration. This move is typically framed as being student-centred, in that a modular offering involving e-learning is expected to bring flexibility, allowing a broader range of students to engage in education in a flexible manner.

In spite of a growing rhetoric about independent and autonomous learners (Thorpe, 2002), we have no confidence that our students know how to learn best. Instead, we offer them modularisation and centralisation. When students engage with these offerings, there is no trust in their ability to complete them, leading to regimes of surveillance (Land and Bayne, 2002) and a deep-rooted suspicion that they will cheat. The fear of plagiarism has led to widespread electronic analyses of work that attempt, with only mixed success, to catch plagiarists (Evans, 2004).

The rhetoric of personalisation and student-centredness constructs the individual learner primarily in the deficit, as having individual needs requiring individual support, and this personalisation hides and denies that whole groups and classes of people have been excluded from education because of their class or group position – not because of individual flaws or lack of aspiration (Burns et al., 2006). Arguably, rather than education as an ineffable and somewhat unknowable transcendental experience (Noble, 2001; Satterthwaite, 2004), involving creativity, trust and communication, we have implicitly transgressive students corralled by implicitly transgressive staff (Sinfield et al., 2004).

Students’ experiences of e-learning

The focus of the literature thus far has been from the perspective of the institution and the teacher. The students’ experiences of e-learning have been relatively neglected (Sharpe et al., 2006). The few studies that have explored students’ engagement with technology and education show a complex picture: that shaped by social and cultural influences and full of distractions (for example, Crook, 2002), a far cry from the simple promise of access to consumable courses promised in the Dearing Report. The C-SAP e-Learning Scoping Study (2008: 14) provides an insight into staff perceptions of personalising learning for students and, as a focus group member points out:

'A sophisticated ‘personalised’ system of e-learning would not obviate the need for students to engage thoroughly with the materials, in whatever form; porting classes into Facebook might be novel, but would not guarantee further engagement with learning on the part of the students.'

This contrasts with the University of Dundee e-learning survey report of students, where 80 per cent of student respondents visited their virtual learning environment (VLE) at least twice a week and in focus groups students ‘stated the frequency of visiting was driven by expectations and the nature of specific teaching programme’ (Weyers et al., 2004: 7). However, Sharpe and Benfield (2004: 3) note that although many students report benefits to their wider experience through the use of e-learning, the typical e-learning interventions do little to change existing classroom practice. It is when e-learning adapts new or unusual pedagogies that things get more complicated, and ‘here learners report an intensely emotional experience and a major concern with time and time management’ (Sharpe and Benfield, 2004). As yet, we don’t really understand the ways in which individual students manage their access to a range of online materials outside the classroom and the meanings they ascribe to their engagement with online resources.

Although there is considerable interest in the notion of context, very little research seems to be done on the simpler idea of ‘space’. This is not a widely discussed topic in the educational literature, and much of what has been written tends to be in related fields, suggesting ways in which space can be physically conceptualised. Thus, for example, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) produced a glossy brochure that focuses on the design of spaces within educational institutions that ‘become a physical representation of the institution’s vision and strategy for learning’ (JISC, 2006). There are some underpinning concepts that need to be reviewed when considering how students engage with their own ‘learning space’ (Holley, 2008). This raises questions about how ‘free’ a space can be when students are monitored, tracked and highly visible to their tutors.

A useful start to conceptualising student space is to identify where space is available within current pedagogic practice. A study by Oliver and Shaw (2003) explored the relatively neglected area of curriculum design practices with academic staff. The research suggested that curriculum design tended to be themed as a series of expanding academic considerations, starting sequentially from an absence of design, to content considerations, to the planning stage, and finally to the process of integrating the whole into the organisation. A separate theme relating to this process of curriculum design was also identified in the Oliver paper, namely the ‘lived curriculum’, which was elaborated as a need for a ‘creative space’ – areas that were not planned, in which teachers and students would feel able to try things out and negotiate what should be done. Significantly, it was ‘felt that this space should be enjoyable and … respectful to and encouraging of students’ (Oliver and Shaw, 2003: 5). Thus a space was identified within which students were able to move freely, and academics felt that there was a need to protect this spontaneous open space from the formal, planned curriculum. What actually happens in these spaces that are left out of the curriculum? Or is this a much more liberating space away from what Land and Bayne (2002: 7) call ‘extensive tracking tools’?

However, none of this work has explored the detail of how specific students work with technology to manage their studies from their external environment. It is this neglected area that will be explored through the subsequent case studies.

Method

Recognising the complexity of the politics impacting on our students and their experiences, the tradition within which we will frame the work is the phenomenological approach, where the meaning of the lived experiences for individuals about a concept or phenomenon is explored (Cresswell,1998: 51). Exploring the individual experience of learning outside the formal classroom environment has led researchers to call for new types of study to be undertaken – ones that explore people’s patterns of use and seek to understand them (for example, Selwyn, 2004; Potter, 2006). Biographic Narrative Interpretative Method (BNIM) fits within this tradition. It is used to draw out the ‘stories’ or narratives from interviewees’ lives (Wengraf, 2001). What is of interest to the researcher is what the interviewee selects to tell us, and the way in which the story is told. One advantage of this approach, Wengraf suggests, is that it limits counter-transference, which is the emotional reaction of the interviewer to the interviewee’s subject matter. The BNIM has a key advantage for interviewing participants known to the interviewer as it can, in part, address issues of power relationships.

The context of the study

The context for this study is a metropolitan university in the UK. It has a diverse student intake and two-thirds of the student population are mature learners. Many have English as a second language. A high proportion of mature learners change the typical learning dynamic as the students very often attend lectures only. The informal learning that takes place on a more residential campus where students are present for more of their time is missing at this university. Research by Pheiffer et al. (2003) showed that, by week 11 of their semester, only 19 per cent of year 1 students had joined a student society and only 44 per cent had attended a social event at the university. The students experience financial hardship and many are trying to combine full-time study with nearly full-time work, with an average of 15 working hours per week (Holley and Dobson, 2008).

The course is a specialist honours-level module on an International Business degree. Historically, it had a high failure rate, and the first author redesigned the module, making full use of Blackboard, the university VLE. Weekly interactive online discussions were implemented, and students were encouraged to engage with an ethical discussion running for three weeks around the use of labour in developing country factories supplying UK chain stores. The tracking tools enabled the monitoring of student access and activity within the VLE.

Selection of participants

The BNIM approach recommends the selection and analysis of three interviews. If two people are selected, there is a tendency to compare and stereotype; by adding a third person, the analysis is much richer (Wengraf, 2001). The three students comprising the case study were Nyela, a refugee from Somalia, Marco, an Italian student studying in the UK and working hard to finance his studies, and Richard, a student studying for his professional examinations on a part-time basis at the university. (All names are pseudonyms.)

Students were placed in a sampling framework as follows:

Quadrant A Students engaging online, and engaging face-to-face	Quadrant B Students engaging online but not engaging face-to-face Nyela, Marco, Richard
Quadrant C Students not engaging online, but engaging face-to-face	Quadrant D Students not engaging online, and not engaging face-to-face

For this study, an exploration of students’ behaviour outside the classroom was of significance and thus three students from Quadrant B were selected for interview. The narratives from these students can offer insights into their attitudes towards both the classroom and their silence in this space, and a contrast with their use of technology outside the classroom in their own space. Richard studied the whole module course virtually, on a distance-learning basis, and so had no experience of face-to-face tuition. Marco attended the class regularly, made very little contribution in the classroom debates and discussions but was very confident in emailing to clarify points subsequently. Nyela attended the classes infrequently and was almost invisible when she was there, sitting apart from others in a back corner of the class.

Ethical considerations

All 26 students were invited to take part in an interview and 11 students participated. Each interview took place in the author’s office (the author was also the lecturer on the module) at a time that suited the student. Interviews took between 40 minutes and an hour. All students signed an informed consent form, which had been derived from the BERA ethical guidelines (www.bera.ac.uk/ethical). This explained the study and made it clear that interviews could be stopped at any point; if this action was taken, the student was welcome to leave and take their tape-recording with them. All references to students in future work would involve pseudonyms, the original named transcription would be held only on the author’s home PC and, finally, all tape-recordings would be destroyed at the end of the project. Talking through the ethical guidelines before the interview commenced acted as a powerful agent in ‘settling’ the individual into the interview space, and one student commented that knowing they could leave at any time helped them stay and take part.

Case Study 1: Nyela – home comforts

A refugee from Somalia, Nyela starts her narration by talking about how hard she has found the move to the UK both in terms of social and educational integration:

'You know, when you can’t speak the language it’s even harder for you to actually go down the high street or buy certain products, let alone start school, and then not only start making friends with people you’ve never met in your entire life and completely different people to you, it’s harder to learn at the same time.'

Her story is one of difficulties – with making friends, with settling into a different education system, with not having the familiar extended family support network around her. Her very expressive language shows how hard she has worked to learn English as a foreign language, and she is able to use tone and intonation to convey the depth of her feelings. Her selection of words ‘even harder’ and ‘you’ve never met in your entire life’ hint at the resistance she has come across when trying to adapt to and enter a new community. It is significant that Nyela has chosen to start her narrative from her childhood experiences of first entering the UK.

Nyela explains how she sees studying at university by referring back to her secondary school, where she says:

'I just wanted to be invisible and to go into class and just see what it would be like to just sit there. So it would be nice for them to actually get an overview of what the place would be like, what the food is like, what the people are like.'

There is a sense that she wants to find out what the ‘norms’ of a learning situation are before she exposes herself to it. This would help her to blend in when she arrives, to sort out in her head how things should be. Being a visitor first would help her understand the rules. She relates this to a university induction:

'Maybe it would be nice if the students actually came in and look around the university without someone guiding them going this is this room etc. Somewhere they could just have an overview of what their days may be like if they do go to the university.'

We start to get an idea of how these kinds of pre-entry experiences would be useful when we explore further how Nyela negotiates spaces in other aspects of her life. In the following extract, we contrast the use Nyela makes of spaces – both virtual space and physical space. In both sets of circumstances, she feels she must learn how to negotiate use of the spaces in order to gain some control over the context for study. When this is achieved, she feels the conditions to work well are set up.

The physical space is evidenced through narratives about the technology at home, which is clearly an important part of Nyela’s approach to study. It is of great importance to her family, as a means of accessing educational resources, and equally important is the location of the PC, in the home, where Nyela has the support of her family. She is very proud that she has bought a computer and beams when she explains that she has acquired this with her first pay cheque.

'It’s because I always wanted something that was mine and, you know, when you’re working and you buy something with your first pay cheque, that computer, I felt kind of good. I felt like I was working, old enough, I’d bought something to the family, so it was something that I also did for them, as well as for me. So it was something kind of precious. It was something that I did for myself and for the rest of the family.'

Here we can see that her economic capital as a worker is paying back the social capital to her family, and she is delighted that she can contribute to the family in this way (Bourdieu, 1986). Nyela shares a house with her mother, brother and sister. She says, ‘We don’t have much room at home’, and she is grateful that her sister shares a room with her mum: ‘She doesn’t sleep with me.’ The computer is in her bedroom, and access is negotiated to suit all the family members: ‘So we work our way around it, it’s not really hard.’ Her sister uses it before Nyela comes in from college, and ‘my brother, he actually just surfs the net, normally when we’re out. He’s at college as well.’

Nyela has negotiated the space to access the technology. Although it is ‘her’ computer, she sees the wider implications of technology as a key part of studying, and she wants her brother and sister to share in the experiences. She retains control through the PC being in her room, so she can control the environment. She does have to compromise, but for her the compromise is viable, involving strictly segregated access.

The ‘virtual’ space is evident as Nyela goes on to discuss the course in some detail. In her narrative there is a sense of an overwhelming space – the course is too vast for her to comprehend and she is seeking a guide through both the formal and informal learning on offer. She reverts to time-management skills to map out and gain control of the space and applies her IT knowledge to sequence the learning.

Learning is a key objective. It does not matter how hard it is to ‘learn’; Nyela will endeavour to do this. As her narrative develops into describing her university experiences, we can trace her determination to ‘learn’ from her childhood experiences. Unfamiliarity with places, people and events has enabled Nyela to develop successful strategies for overcoming barriers in her own way, as we can see from the next extract:

'But now I think it probably has something to do with the more you grow up the more you learn and everything else, but I feel more comfortable with myself to actually go about learning a certain subject, managing my own time and then gradually, bit by bit, go and force myself to overstress myself but gradually learning bit by bit.'

She talks about forcing herself to overcome the stress of learning, and is starting to develop strategies to cope – managing her own time and space is important because having small steps works for her. Her aim of developing ‘learning’ is being achieved.

However, the difficulties remain with Nyela in terms of making friends and starting to be, as she puts it, grown up. She would prefer to talk things through with peers rather than ringing her mum at home:

'I think the sooner that you know certain people within your group, the better. It’s because they can be your support at uni so if things go horribly wrong, instead of ringing your mum or your friend back home, you can ring them and talk to them. Having friends in university life would be great.'

It is clear that her aim of having friends at university has not yet been achieved, and the pressure of study and time for friendship is an issue. There is a sense of not having achieved this social capital, and the next extract suggests a reason why this is the case – Nyela is prioritising personal capital:

'It’s still a bit difficult to find friends at uni. On top of that, getting to know people while you are trying to get an essay in on time is extremely hard.'

Thus, for Nyela, being able to study is something that follows from a feeling of knowing how to use a particular space for learning. She has struggled to learn how to use several different spaces – classrooms, home, the online environment. It is her approach of compartmentalising spaces that has enabled her to overcome her initial difficulties and to engage successfully in education.

Case Study 2: Marco – giving up sleep to manage his study space

Marco is an Italian student who came to London for what he describes as ‘a new experience, new challenge’. He has held down a number of jobs (office administration in Italy, hotel and bar work in London) and also studied to gain the ticketing qualifications needed to work in a travel agency. He is used to combining work and study, and is keen to attain his degree in England as this holds a high status back home.

His interview characterises him as a man seeking new opportunities, who is willing to take risks with his career and education and to gradually find a role that he is comfortable with. The extract below illustrates his ethos:

'Marketing was one of those subjects that I wanted to study, so I said I can start and see if I like it and I will stay or change in the next semester. I started this new challenge.'

He took opportunities as they came along. For example, before starting at the university, he attended an open evening, accepted the offer of a place and started studying a degree within two weeks: ‘So I just went for it and see if I like it or not.’

Time management is an issue for him, as he has to continue to work to fund his studies. He is unable to spend time on the university premises to study. He prefers to study in his flat, where his flatmate also works shifts, so there is peace and quiet. He is very good at prioritising his work. When he finishes his shifts in the bar, he can use the internet there and so regularly logs on and works between 1am and 3am. His manager is keen for him to progress and allows him to use the internet if there are any quiet periods during his shifts and also after the shift ends at 1am.

Marco does not see himself as a typical student; this is partly because of his part-time work. He prefers the peace and quiet of his home to study. Student areas of the university are noisy: ‘I don’t like to study with the TV or music on.’ His home space offers a contrast to the general busyness and noise elsewhere in his life. The home space also gives him an environment he can control to enable him to maximise his study effectiveness. His patterns of study, either in the quiet at work after the bar has closed or late afternoon, indicate the discipline of study on a regular basis.

Part of the assessment for his course is group work. He is asked how he manages to fit this in along with the needs of a full-time job. Marco negotiates his time by maximising the use of online space. He says:

'We share the phone number and we share the email but this is mostly by email that we exchange information or we give deadlines to each other. For example, we know by Thursday we have to do some part of the report. So the phone is still not used yet but the email, yes, it’s used a lot.'

When asked about whether it is the university email account or an individual one, he comments: ‘We never use it, we just use the personal one.’ As a mature learner, Marco prefers to be totally independent of the university, and it is suggested that others in his group take this approach as well.

When questioned about the potential use of mobile technology to keep students in touch with the course, Marco says he would find this intrusive. He says:

'Yes, because it’s something, I think it’s something personal, and studying or working is something separate from my private life. So I don’t want the university to get into it. I don’t really feel comfortable with it. If I see a text message from the university I’m not really happy about it.'

The above quote illustrates how Marco compartmentalises the different aspects of his life, and how he wants to manage his life on his own terms. He is prepared to work anti-social hours to earn the money to study, and to study at anti-social hours to keep up-to-date with his study, but he wants to manage his own life and deal with any issues arising at a time that suits him. The following extract shows how he would perceive any university communications:

'Maybe because the technology at 3am, I chose to look at it. I can control it, when to look at it, but the phone that the text message can come at any time and I cannot control that.'

Thus, Marco is keen to use technology at the place and time of his choosing, and he wants to keep the university side of his life separate from the rest of his life. He manages a combination of work and study by strictly controlling the impact of his study within regular periods when he has carved out the space, either in his preferred location of home or the post-work period when there is quiet in the office behind the bar. He is blocking out time to create space and giving up sleep to enable him to continue to pursue his aims of a degree while living in London and earning his own living.

Case Study 3: Richard – power, privilege and personal space

Richard is a white, middle-class student in his early thirties, and a feature of this analysis is his strong identity of self. In his interview, he presented himself as confident in his abilities, both as a worker and as a student, and in his ability to transfer skills from one arena to the other. In terms of negotiating his own time and space to study, he is prepared to work hard and effectively in the comfort of his own home, where he can shut out the world. Middle-class values of deferred gratification and the commercial values of the professional in industry can explain in part his determination to succeed and his view of the educational process as a series of tasks to be undertaken. His language reflects neo-liberal notions of success and reward of the individual; for example, a key feature of his narrative was a constant comparison of himself with other learners, placing himself in the ‘top 10 per cent’ of the classroom. He uses terms that classify the other students in his class by ‘success’ or ‘failure’ on a sliding scale. For example, when talking about forming online groups for an assessment, he comments, ‘Then the lower end of the group would be excluded from that I think.’ Given the tone and expression of voice, this meant that the students he would place at the lower end would not be capable of forming an online group. He is satisfied with his own group, because ‘the top 10 per cent would be able to form themselves into sensible groups who could work together’.

He is aware of his privileged position, and explains that he is at a little bit of advantage because he is working and has the money to buy text books ‘even when they’re not essential’. There is a sense of privilege from the resources Richard has access to in his home environment, and privilege is a re-occurring theme.

Richard can be described as an independent learner as he shows confidence in approaching the teaching/learning materials on his own. He displays ‘white, middle-class’ self-assurance in his abilities to negotiate an alternative teaching mode with the lecturer that is not available ‘by strictly following rules’. He displays independent learning characteristics through minimal contact with the lecturer – only checking when there is a query he is concerned about (queries were mainly to do with how high marks could be gained for the module assessment). He knows that there is untapped support from the lecturer should this be needed. This approach suggests an economy of effort, which reflects the business world in which Richard operates. He has high expectations himself and is intolerant of others. Below he talks about the value of face-to-face teaching compared with self-study:

'In terms of face-to-face time, for me, it’s not so important. I can spend an hour at a computer or an hour in a lecture but the hour I spend in front of the computer will probably cover about five to six weeks’ worth of material.'

He is able to draw upon his work experience to ensure he is able to gain the high grades he considers he deserves. Richard sees value in setting goals and working hard to achieve these. He uses ‘hard’ commercial skills that would be valued in the workplace in his studies. He can be seen to be self-assertive and elitist in his approach to learning, as his comments below illustrate:

'The use of technology will be more advantageous for those who are able to use the technology to their advantage. I know it sounds a bit like an obvious thing, but I think to only use technology to deliver a course would not work very well for the lower end of a particular group and I think the disadvantage for the middle ground unless they were effectively managed by an outside influence such as the tutor. I don’t think you can just bang everything online and say, there you go.'

Materially, Richard has a settled environment within which to study. He has access to a laptop computer. There is a feeling of physical space where notes can be spread out ‘as far as you can see’. He feels free to make a mess at home. Internet access is also evident, and Richard feels no need to work in an IT room at university, nor a quiet study area designated for student writing.

Later in the interview, Richard talks about how he works independently. There are clues to a privileged existence, which may be very different to that of other interviewees. His educational needs almost colonise his home life in terms of time and space. Here we have an example:

'When you’re at home, you just get home from work, sit down and say this is where I need to be by the end of tonight, and you just sit down and you do it until it’s done, and if it takes an hour or it takes to four in the morning, depending how close your deadlines are, then that’s what you do and you just get down and focus and you can block the rest of the world out.'

University space is definitely not of equal value to Richard. He comments:

'Whereas in the university, the IT rooms are generally … quite noisy and there’s no space to spread out and I’m a very messy worker. I sit there with my laptop in front of me and there’s paper as far as you can see, in every direction.'

His use of home space and time means that he is able to set his own parameters for study. He also has all the necessary resources to assist him. He fails to acknowledge, however, that his ease of study is enabled by a scaffolded learning approach designed by the tutor.

There is no evidence in Richard’s narratives that home space has to be negotiated, and he is able to use his time to meet his own needs first. There is no evidence of a partner or family sharing this space, and it is noticeable in the transcript of the interview that Richard only talks about work and study, and these concerns frame the world that he constructs. Family and friends of Richard possibly share his values, as there are no concerns expressed about having free time to work on his studies. There is a sense of privilege that echoes back to his perceptions of his power, arising from experience in the commercial sector that he feels is more important than the experiences other students had brought to the course.

Discussion

The three cases here show how complex the process of engaging with education is for students. The promised flexibility is not a simple function of the technology; although the course has been re-designed in a modular manner, students have to find their own ways to engage with it. Thus the ‘flexibility’ arises from their negotiation of social constraints rather than being an inherent property of the technology. In all three cases, the students needed to be flexible in some aspect of their home or work life in order to make time and space to study.

Nyela creates her space at home, one that is negotiated with her family. Importantly for her, the space has been negotiated – it no longer needs to go on being negotiated. Having negotiated it once, she has taken control of it, and can now get on with using the space for learning. She has also found a way to use the classroom to learn, but this has been a struggle for her and has involved carving up the overwhelming space of the course into manageable chunks. Her access to technology has been created at personal expense – for her, the online nature of the course was a barrier to be overcome. It required financial expense, and she remains vague about how she works online, suggesting that this part of the educational experience may still require work for her.

Marco is unable to fit in all his commitments, so he blocks out time to give him study space. He does not have to negotiate the social spaces around technology in the same way as Nyela; no family shares his technological access. Rather than working hard to master particular spaces like Nyela, he presents himself as being an opportunist. He knows that he will have to learn in certain ways (for example, through online access) and takes what opportunities present themselves, such as studying in quiet moments at work. This is not to suggest that his engagement is easy, however. He is giving up sleep to study. Importantly, in his account, technology involves a negotiation (and segregation) between educational and social uses. He is wary of formal education intruding into his social uses of technology. Thus here, although technology has enabled flexible study, it is at a price and at the risk of losing control of what he sees as personal spaces.

Richard is giving up nothing. He already has control of all the spaces in which he needs to learn. If anything, he has more control than he needs. He feels able to neglect certain opportunities for learning (such as the open access computing facilities) because he knows he can use or create other opportunities for learning (for example, emailing the tutor when he has a problem – in other words, at a time to suit him, not the tutor). The system is allowing him to take full advantage of all the ‘good ‘ learning experiences while ‘bending the rules’, which enables him to succeed in his own terms (attaining excellent grades at the expense of others). It is not that technology has created any flexibility for him; his flexibility arises from already having a repertoire of spaces that he can use for learning, enabling him to pick those that best suit him at any moment.

Thus students’ struggles to engage with education have not been radically transformed by technology. Indeed, for Marco and Nyela, introducing technology created barriers – new negotiation was required to create a space in which this kind of learning could be undertaken. Both have found ways to study online, but this has required one-off expense and effort for Nyela and ongoing sacrifice for Marco. Richard, by contrast, is able to pick and choose how (and if) he uses technology because he already has a repertoire of alternative ways of learning that are sanctioned by the course and the tutor.

Conclusions

Technology is not ‘permitting’ students to take their work home so much as requiring them to do so. This has changed how students engage in education, but in a way that complicates the process rather than improves it. As the cases here reveal, students may have to struggle to create a context in which they can learn successfully – and this applies just as readily to learning online as it does to classroom study.

Introducing technology has not solved educational inequalities by providing flexibility and thus ensuring access for all. The privileged student in this study is now more privileged, if anything, because he now has even more choice about how to engage with his learning. The other two students have found ways to engage in this programme – and it is possible that, if the course were taught in a more conventional format, they may not have been able to do so. But unless this work is extended by following up with students who have been unsuccessful in their attempts to engage with education, it would be hard to argue such a position convincingly. However, now that a more detailed picture of students’ engagement has been provided, it may well prove productive to extend this by considering the efforts of those making unsuccessful attempts to take part in education in a similar manner.

Critical analysis of the policy agenda – from Lyotard through Noble to Burns et al. – reveals that policy when put into practice ‘must’ denature academic and student alike (Burns et al., 2006). When considered alongside the role of managers in managing pedagogy (Holley and Oliver, 2000), it should come as no surprise that the disadvantaged are further disadvantaged and the advantaged further privileged by e-learning developments. Indeed, rather than empowering the educationally disenfranchised, it is the stakeholder at the margins of society and education who continues to be silenced through the policies and practices of education and e-learning, whilst those with cultural, institutional and economic power continue to set the agenda (Burns et al., 2006).

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Using e-learning to promote critical thinking in politics

Cristina Leston-Bandeira, University of Hull
c.c.leston-bandeira@hull.ac.uk

The author

Cristina Leston-Bandeira is a senior lecturer in legislative studies in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Hull. She was awarded a university teaching fellowship in 2006 in recognition of the quality and innovation of her teaching practice and she became a C-SAP associate in 2007. She has been particularly active in promoting innovative practices in the areas of research methods and online teaching.

Abstract

This paper aims to explore how the use of e-learning can help to enhance critical thinking skills through supporting the development of an active learning and constructivist approach to teaching and the promotion of reflective skills. The paper is based on the case studies of two modules, which have been taught for over five years. These modules have been used to develop approaches which strengthen the students’ ability to think critically by promoting independent learning and reflection. The outcome has been very positive, resulting in outstanding work produced by students and excellent feedback. However, the paper also shows that this is only achievable if the tutor plays an active role in managing the learning process.

Keywords

e-learning, critical thinking skills, active learning, constructivist learning, online teaching, blended teaching

Introduction

This paper presents two case studies of politics modules to illustrate how e-learning tools can be used to maximise teaching approaches that promote critical thinking. The e-learning tools are not the guarantee for better critical thinking skills; they are simply the means through which the tutor can maximise a teaching approach that promotes critical thinking. The case studies relate to two different subject areas and have a different student audience. In both cases, the use of e-learning is paramount to student engagement in the learning process, resulting in very good and innovative student work. This is not a research-based article, being instead a reflection on the two case studies. The author does not claim to be an expert on e-learning or on the promotion of critical thinking skills. This practice-based paper merely aims to present two case studies where e-learning has provided the tools to effectively develop critical thinking skills.

The problem

The politics and international relations benchmark puts a strong emphasis on the development of critical and analytical skills (QAA, 2007). It states, in particular, that undergraduate politics and international relations programmes should aim to:

• enable students to understand and use the concepts, approaches and methods of their discipline and develop an understanding of their contested nature and the problematic character of inquiry in the discipline
• develop in students a capacity to think critically and independently about events, ideas and institutions
• encourage students to relate the academic study of politics to questions of public concern and to relate the academic theory to policies in practice.

(QAA, 2007: 6)

Politics and international relations graduates are expected to be able to apply concepts to specific political events, and to critically evaluate these events in order to ‘identify, investigate, analyse, formulate and advocate solutions to problems’ (QAA, 2007: 7). This is a discipline that puts considerable emphasis on debate and discussion of different perspectives, and where tutorial discussion-based teaching is often a constituent part of the teaching methods used. More generally, ‘the need for critical thinking skills as an outcome of formal education has emerged as an important issue for universities … on feedback and advice from employers’ (Oliver, 2001: 99). And yet I am faced regularly with university students who have difficulty in identifying different perspectives on a specific issue, to evaluate them or simply to debate and form their own analysis of political events and realities. I am faced with first-year students (often coming in with top A level grades) who expect to know what they need to know to pass, rather than appreciating the importance of the analytical process leading to the knowledge outcome. This is then reflected in descriptive essays and quiet tutorials. Politics students need to be shown, right from the start, that the onus of engaging with the learning process is on them, and on their ability to act and reflect on their learning, with the support and guidance of tutors. This is where e-learning can make a difference (see Diochon and Cameron, 2001; Lee, 2003; Oliver, 2001; Rogers, 2004).

E-learning: a tool to promote active, constructivist and reflective learning

E-learning can help to promote critical thinking skills because it offers tools to support (1) the use of active learning principles in teaching, (2) a constructivist approach and (3) student reflection (Bennett and Marsh, 2007; Salmon, 2000).

The use of active learning principles in teaching can promote students’ engagement in the learning process very successfully and is one way to address the problems outlined above (Exley and Dennick, 2004; Healey, 2005). Active learning is also known as ‘learning by doing’, but it goes well beyond the practical side of carrying out an activity. Active learning puts the student at the centre of the teaching process, which therefore leads to student-centred teaching activities. It aims to encourage students to take responsibility for their learning process, and also to think and reflect about the teaching objective. From being a passive receiver of information, the student becomes an active part of the teaching process and comprehends the contents being taught (Powner and Allendoerfer, 2008). E-learning can support this approach very effectively by extending the opportunities available to the tutor and the possibilities of participation from the student’s point of view. It therefore maximises the possibilities of active learning-based teaching activities (Bennett and Marsh, 2007; Salmon 2000).

A constructivist approach aims to encourage students to take ownership of the learning process and develop their own learning according to their own interpretation of events and their own experiences (Exley and Dennick, 2004: 5). This leads to better engagement in the learning process because students can relate better to the matter being taught, and it also fosters the development of critical thinking skills, as students have to make their own interpretation of the matter being taught in order to come to a conclusion. E-learning can support the development of this approach very effectively because it can help to meet the specificities of a much wider range of students than face-to-face teaching would; and because, through e-learning tools, students can very effectively integrate the learning process into their own context (see also Diochon and Cameron, 2001). This is particularly useful for work-based learning situations such as placements, or distance-taught programmes.

Promoting reflection in the learning process helps students to assimilate and understand the teaching process. It also helps to foster critical thinking skills – as Horton-Deutsch and Sherwood (2008) put it: ‘Reflective thinking is more than being thoughtful; it is a learning experience through a rational and intuitive process leading to positive change. [It] prepares learners to think and to discriminate between beliefs that rest on empirical evidence and those that do not’ (pp. 947–8). E-learning can help the development of a reflective approach towards learning by allowing students to view and review the teaching material in their own time. It also provides the tools for students to reflect on their own contributions and amend these at different times according to their own needs.

The two case studies below illustrate how these three approaches (active learning, constructivist and reflective approaches) have been applied to the teaching of two different subject areas with different student audiences, and led to successful outcomes thanks to the use of e-learning. E-learning is a key part of both of these case studies; in fact, neither module would work if the e-learning element were not present. And, indeed, if students do not engage with the e-learning process, they are likely not to be successful in either of these modules. In both case studies, the use of e-learning has helped to encourage the development of critical thinking skills amongst students, illustrated in the work they produce.

The case studies

The two case studies are taught at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Hull:

Paths of research in politics: A second-year undergraduate compulsory module on research methods for all politics students, taught through blended teaching

Parliaments in the modern world: A postgraduate module in legislative studies taught entirely online.Paths of research in politics

The design of this module is underpinned by constructivist and active learning principles, and e-learning is the tool used to apply these principles to the module. The module aims to introduce students to the main research methods used in politics and also, more important, to make students understand what a research process entails. The main aim of the module is to enable students to develop an understanding of how to apply relevant research methods to develop their own interests rather than to make them knowledgeable about the ‘ins and outs’ of research methods. The focus, therefore, is on the application of a specific research design, approach and method(s) to a specific problem developed by each student.

As part of this module, all students develop a research project chosen by themselves. This is reflected in the assessment: a research proposal (20 per cent) and a research report (80 per cent). Students submit the research proposal at the end of semester 1 and the report at the end of semester 2. The whole of semester 1 is spent on developing the students’ research question, which will form the basis for their research proposal and will be the subject of their research which they analyse in their research report. The process of developing individual research projects, to include the definition of the question to be investigated, provides an excellent opportunity to develop critical thinking skills. From the choice of a topic and its operationalisation into a research question to the analysis of results, students have to critically consider what they are doing and why. The module caters for about 70 students. The development of this strategy of individual research projects as the core bone for the module is only possible thanks to the use of e-learning. E-learning tools allow tutors to provide access to materials about a wide range of research methods at any one time and to support online the development of the research projects. The module is taught through face-to-face lectures and workshops and supported throughout by the use of a virtual learning environment (VLE).

E-learning is incorporated into the module in a number of ways:

Research questions

These are developed through a forum facility in the VLE. Students are asked to post their draft research questions and ideas on the forum. Tutors then comment on these, with advice on how to best make their question more focused and precise. All students can read and comment on all research questions posted. This not only helps students develop better research questions, but also encourages all students to engage in the process and to ponder adequately on their research question. Students learn from reading fellow students’ contributions and from reading the tutors’ comments to all.

Lectures

There is an effort to make all lectures relevant to each student’s interest. This is done via the development of instructional tasks set in the VLE. Prior to each lecture, students have to check the VLE for what they need to do to prepare for that specific lecture. Each instructional task is designed so that students can apply it to their own research interest, at the same time making it applicable to the lecture. Then, in the lecture, there is a small activity where students have to use what they prepared beforehand. An example of this is that they would develop a 10-question questionnaire on their research interest prior to the lecture. In the lecture they would then share their questionnaires with a fellow student and aim to improve their questionnaire.

Access to a wide range of material

The VLE stores handouts, guides, web links and other materials to support a wide range of styles of research methods on diverse political topics (such as security studies or British government).

Forum to raise and discuss queries on the development of research projects

One of the main forums is the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section where students can put queries and where tips on research methods are added regularly throughout the year to reflect the process of research that students undertake.

Individual messages for individual support

When needed, students can also contact their tutors individually through the VLE to clarify points and/or seek advice.The use of e-learning is therefore an integral part of the module; it is what allows for a constructivist approach to the teaching whereby each student develops their own research idea. This focus on a research idea that interests them – whereby they develop the application of a, or several, research method(s) – is what engages students in the module. By developing a research project from its conceptualisation to its analysis, students naturally develop critical thinking skills, as they have to reflect on which method best suits what they would like to research, and critically assess the suitability of the different possible research strategies. Without the integration of e-learning, this approach would not be possible. What is more, the ability to review different methods of research and to contrast their method with other students’ choices helps to foster a reflective approach to learning.

Parliaments in the modern world

This module follows a more traditional style of teaching, although it is taught entirely online and also uses a constructivist and active learning approach. It is part of an MA programme taught entirely online in the area of legislative studies. Students take the programme on a part-time basis over two years. All the students have full-time jobs and work with or in parliament (from parliamentary and party officials to United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) officials and members of pressure groups, UK-based and overseas). Overall, the programme tries to make the most of the working experience of each student, which results in a very rich exchange of experiences and a better understanding of the concepts and theories taught.

Parliaments in the modern world aims to introduce students to the variety of parliamentary realities around the world. One of the key ideas is that this perception allows students to make a constructive analysis of their own parliamentary realities, and enables them to apply key concepts to analyse specific cases.All teaching and contact is done via the VLE and students take part in the process asynchronously. There is, therefore, considerable flexibility of time, which allows students to fit the learning process around their own work commitments. Teaching is done around a set of ten seminars. Each seminar topic lasts two weeks; during this time students read relevant material and/or develop instructional tasks. This results in discussion in the forum.Tasks vary and can include, for example, group work. This usually requires students to discuss their strategy to address a specific problem in groups, which is then reported back to the main discussion thread. The development of a discussion thread linked to specific readings and/or activities helps students to consolidate their understanding of the concepts under discussion. The fact that each seminar is related to an online discussion helps to consolidate understanding considerably. Students can read the tutor’s and their fellow students’ comments at their own pace, which leads to a much better understanding than, for instance, following synchronous face-to-face discussions. The understanding of the online discussions is therefore much more thorough. What is more, when it comes to essay writing, students can relate back to the discussion threads and review what was said. This again helps to consolidate the concepts being taught, as students may have a different understanding of the problem once they are in the process of applying this to a piece of assessment. The online mode of teaching therefore allows students to view the learning outputs at different times of the learning process. It fosters reflection throughout the learning process by encouraging students to review the discussion threads of the different seminar topics at different times of their learning process.

E-learning, again, is an integral part of this teaching approach. It would not be possible to communicate with students in many different locations with very different experiences and make the most of these experiences for the teaching process without the means of online teaching. Online teaching also allows for the recording of the whole of the learning and teaching process much more effectively than would be possible with face-to-face teaching delivery. All of this helps to reinforce the students’ critical thinking skills.

Student performance and feedback

Student performance and feedback relating to both modules has been very positive. This should be noted in particular in relation to Paths of research in politics, as this is a compulsory module in a subject area which students often dislike.

For Paths of research in politics, students have developed excellent and innovative research projects displaying very good analytical skills. This work involves making decisions on which topic to choose and a correspondent research question, defining a research strategy that suits their research question, collecting and collating material (from documentary analysis and contents analysis to interviews and questionnaires, or secondary data analysis), analysing it (to include statistical analysis where relevant) and making conclusions. This process results in a final research report which shows the development of critical thinking skills as determined by Oliver (2001): ‘the process of identifying issues and assumptions in an argument, recognizing important relationships and drawing conclusions based on the available information and data’ (p. 99). Final outcomes have included very high marks and results have been consistently higher than those in other compulsory modules. External examiners have singled out the originality of the work produced, noting in particular the analytical skills demonstrated in the analysis of findings. Second markers have also commented positively on the students’ ability to critically adopt and assess their own research strategies rather than following a standard approach. On the downside, those students who do not engage with the e-learning-based teaching process tend to do poorly in this module. This is why it is important to make it clear from the start that engagement with this module goes beyond the classroom.

The development of independent and critical research in this module has also given students more confidence to develop their dissertation in their final year. Preparation for the dissertation is one of the main points that students single out in their feedback on this module. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with many students indicating this to be their favourite module because they are able to develop their own individual research project. Some of these students have gone on to produce excellent dissertations based on primary research.

For Parliaments in the modern world, again, feedback has been very positive. In particular, students single out the group tasks and the possibility of analysing very different realities from the ones they are familiar with. Overall, students find particularly useful the fact that they can refer back to the seminar online classes to review and reinforce specific points. As Lee found (2003: 70), the quality of the online discussions is very high because students read material beforehand thoroughly and reflect on their postings before contributing. All of this is only made possible due to the online mode of discussion. And student feedback indicates that those with difficulties in following oral communication and/or for whom English is not their first language find it particularly useful to be able to refer to so much material in the VLE.

In terms of student performance, marks for this module (and the programme overall) have been considerably higher than for other MA programmes taught face-to-face. This is partly due to the fact that we can recruit very good students to the online programme because it allows for flexibility in time and location, ensuring that good students can carry on their work activity and engage in studies at the same time. They are also more committed than other students and engage better in the learning process and, in particular, in the discussions. Access to the repository of online discussions at different times in their learning process allows students to fully appreciate the theories under discussion and therefore to develop more robust critical thinking skills. This is shown in the quality of the essays, as well as in the feedback from students. Significantly, as part of their feedback questionnaires, students over the past four years have agreed that the module has ‘furthered high quality learning’ and ‘encouraged critical thinking’.

Conclusion

This use of e-learning to support student-centred teaching activities therefore has many advantages. The advantages are in the positive feedback, excellent performance and overall student engagement with the teaching process; all of this results in the enhancement of critical thinking skills. This teaching approach gives students ownership of the learning process and fosters the development of critical thinking. It also allows lecturers to meet the needs of a very wide range of students. But this approach also demands considerable time and attention from the lecturer. The provision of an e-learning framework by itself is not enough. This needs to be reinforced through the lecturer’s intervention, which guides the students’ learning process (as shown by Salmon on the crucial role of the e-Moderator, 2000). But, when supported adequately, e-learning can offer us invaluable tools to promote critical thinking skills by helping to support a wide range of learning needs, fostering a constructivist approach and applying active learning principles.

References

Bennett, S. and Marsh, D. (2007) Handbook of Online Education, London: Continuum International Publishing group Ltd.

Diochon, M. and Cameron, A. (2001), ‘Technology-based interactive learning’, Active Learning in Higher Education, 2, pp. 114–27.

Exley, K. and Dennick, R. (2004) Small Group Teaching – Tutorials, Seminars and Beyond, London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Healey, M. (2005), ‘Linking research and teaching to benefit student learning’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 29 (2), pp. 183–201.

Horton-Deutsch, S. and Sherwood, G. (2008) ‘Reflection: an educational strategy to develop emotionally-competent nurse leaders’, Journal of Nursing Management, 16, pp. 946–54.

Lee, D. (2003) ‘New technologies in the politics classroom: using internet classrooms to support teaching and learning’, Politics, 23 (1), pp. 66–73.

Oliver, R. (2001) ‘Exploring the development of critical thinking skills through a web-supported problem-based learning environment’, in J. Stevenson (ed.) Teaching and Learning Online: New Technologies for New Pedagogies, London: Kogan Page, pp. 98–111.

Powner, L. and Allendoerfer, M. (2008) ‘Evaluating hypotheses about active learning’, International Studies Perspectives, 9, pp. 75–89.

Quality Assurance Agency (2007) Politics and International Relations Subject Benchmark Statement, www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/benchmark/statements/Politics.pdf, QAHEA (accessed 15 January 2009).

Rogers, G. (2004) ‘History, learning technology and student achievement’, Active Learning in Higher Education, 5, pp. 232–47.

Salmon, G. (2000), E-moderating: The Key to Teaching and Learning Online, London: Kogan Page.

Whose interests count? The university under pressure to keep abreast of national developments in technology-enhanced learning

Dr Berenice Rivera Macias, Anglia Ruskin University
berenice.riveramacias@anglia.ac.uk

Uwe Matthias Richter, Anglia Ruskin University
uwe.richter@anglia.ac.uk

The authors

Berenice Rivera Macias began working at Anglia Ruskin University in April 2008 as a researcher for INSPIRE, contributing to its diverse research agenda in learning and teaching. She is interested in looking critically at people’s experiences at the micro level in relation to the meso and the macro. She received her PhD in sociology at the University of Essex in 2008. Her doctoral research was hermeneutically informed by the micro-level experiences of a Mexican anti-poverty programme involving beneficiaries with indigenous ethnicity and implementers with mestizo ethnicity. She has also taught undergraduate courses in sociology at Essex and social policy at Anglia Ruskin.

Uwe Matthias Richter is the associate director of INSPIRE, Anglia Ruskin University's Learning and Teaching Centre, Cambridge and Chelmsford, and lead in flexible and distributed learning. He graduated from Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg, Germany, with an MA in German and Geography (1988), and lectured in German language and culture for many years before undertaking an MSc in IT and Learning at Lancaster University (1999). He moved into learning and teaching eight years ago. His main activities are in policy issues around flexible and distributed learning, staff development and projects. His current research interests lie in the field of learning and teaching, with a particular focus on learning technology.

Abstract

This paper explores whose interests count and whose interests should be considered in the adoption of technology-enhanced or e-learning in higher education (HE). We look at three key actors in the UK context, which we perceive as a policy-driven system. First, we examine the HE sector and the influential reports by UCISA, JISC and Becta. Second, we look at the response from a post-92 university in relation to its key corporate objectives, mission statements and the outcome of its HEA technology-enhanced learning benchmarking exercise and resulting targets. Third, we report on findings from our research, involving a focus group and online surveys, on staff and students’ actual experience of technology-enhanced learning. The findings challenge the university’s and the government’s policy targets.

Keywords

HE sector, technology-enhanced learning; technology-enhanced learning discourse, technology-enhanced learning experience

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to explore whose interests and needs count and whose should be considered when designing and planning technology-enhanced learning in higher education (HE). We look at three key factors and their current role in the UK’s current higher education system. We argue that the UK system is often experienced as a policy-driven system, where further education (FE) and HE institutions are under pressure to manage and achieve the expectations and visions set by the sector’s leading and funding bodies. In this paper, we use a case study to explore existing tensions in implementing technology-enhanced learning between national expectation and the local experience of developing a virtual university.

In order to better understand the role of the HE sector, universities and their staff and students’ experience, we have allocated them different (macro, meso and micro) levels. These levels are defined in terms of traditional structures. The micro social structures are the local higher education institutions (HEIs), mainly the interrelations between staff and students; the meso social structures are the corporate management committees, internal policies and so on of HEIs; and the macro social structures include the HE sector and leading HE bodies such as the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) (Giddens, 1984: 181; Thompson, 1989). We briefly contextualise these and other relevant institutions in the following section.

Research carried out by the HE sector during the first decade of the twenty-first century has generated a movement towards the development and implementation of virtual learning across UK HEIs. This is partially due to the rapid development of information and communication technologies in HEIs and to the perceived educational potential of computer-mediated communication (Castells, 2000; Rheingold, 1993; Urry, 2000, 2002). It is also attributable to an increase in flexible and distance learning and teaching, in part a result of widening participation, where many more people study part time and from home or work, for example (Cornford, 2000: 2). These specific characteristics apply to post-92 universities such as our case study. Post-92 or new universities refer to former polytechnics, FE institutions, and colleges of higher education that have gained the status of university after 1992 owing to government policies (David, 2007: 75; Tysome, 2007). These factors have been taken into account in the HEFCE’s and the DfES’ (Department for Education and Skills, now DIUS (Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills)) strategy for e-learning (HEFCE, 2005). These funding bodies are the political and strategic drivers behind e-learning developments across the UK HEIs and funding bodies.

A significant change in the perception of technology-enhanced learning is the transformation of the HE sector’s view of the student as recipient of learning to a user of education (Greenbank, 2006: 143; Pollock and Cornford, 2000). As a consequence, it could be argued that a need for more independence and autonomy is becoming a dominant factor in students’ learning and teaching experience (Crook, 2002). The virtual university has been shaped, nevertheless, under fixed assumptions about students as users (Crook, 2002; Hemmi et al., 2003). As such, the virtual university’s principles do not seem to take into account the diversity of its students and complicates the learning and teaching experience instead of simplifying it (Hemmi et al., 2003).

Thus, instead of universities designing and planning their technology-enhanced learning strategies in a flexible and adjustable way, based on the characteristics and needs of their users, policy-making HE bodies expect universities, students and staff to achieve the sector-wide strategies and aims they have set. In addition, the significant change in the teaching role, from face-to-face to technology-enhanced, seems to be taken for granted at times. As in most of the strategies defined by the sector, this is referred to as staff training/development related to learning technologies rather than a shift in pedagogies as analysed in the literature (see Bayne, 2008; Bayne and Ross, 2007; Bennett et al., 2008; Hemmi et al., 2003; Hemmi et al., 2008; Koskela et al., 2006). This is not clearly delineated in the e-learning discourse or defined by expectations from the sector, as explained below. After defining the sector’s expectations, we briefly describe a post-92 university case study, including a virtual learning environment (VLE) review, and relate the findings of the review to student and teaching staff use of learning technology.

The higher education sector and institutions: an overview of the macro and meso levels

We identified the HE sector as the first influential actor, and the reports, policy and strategy papers produced by the main policy and funding bodies for HE. Initially, HEFCE and the DfES (2005) issued a national strategy for e-learning in March 2005, with an intended duration of ten years (HEFCE, 2005). The strategy was guided by the need to know about the current state of e-learning in HE and provided eight measures of success as reference points for expected outcomes (HEFCE, 2005: 3–9). That subsequently led to the national e-learning benchmarking exercise in 2006–08 jointly supported by the HEA and JISC (HEA, 2009). The main goal of the e-learning benchmarking exercise was ‘for each institution to undertake a fundamental analysis of its own e-learning processes, provision and practice on which its own future development decisions could be based’ (HEA, 2009: 3); ‘For many institutions this exercise acted as a wake-up call, while for others the exercise provided valuable insights’ (HEA, 2009: 4).

Similarly, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) is leading the Harnessing Technology strategy on behalf of the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and the DIUS (Becta, 2009a). Becta is a governmental agency with the task of ensuring ‘the effective and innovative use of technology throughout learning’ (Becta, 2009b), focusing mainly on primary, secondary, adult and further education. Nevertheless, Becta influences expectations of HEIs’ technology-enhanced learning provision since students from schools and FE institutions are prospective HE students. Finally, the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA) undertakes surveys on technology-enhanced learning for the UK HE sector. UCISA surveys are the UK equivalent to the USA’s Horizon Report. For the purpose of this paper, we concentrate on the reports from JISC and Becta that have projected a change in technology-enhanced learning in HE over a short period of three to four years.

The most common understanding is that technology is a normal part of students’ everyday lives, albeit to different degrees (Bennett et al., 2008: 9). Moreover, technology is becoming more embedded in learning and teaching. However, as we found in our research, staff and students want to engage in the use of technology in their learning and teaching in a variety of ways. Furthermore, staff and students question the way technology should be used to enhance learning across the different disciplines and subjects. These are also issues that are present in the wider literature, in research and in strategies from the sector.

First, it is suggested that learning technology becomes an ubiquitous part of the learning process. According to Oblinger and Hawkins (2005: 15), this indicates that ‘the ‘e’ will slip into the background’. This is based on the view that students focus on what they can accomplish with the available technology rather than focusing on the technology (Oblinger and Hawkins, 2005: 15). The idea of the ‘e’ slipping into the background has been taken up by UCISA. In its last report, UCISA opted for the renaming of e-learning as ‘technology-enhanced learning’ (TEL), defined as:

'Any online facility or system that directly supports learning and teaching. This may include a formal VLE, an institutional intranet that has a learning and teaching component, a system that has been developed in house or a particular suite of specific individual tools.'

Browne et al., 2008: 2UCISA suggests that HEIs are currently facing two challenges: HEFCE targets and priorities; and the rapid rise of Web 2.0. It does not come as a surprise that, in addition to the institutional choice of VLE, there are other VLEs and learning technologies used locally in academic departments. According to UCISA, other tools used include podcast, e-portfolios, e-assessments, blogs and wikis (Browne et al., 2008: 7). These findings reflect the considerable changes introduced into the learning technologies landscape by social networking tools (Web 2.0) and also show that the traditional model of a VLE as ‘all-tools-in-one-box’ and the inherent underlying instructivist or teacher-led model are rapidly outdating (Biggs and Tang, 2007: 5–7). These teacher-led style VLEs have little functionalities that enable students to manage their own learning such as storing resources, sharing documents, communicating and collaborating with each other. Our research findings mirror this situation at our university.

The two challenges found by UCISA have resulted in new demands on HEIs’ provision of support for students’ and teachers’ growing use of streaming media, mobile computing, podcasting and Web 2.0 (Browne et al., 2008: 7). UCISA notes that the required support needs to concentrate mainly on staff development and strategies. In order to achieve this, it is highly desirable to carry out serious investigation into the expectations and perspectives of students and teachers (Bennett et al., 2008: 10).

As may be expected, UCISA agrees that there are limitations to the challenges. Time, particularly, is a constraint, alongside the development of staff skills. Additionally, UCISA found that there are insufficient career enhancement opportunities in TEL, especially in pre-92 universities (Browne et al., 2008: 7). Furthermore, UCISA suggests that attention needs to be given to sustaining the distant students’ needs because their academic and professional success relies completely on the adequate provision of support through technology-enhanced learning. Finally, UCISA acknowledges that JISC and HEFCE have a strong influence across the educational sector, especially on post-92 universities, which is the situation with our university. This is the case because post-92 universities invest more funding in technology-enhanced learning, for example through the creation of jobs in technical support (Browne et al., 2008: 7).

JISC ran a key background project entitled ‘Distributed e-Learning Programme’, which was a HEFCE-funded programme of activity that took place during 2004–06. This programme developed technologies and explored cultural and organisational issues around the use of technology to support lifelong learning. Its attention focused in particular on regional and subject communities (JISC, 2008a). Furthermore, the Distributed e-Learning Programme looked at regional pilot projects on the use of technology to support lifelong learning. This project took into account the relevance of personalisation, context and purpose, as well as the significance of looking at ‘people-related’ requirements. Furthermore, the project considered the usability of technology, and showed how the project managers motivated tutors and learners to get involved (JISC, 2008b: 1).

The Distributed e-Learning Programme was succeeded by different projects. Among them, the JISC’s e-Framework, an initiative at an international level, explores ways to enable service-oriented educational technologies and improve interoperability between systems (Caldwell, 2008). The aim is to develop an innovation knowledge base that will concentrate stakeholder, models and functional aspects of software. The challenges are to develop appropriate new ways of engaging with the community in order to populate the knowledge base on the website (Caldwell, 2008).Furthermore, JISC (2007a) explored the learner’s perspectives on technology-enhanced learning, and this has provided more information on issues, constraints and implications for institutions and for tutors. Table 1 highlights some of JISC’s findings.

Table 1: Selected JISC recommendations based on the learner's perspective on e-learning

Issues and constraints	Learner’s perspective	Implications for institutions	Implications for tutors
Staff reluctance to engage	Turn to informal networks (peers, family, work colleagues)	Allow creative learning design based around VLEs (avoid passive-learning use of VLEs)	Need to develop their own skills in using technologies
Unawareness of social technology and other technology used by students	Levels of information technology literacy vary	Support for individual learners (attention to the digital divide)	Responsible to be techno-knowledgeable and support students across the spectrum of the digital divide
Missing the opportunity to use them in learning and teaching	Urgent need to establish a culture of listening to learners	Improving choice and flexibility. Allow learners to personalise their learning technologies when this has clear benefits	Development units should come in assistance

Ultimately, JISC’s advice is to debate how the collaborative and creative potential of emerging technologies can be harnessed for pedagogic gain (JISC, 2007a: 23). This standpoint is similar to the recommendations made by Oblinger and Hawkins (2005: 15) to educational institutions’ executive teams. Among their recommendations are the following suggestions for discussion:

• What experience and expectations do students bring to our institution?
• Are we too focused on the ‘e’ and not enough on the learning?

As explained later, these recommendations are echoed in our findings from our student and staff surveys and staff focus group. Before providing our analysis, we present Becta’s perspective on e-learning.

Becta’s Harnessing Technology Review 2007 is based on the characteristics and needs of schools, the FE and the skills sectors. In Becta’s view, building e-maturity remains a challenge across the educational sector. However, there are variations (Becta, 2007: 9). Becta states the significance of:

'The continuing need to find effective ways to deliver the change that is clearly required in order to realise the full benefits of technology for the education system.' (Becta 2007: 9)

The recommended outcomes from the Harnessing Technology Review 2007 (Becta, 2007: 2) are:

1. Fit-for-purpose technology, systems and resources
2. Capability and capacity of the workforce, providers and learners
3. Efficiency, effectiveness and value for money across the system
4. Improving learner and systems performance.

In recent months, Becta (2008) has released Harnessing Technology: Next Generation Learning 2008-14. This report is oriented towards the Next Generation Learning campaign and consists of two phases following on from the previous report. Phase 1 expects that the educational institutions are enabled and capable; and phase 2 expects that educational institutions are confident in their use of technology-enhanced learning (Becta, 2008: 5–6).

For Becta, the ‘e-confident’ system is essentially student focused, where all efforts are concentrated on personalised learning. This means that system leadership, provider capacity, learner–parents–employer, and technology are all involved and synchronised towards the academic and professional development of the student (Becta, 2008: 5–6). We understand, for example, that our university has taken steps to increase its educational engagement with employers, and with their employees and worked-based students through a work-based learning strategy. It is therefore essential that all the required structures and support for students enrolled on the resulting scheme are in place. This example is significant because students under this scheme would most likely engage in blended or fully online modules or courses, most likely delivered through the institutional VLE.

Finally, Becta gives great relevance to the digital divide and its implications for the achievement of goals set for phase 1 and phase 2 (Becta, 2008: 10). For instance, while 80 per cent of households have PCs and internet access, 20 per cent do not. This could mean that if no extra support is provided to students and their families without a PC or internet access, they would remain behind in the e-confident spectrum (Becta, 2008: 10). Thus, Becta remarks that the strategies set by the schools, FE and the skills sector must act towards reducing the gap, often referred to as ‘digital divide’, between those who have access to computers and the internet and those who do not. In order to achieve the proposed e-confident system, Becta and their partners will find new ways of reaching the families of the learners who still don’t have that access. There is a plan for engaging all stakeholders who could influence the e-confident system, ranging from central government, local authorities, the educational institutions and support units to the learners’ parents.

So far, we have been providing background to our case study of the post-92 university and the significance that the strategies and research from JISC, UCISA and Becta have had on the university’s plans and strategies. It is clear that challenges will arise as FE and HE institutions strive to achieve the targets and ambitions for technology-enhanced learning set by HEFCE, JISC and other national bodies. The challenges, however, will differ depending on the specific situation and context of each institution.

As the second actors, the universities’ strategic and decision-making committees are tasked to translate government policies into university strategies, targets and actions. We see the embedding of learning technologies alongside other processes that shape the university such as its regional, national and global context and the implementation of government policies such as widening access and participation, employer engagement, research and internationalisation. In the following, we will consider the case study of a post-92 university, and present its relevant strategies and mission statements followed by key findings from the VLE review.

Our case study shares the characteristics of many post-92 universities such as a high intake of non-traditional students through widening participation and access and a larger concentration of part-time students compared to most pre-92 universities (Jamieson et al., 2009: 3). These factors impact on the development and implementation of policies and targets for technology-enhanced learning.

A post-92 university VLE review: an overview of meso and micro levels

The second and third actors will be considered in the context of the case study of our university as an example of a post-92 university. Whilst technology-enhanced learning, the notion of the virtual university and localised strategies are intertwined with the practice of learning and teaching, the complexity of these interrelations lies in the different fields of everyday learning and teaching.

The need for a review of learning technologies provision, and in particular the VLE, was an outcome of the HEA e-learning benchmarking exercise at our university. Subsequently, a mandate for a VLE review was given to the web review team by senior management and another university committee with the aim of:

• Identifying student and staff expectations and experiences
• Identifying a number of VLE candidates
• Evaluating these VLE and
• Recommending a VLE for adoption and implementation.

The review was carried out between February and July 2008 by the web review team comprising representative members of staff from across the faculties, information systems and the learning and teaching services. This paper only draws information from the components of the VLE review, which consist of the research into staff and students’ perceptions and experiences of the use of the VLE at the time and its use to enhance learning. Our university’s learning and teaching unit undertook the research between March and June 2008. The methods used were a staff focus group, and staff and student online surveys. All staff and all students were invited to participate. The objective of the focus group was to grasp an understanding of staff standing points on e-learning in general, their use of the VLE at the time, and their expectations of a VLE. The aim of the surveys was to learn about staff and students’ views and experiences of the use of our institutional VLE.

In brief, we found that academic staff adjust their chosen learning and teaching approaches to the way a VLE can be used (Bourdieu, 1998: 25). From the perceptions and expectations expressed in responses to the survey questions we were able to discover what communications technologies staff were familiar with, or used to, and how they used them. Our understanding is that staff draw on the knowledge they hold about specific situations and contexts, such as their expertise in learning and teaching strategies, and they apply these to a new situation. The adoption of a VLE within their teaching routine can be seen as such a process (Stones, 2005: 89–92). The result is often that traditional classroom teaching approaches are applied to a (new) flexible and distance-learning context before adjustments are made, usually as a result of experiencing shortfall in the delivery.

Nonetheless, while staff adjust their teaching approaches as a result of using a specific VLE, we can also talk of a shift in the pedagogies and understanding of learning and teaching theories in general. Yet it has proved challenging to fast-forward this shift at a speed similar to that in which the technology-enhanced learning macro strategies are formulated (Emerald, 2009: 3). As mentioned by Pollock (2000: 263), to achieve the implementation and widespread use of an e-learning and e-teaching system through an institutional VLE requires the engagement of key staff capable of adequately transmitting the practicalities of the system in contrast with non-virtual learning and teaching. Whether this shift is desirable and/or possible in all disciplines and styles of learning and teaching is questioned. In fact, our findings show that teaching staff understand the move towards technology-enhanced learning and that potentially more and more students would expect this when enrolling on a university programme. Nonetheless, they also suggest that not all disciplines and their subjects could be learnt and taught comfortably via a virtual environment.

The staff focus group

We ran a focus group with academic staff from our university as well as with two external participants. This took the form of a plenary at a conference at the beginning of summer 2008. The focus group was one-hour long and consisted of a panel discussion that addressed a range of questions relating to technology-enhanced learning and learning technologies. The questions had been submitted in advance by teaching staff, thus facilitating an open discussion on a wider range of topics and issues (Priddle et al., 2008).The first area covered was the practicality of moving to some level of technology-enhanced delivery for all modules taught at our university. Whilst most participants agreed that it was desirable to have 100 per cent adoption, they also felt that there were a number of challenges that needed to be addressed. Furthermore, participants stated that technology-enhanced learning should not be made compulsory, but should have explicit values that would make them attractive to both staff and students (Priddle et al., 2008).

Participants shared in the perception that, in time, students will expect technology-enhanced delivery to be normal practice. Yet some participants asserted that we have to bear in mind that all courses and subjects vary and that perhaps, in some, face-to-face teaching and use of physical learning resources would be more efficient for the achievement of learning outcomes (Priddle et al., 2008). These findings echo recommendations from JISC and UCISA.

Regarding training, staff require a follow-up system after initial training, as well as ongoing support, especially for new staff and post-training. These feelings were shared by many staff delivering modules online or technology-enhanced. Furthermore, there are other concerns about the use of technology that need further attention, in particular adequate staff development and the provision of local technical support, which so far has been limited. (Priddle et al., 2008)

While most of the participants affirmed that a VLE was an efficient choice, they also discussed the usefulness of one single package as opposed to personalised learning spaces that would incorporate a wider range of specialised applications. Moreover, they mentioned that ‘the opportunity to customise students’ learning environments needs to be exploited as far as possible’ (Priddle et al., 2008: 35). Thus, participants noted that usability and accessibility had to be taken into account, informed by students’ wide range of skills, experience and expectations (Oblinger, 2003: 44–45). For instance, there are students with disabilities, students who have English as their second language and distance, part-time and mature students with diverse commitments other than their studies. JISC makes the following recommendation on this matter:

'Whilst awareness of students’ diversity should be present, instead of perceiving diversity as a barrier for technology-enhanced learning, universities could use them to develop programmes that would help students to engage more effectively with the learning and teaching it offers' (JISC, 2007a: 26–31; 2008b: 1).

We also found that more work needs to be done to motivate and involve more members of staff in technology-enhanced learning (Browne et al., 2008: 27). In fact, participants from the focus group stated that it was necessary to involve the staff who were not knowledgeable about the potential of technology-enhanced learning, and who missed the opportunities to partake in events where they could share ideas, examples of good practice and experiences in technology-enhanced learning. Addressing this would help to reduce the ‘digital divide’ at our university. This is captured, to a certain extent, under the digital natives/immigrants dichotomy developed by Prensky (2001a, 2001b). However, we think this binary division needs to be challenged as it establishes an unnecessary opposition between different members of the teaching and learner communities (Bennett et al., 2008; Bayne and Ross, 2007; Horrigan 2007). Furthermore, a suggestion to overcome resistance from staff indicates that the Three-E Strategy could be applied by making sure that technology is evident for the potential users, that it should be easy to use, and that it becomes essential for the users (Haymes, 2008: 68, (original emphasis)).

Finally, recognition of the importance of time invested in their work was consistently raised. We also need to understand that technology-enhanced learning is affected by a variety of factors, and that other factors, besides staff and learner attitudes towards technology-enhanced learning, IT skills, and e-pedagogy discussed above, such as infrastructure for instance, need to be consistently (re)addressed and are common challenges across the sector (Browne et al., 2008: 27–9).

Staff survey

The online survey was available to our university staff from early March to early May 2008. The survey consisted of 15 combined closed and open-ended questions. We received 196 responses from teaching and support staff. For the purposes of this paper, we have only drawn upon findings from two questions as described below.We asked the staff to specify the other VLE/learning technologies they had used as alternative to or while using the current VLE. Moodle is the most commonly used secondary VLE, a finding which is consistent with those from UCISA (Browne et al., 2008: 7). In general, we can appreciate that staff who have been using the institutional VLE are actively engaged in the use of alternative tools, software and search engines for their teaching.

As a fundamental part of our survey, we considered it important to learn about staff’s perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of the current VLE. As shown in Table 2, staff responses state that the most important strength of the current VLE is its flexibility, the ability to access it independently at any time and any place. In addition, students can receive fairly fast formative feedback from staff and other students, and information is kept private and secure. Furthermore, it facilitates formative assessment, addressing different learning styles and student tracking. Conversely, they identified fundamental weaknesses, such as it being an old-fashioned toolkit, with an unfriendly interface, restrictive and over-controlled by the tutors. The latter means that, while staff enjoy having control over the tools, they also want students to manage the environment and thus their learning space, as well as adapt it to their needs. This mirrors an existing contradiction, as the need to provide constructive alignment between learning objectives, learning outcome and assessments should be based on the students’ negotiated learning requirements. Although constructive alignment was promoted before technology-enhanced learning became widespread (Biggs and Tang, 2007), the fact that most established VLEs tend to be instructivist, actually facilitating learner-centred learning can be difficult to achieve.

Table 2 gives a summary of the strengths and weaknesses identified by the staff focus group.

Table 2: Current VLE strengths and weaknesses

Strengths	Weaknesses
Flexibility time and space less paperwork	Rigidity unmanageable, difficult to use expire, out-of-date material cannot be removed little flexibility in discussion boards, old-fashioned interface and operability restrictive, one-dimensional, not very engaging, have to get permission to enrol students not an intuitive tool
Access any time and place to online communication with students and between student, to and through resources and information to and through technology is safe, private and confidential independent	Issues with access when systems are down and connection fails university’s login arrangements for students system is unavailable at times, students and staff setting WebCT up in off-site PCs lack of training to students and tutors (not enough e-confidence to use the VLE)
Supports and enhances teaching varied use of technologies (repository, quizzes, discussion forums) easy to track assignment submission allows formative assessment addresses different learning styles controlled by the tutor student tracking	Little support that hinders teaching lack of training for staff lack of learning technologists poor guidelines tools are poor (discussion, chat), not practical for all courses (eg NHS), over-controlled by the tutor, students have no input

Interestingly, staff emphasised that many of the weaknesses they perceived through their use of the current VLE had a direct correlation with their need for consistent and suitable institutional support. They gave the fact that they had not received adequate or any training as a reason for why they would rather not use the current VLE. Students had also not received training. This is partially linked to a lack of learning technologists to cover all staff and student needs.

Student survey

The online survey was made available to all of our university’s students from the end of April until the end of the second week of June 2008. Whilst only 174 students (approximately 0.8 per cent of the total student population) answered the survey, the research team considered their responses to be significant. We received responses from a representative sample of the student population in terms of age, gender and subjects being studied. Here we draw on findings from two questions as described below.

We first asked students about the frequency with which they used computers for studying. It is crucial to note that 71 per cent of the students used the computer for their studies on a daily basis. In addition, almost 26 per cent of the students used the computer between two and three times per week, whereas around 1 per cent of the students used the computer for their studies once a week or less than once a week.

Table 3 indicates that students require consistent experience of the use of technology-enhanced learning. For example, while students consider that technology-enhanced learning is flexible because it allows them to use it in their own time and in different locations, they still depend on their tutors’ and other students’ responses. This conflict can also be found in relation to access where an advantage was defined: technology-enhanced learning is fast and effective for communication between students and tutors, for example. However, there are problems with accessibility, such as systems going down and inadequate access for disabled students, which affect the learning experience. Another positive feature of this type of learning is that it addresses different learning abilities and provides a wide spectrum of stimuli when the learning materials and the technology-enhanced course are appropriately designed. However, students are often faced by lack of support and inadequate technical help.

Table 3: Breakdown of advantages and disadvantages in technology supported learning

Advantages	Disadvantages
Flexibility time and place less paperwork	Rigidity feelings of isolation dependency on others dependency on information to be uploaded
Access speed through various time and space to online communication to other and diverse students to tutors to and through resources and information to and through technology to up-to-date information	Issues with access when systems are down and connection fails when technology is insufficient with peers’ slow communication with tutors’ late feedback by the lack of provided and available training to students and tutors unreliable sources of information
Supports and enhances learning addresses different learning styles encourages self-learning as well as peer-learning wide ranging stimuli	Little support that hinders learning poor support-related functions inadequate technical help inconsistent academic support issues with self-motivation
Attracts mature students develops skills improves confidence	Intimidating for students stressful where training has not been provided expensive unfairness when not owning a computer · ambiguity in clarity causing misinterpretations and sense of unreliability among users

The weaknesses of the current VLE mentioned by staff and students confirmed the expected need to adopt a VLE that caters for different learning and information-processing style to the existing one. This is crucial because it affects how people interact within the VLE and the extent to which students can learn (Kordel, 2008: 11). In other words, the provision and success of technology-enhanced learning depends on the flexibility that it offers to meet the variety of needs from different disciplines, staff and students.

Closing remarks

This paper has looked at the linkage between the diverse requirements that need to be borne in mind in the planning of strategies related to technology-enhanced learning across the macro, meso and micro levels of further and higher education. Based on recent reports, as well as our own findings, we found that the relationship between policy making and implementation and progress at grassroots level is often ‘out of sync’. For instance, that learning technologies are now embedded in teaching has been taken-for-granted, while the reality is that many staff, students and institutions still find technology-enhanced learning and teaching a challenge. This leaves a gap between the micro level and policy- and decision-making at the macro and meso levels.

This has been highlighted in a review of the 2005 HEFCE’s strategy for e-learning and the findings of the HEA e-learning benchmarking exercise. Some of the findings from this review resonate with concerns in the wider literature and those of our own research. For example, the strategy is perceived as a successful reference document for the implementation of policy change. Nonetheless, there is concern that the subsequent plans give more attention to technological innovation, disregarding actual institutional needs and requirements (Glenaffric, 2008: 13–14). The same review finds concern on the part of respondents who identified inconsistencies between funding for technological development and consolidation of those changes in practice (Glenaffric 2008: 15).

Furthermore, similar to our own findings, the wider literature challenges the adoption of commercial VLEs. For instance, Hemmi et al. (2008: 2) emphasise that commercial VLEs generally fail ‘to engage with the rich potential of the digital environment for learning’, especially the creative use that staff and students make of Web 2.0. In addition, as we hope we have explained, structural hierarchies are simply representing non-virtual learning, and therefore excluding the benefits for learner-centred and managed learning that Web 2.0 has introduced (Hemmi et al., 2008). For example, we showed that staff are experiencing certain contradictions: they expect to keep control over the students’ learning while at the same time wanting to be able to hand over more control to the students.

Finally, it would be beneficial to see the adoption and implementation of technology-enhanced learning strategies as the intentional adoption of ‘standard software to non-standard organisations’ (Pollock and Cornford, 2002: 723-724). Whilst universities are becoming more corporate by means of globalising the provision of their services to students who are seen as users, it should be acknowledged that the e-learning and e-teaching experience should not be constrained by set standards. We therefore advocate a flexible approach to technology-enhanced learning.

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Strengths	Weaknesses
Flexibility time and space less paperwork	Rigidity unmanageable, difficult to use links expire, out-of-date material cannot be removed little flexibility in discussion boards, old-fashioned interface and operability restrictive, one-dimensional, not very engaging, tutors have to get permission to enrol students not an intuitive tool
Access any time and place to online communication with students and between student, to and through resources and information to and through technology is safe, private and confidential independent	Issues with access when systems are down and connection fails university’s login arrangements for students system is unavailable at times, students and staff setting WebCT up in off-site PCs lack of training to students and tutors (not enough e-confidence to use the VLE)
Supports and enhances teaching varied use of technologies (repository, quizzes, discussion forums) easy to track assignment submission allows formative assessment addresses different learning styles controlled by the tutor student tracking	Little support that hinders teaching lack of training for staff lack of learning technologists poor guidelines tools are poor (discussion, chat), not practical for all courses (eg NHS), over-controlled by the tutor, students have no input

C-SAP scoping survey on the use of e-Learning: perspectives from social science practitioners

Darren Marsh, C-SAP
d.l.marsh@bham.ac.uk

Richard Pountney, Sheffield Hallam University
r.p.pountney@shu.ac.uk

The authors

Darren Marsh joined C-SAP in 2004, after completing a PhD in English Literature at the University of Birmingham. As well as developing and maintaining the C-SAP website and other web resources, Darren supports e-learning projects and initiatives within the C-SAP subject community. This involves supporting and working with academic staff on C-SAP annual projects, and other work funded through the Higher Education Academy and JISC.

Richard Pountney is a principal lecturer and Teaching Fellow for Curriculum Development in the Faculty of Development and Society at Sheffield Hallam University. He has worked as an e-learning consultant with C-SAP from 2007, contributing to a number of projects including an E-learning Scoping Survey, and co-directing the C-SAP “Virtual University?” conference in January 2009. His role at SHU includes curriculum planning and course design, and his research interests include pedagogical frameworks for supporting open access course design.

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Abstract

This paper summarises the findings from an e-learning scoping survey carried out between October 2007 and spring 2008. The survey was funded as part of the Higher Education Academy/JISC Distributed e-Learning Programme and was co-ordinated by C-SAP. This paper describes in brief the methodology used and principal findings from the research. Notably, use of e-learning was predicated on the VLE (virtual learning environment) or other institutional system, and in most cases this was supported locally within institutions. There was an awareness of other web tools that could be employed for pedagogical use, but only modest interest in using such tools. Factors influencing the creation and sharing of digital learning materials were centred on copyright, incentive and reward. In general, academic staff were keen to make resources available for re-use; however, concerns were expressed about the level of quality needed in order to offer materials openly, and the difficulties of repurposing bespoke work. Attitudes to curriculum development and pedagogy suggested that the use of e-learning could offer significant advantages when working with groups of students. The survey also elicited views on the nature of personalisation and assumptions about the expectations of students as learners.

Keywords

e-learning, VLE, Web 2.0, pedagogy and curriculum, staff development, support structures

Introduction

This paper provides a condensed and modestly revised version of the C-SAP e-learning scoping survey (Marsh et al., 2008), aiming to highlight common themes, give an overview of trends of e-learning use, and discuss some of the challenges and issues raised from the scoping exercise. We hope that the findings from the survey inform and show linkages with survey work previously carried out in the social sciences (Lightfoot, 2004; Blair, 2006). In addition, the research encapsulates the diverse engagement with e-learning that has been characterised in previous C-SAP-funded mini-projects and other JISC-supported activity (JISC InfoNet, 2008).

In essence, our scoping survey was an opportunity to consult with our academic communities in order to try to elicit more information on a range of questions:

• how were people using e-learning in their day-to-day teaching?;
• what problems and opportunities did it present?;
• how were staff supported?;
• what recognition was given for the development and use of e-learning material?;
• what were the responses from students to the use of e-learning?;
• were staff sharing resources?;
• if they were creating e-learning material, how was this achieved?

Methodology

In seeking to answer these questions, we adopted a survey methodology comprising a) an online questionnaire, b) a series of follow-up telephone interviews and c) at least one focus group.

Phase 1 of the survey used an online questionnaire, open from 11 October 2007 to 13 January 2008. The survey had six sections, 34 questions in total, with a mixture of mandatory and optional questions. The sections were:

1. Questions on role
2. Questions on the use of electronic learning resources
3. Sharing electronic resources
4. Use of VLEs and tools outside the VLE
5. Pedagogical aspects of e-learning
6. Use of C-SAP electronic resources and support for e-learning

The survey information was disseminated across the range of C-SAP’s academic and departmental contacts, and there were 78 responses which could be analysed from this phase of the survey. Of these, 85 per cent were from higher education institutions (HEIs) in England, 7.5 per cent were from Scotland, 4.5 per cent were from Wales and 3 per cent were from Northern Ireland. The spread of representation across the C-SAP disciplines is shown in Table 1.

Table 1

In the context of the population of UK social science teaching staff, this response rate was relatively small and we would of course qualify any findings from the research with this in mind. Moreover, in the spirit of this research, we simply wanted to begin a series of conversations with academic staff on their use of e-learning and to provide an overview of practice in departments which would inform the shared interests of staff in developing pedagogical practice through the use of e-learning tools. Almost 75 per cent of the sample described their role as that of lecturer/senior lecturer/professor; other categories included researcher, learning technologist, student and administrator. At the start of the research we were anticipating that there would be differences in the perception of e-learning which might be accounted for by subject differences. As these are cognate areas, we would not expect extremes in the responses, and, indeed, this was the case in most of the survey questions and in the interviews. However, it is interesting to note that the notion of disciplinary differences has figured highly in approaches to funding and research in the use of e-learning (JISC, 2006). Kemp and Jones, in their longitudinal research with staff at one institution, note: ‘The use of digital resources is significantly related to the subject and discipline area being taught. However the picture is complex and seems to be affected by a number of cross cutting pressures’ (Kemp and Jones, 2007: 55).

Certainly, as Kemp and Jones suggest, for social science, e-learning might mean an emphasis on web-based materials rather than specialist software, though making distinctions between complex web datasets and specialist software becomes problematic. At the very least, broad disciplinary patterns in the use of technology might be related to the types of knowledge to which students are being introduced (2007: 55).

Phase 2 of the survey comprised a number of follow-up telephone interviews. Respondents in phase 1 were asked whether they would be willing to participate in an interview. Forty-five respondents (58 per cent) indicated ‘yes’. After arranging suitable times, the final number of interviewees was 17. Interviews took place during April and May 2008, with the average length of each interview being about 25 minutes. We used a semi-structured format of ten questions, three of which being compound questions. These questions expanded further on the role of respondents: the opportunities available to them to create e-learning resources; their use/adaptation of existing materials; what they needed to know to create, share and find good quality resources; their perception of recognition and reward for teaching with e-learning, and for innovation in teaching more widely; and their perception of the benefits for students. In responding to the questions, interviewees were encouraged to draw on examples from their own experience and to critique any problematic notions, such as ‘personalisation’ of learning.

Phase 3, in May 2008, comprised a focus group. Members of the focus group had participated in at least one of the previous phases of the survey. The main areas of topic for discussion were: a) the use of electronic resources (creating, sharing and finding); b) pedagogy and approaches to learning; and c) the role of C-SAP in responding appropriately to subject needs.

Analysis

We analysed the responses both quantitatively (phase 1) and qualitatively (phases 2 and 3), and in the findings we adopted a thematic approach, clustering responses under four key areas:

1. The learning environment (use of the VLE; use of new technologies outside the VLE)
2. Resource creation and re-use (locating materials, creating, sharing)
3. Perception of benefits, pedagogy and curriculum development
4. Reward and incentive, staff development

Areas 1-3 were primarily identified by the researchers during the first phase of the survey, and during the follow-up interviews, area 4 emerged strongly through a loosely grounded analysis.

The learning environment: the use and support of the VLE

Use of the VLE was a factor in almost 90 per cent of survey respondents in phase 1. In the main, when asked which VLE their institution was using, the response was Blackboard or WebCT; however, there was also a notable use of Open Source systems such as Moodle or Sakai. In phase 1 we also asked how use of the VLE was supported. In general, there was an even spread of responses across department/school/faculty and institutional levels of support such as a learning technologist shared across a faculty or school. In the follow-up telephone interviews a few respondents noted that, as part of their role in the department, they were tasked with helping to map out the needs of their colleagues in preparation for a new system. This was sometimes described as part of the role of a ‘VLE champion’, which also involved peer support to other staff in the department and offering opportunities for focused activity in support of the VLE. Most people who were involved in supporting the VLE within their department were working with platforms that had been in place for at least four or five years.

We explored further the issue of ‘role’ in the follow-up interviews; as already noted, a few respondents had described themselves as ‘VLE champions’, which involved support for colleagues and sometimes a brokering role with other technical staff. A couple of the interviewees noted that, in line with the institutional learning and teaching strategy, their role had become that of a ‘learning and teaching fellow’ (in conjunction with their existing academic role). This split role offered a formal recognition of contribution to e-learning and allowed for designated time within the calendar for working with colleagues on their teaching practice. This was perceived as being structurally more useful than having the additional role of ‘VLE champion’, as it implied a wider focus on learning and teaching than the VLE alone and gave staff more opportunity to talk with their peers on wider learning and teaching issues, perhaps through activities such as internal workshops.

'I’ve just emailed around my colleagues to ask if they need support on using WebCT over the summer. I’ve already had ten replies from colleagues wanting help. I think a lot of staff value this way of supporting e-learning through peers.' (Interview participant)

We were also interested in understanding more about the kinds of teaching activities that were supported through use of the VLE, in order to explore the notion that these systems are mainly used as a means of ‘delivery … for lecture materials and slides to students’ (LittleJohn et al 2007: p.136). We structured the question to try to elicit information about a range of pedagogical approaches to using the VLE. The results are summarised in Table 2.

Table 2

The findings here support the view that, at least for ‘delivering’ learning materials, which could be as simple as hosting lecture notes or other support materials, most respondents were engaging with use of the VLE (though in many cases the comment was made that this was an institutional requirement). This was also the case for communicating with students and despite some other comments about the difficulty of controlling email traffic within the VLE, on the whole, most respondents felt confident in using the VLE for communication and as feedback, at some level, to students. Activities for which scores were less frequent, such as ‘assessment’ and ‘supporting discussion’, may present more challenges to staff in terms of developing practice within the VLE: how to create engaging discussions for students; how to create assessment which is appropriate to the subject and topic. As Lightfoot (2004) noted in his review of the implementation of a VLE to support a politics tutorial module, often the initial introduction of such systems is predicated on an emphasis on ‘diagnosing problems in student learning at an early stage in their university career’ (p. 175). This offers a basis for developing formative assessment strategies delivered through the VLE, although, as Table 2 shows, only 33 per cent of respondents were using the VLE to deliver frequent assessment.In the follow-up interviews and focus group, a number of respondents indicated unease about multiple choice questions, and whether this form of assessment was suited to the kinds of knowledge and learning sought in the social sciences. As LittleJohn and Cook note (Conole and Oliver, 2007: p.136), ‘few practitioners use VLEs to support active forms of learning’, citing three main reasons, which centre on the inflexible design of VLEs (and the educational models used), the difficulty of transferring materials between systems, and the problems of transferring activities associated with course content. This sense of VLEs creating ‘locked down’ approaches to learning was brought out in our focus group discussion, with one group member commenting that ‘there are many barriers to simply seeing what other people are doing’.

In phase 1 we also asked to what extent e-learning was perceived to be ‘integral’ to a department’s learning and teaching strategy. Overall, most responses were towards the midpoint, between no integration and full integration (see Table 3). These responses were based on perception; we did not set any criteria identifying what would constitute a ‘fully’ integral learning and teaching strategy. This was an interesting question as it elicited many further comments. These indicated a certain baseline of integration in terms of posting lecture notes and communicating with students as a requirement for most modules, with a consensus that extra activity or development of the learning environment was at the discretion of staff. Most comments indicated a positive attitude towards using the VLE and other opportunities for developing e-learning. However, whilst the approach to using the VLE was seen as at least partially integral, there was still concern about the demands on staff time and some questioning of the pedagogical purpose. The comments which presented a negative view of the VLE were wary of seeing ‘technical fixes’ applied to issues of learning and teaching. Some comments were also concerned about passive use of e-learning as a support tool.

Table 3

The learning environment: use of new technologies outside the VLE

With the rise of web 2.0 applications, RSS, user-generated content, blogs, wikis and ‘mashups’, we were interested to gauge the level of use of these tools within teaching. We would expect teaching frameworks and pedagogies to support such tools to be emergent, and therefore that established and long-term use of technology outside the VLE would be limited. As Beer and Burrows (2007) note, care must be exercised when using the term ‘web 2.0’. As they comment, behind the rhetoric of technology futurists resides the ‘complex, ambivalent, dynamic’ nature of these online cultures, ‘laden with tensions and subversions (pp. 1,3). Indeed, when questioned on the subject of using web 2.0 tools to support learning in higher education, the majority of respondents to our survey did not engage with such technology, although podcasting and YouTube had the highest individual use rate (approximately 30 per cent each). Those respondents that did use some of the tools mentioned tended to see their use as having only modest value for teaching, with approximately 75 per cent of respondents to each question answering between 1 and 3, with 1 signifying that the tool was of no value and 5 indicating that the tool was of high value. Again, podcasting and YouTube were weighted slightly higher in terms of their applied value for teaching. The pattern of overall responses was reflected when the same questions were broken down by subject area. Approximately 25 per cent of respondents said they had used a wiki in teaching, with a modest overall value for teaching.

'Most students are clued up in Facebook … some of them try to move their discussions out of Moodle and into Facebook, but I try to discourage it. If you are dealing with students who want to take control of the tools you need to lay down some ground rules.' (Interview and focus group participant)

There may be a number of reasons why use of such web 2.0 tools was reported to be low. Typical of many web technologies, they are of course tools developed for other purposes which have been incorporated into frameworks for teaching. There is therefore relatively little known about good practice (or examples of good practice), and often little motivation to experiment within departments. And, as discussed above, most learning and teaching strategies focus on the VLE in terms of e-learning integration, not on external tools. (In the context of this research we posited tools outside the VLE as web 2.0 services, such as blogs, wikis, YouTube and podcasting. However, we should note that most VLE systems now incorporate such tools as part of the software. While advantageous in terms of integrating directly with the VLE, the notion of web 2.0 technologies as ‘external’ is predicated within this paper as augmentations or alternatives to institutionally driven e-learning platforms.)

Interestingly, we also asked if any web 2.0 tools had been used alongside, or in conjunction with, the existing VLE. Surprisingly, given the indicated low response to each type of web 2.0 tool, 40 per cent of the survey sample had tried or attempted to use one of these tools alongside the VLE. Of these, the majority reported that this had been a difficult or time-consuming process, again indicating that without a clear pedagogical objective or need there was little incentive to use such tools beyond the context of what the department/institution could supply.

As Beer and Burrows note, a more informed understanding of practices within web 2.0 for teaching and research will have further benefits for negotiating identity within these new online cultures:

'Not only does [web 2.0 ] create for us new opportunities for research, and maybe teaching, but these applications are already being used to say things about us, about the concepts and writers that we use, about our teaching, and about our institutions.' (Beer and Burrows, 2007)

Resource creation and re-use: finding resources

In phase 1 we asked respondents to select from a list of options in relation to search strategies for locating digital materials for use as resources within teaching. The responses are given in Table 4.

Table 4

There is an interesting split here in the most frequent methods used – one based on serendipitous searching online, the other on trusted recommendations. We followed up this question in the interviews by asking: What do you need to know in order to locate good quality digital materials? Most interviewees responded along the lines of the methods outlined above, with references to particular resources for their teaching area such as links into parliament websites, or specific datasets. There was a keen awareness of JISC digital resources (and the JORUM repository for learning objects). However, little use was made of these on the whole. Whilst they were regarded as potentially very valuable, again the usefulness of the resource would be dependent on an individual’s teaching needs.

Interestingly, although the responses indicated a mixed approach to sourcing digital materials, in the interviews a number of comments returned to the issue of recommendations from colleagues or peers. These comments touched on the need for more ways of filtering out useful online content, possibly by some form of review process carried out by peers (reiterating the issue of trust). Alongside such a review mechanism of resources could be a form of evaluation in practice, which in turn would contribute to the building of expertise about how to appraise and evaluate digital resources and tools.

Resource creation and re-use: creating resources

In general, the majority of respondents in phase 1 tended to create teaching resources themselves, with approximately a third utilising resources created in conjunction with other staff from within their own institution/faculty. In the follow-up interviews, we also asked about the support offered within departments for creating resources. In many cases this was tied in with support for the institutional VLE and other principal tools. In some cases a more bespoke form of support was offered (as mentioned under the heading ‘The learning environment: the use and support of the VLE’). Generally, according to our modest interview sample, resource creation was predicated on the VLE as the final hosting platform; however, there was also a noticeable interest in alternative forms of hosting resources (YouTube, wikis such as‘pbwiki’, personal web pages). Of course, using such tools beyond the supported VLE platform may require additional support to ensure robust curriculum design, and thus the incentive to experiment beyond the VLE is often constrained. Very few respondents (less than 10 per cent) created resources in conjunction with staff from other institutions. We asked if people were aware of the term ‘reusable learning object’ (RLO); 38 per cent said yes, and, of these, only a minority claimed to use them in teaching. We also asked in phase 1 if there were particular areas of study which might be enhanced by such reusable learning objects; of the responses to this, the most frequent suggestions were ‘research methods’ and ‘study skills’. (‘Re-usable learning object’ simply describes a self-contained set of digital materials, usually having a linear structure which the student might often encounter as supplementary of self-directed study – another way to think about this is as a collection of ‘raw’ media files structured within a pedagogic framework.) This response seems to indicate that practitioners tend to view such objects as better suited to generic support material, recognising the complexity needed to support very specific learning objects, and then the further problem of the re-use and adaptation of such detailed electronic resources. As Jane Seale and Tom Boyle (2007) note:

'Highly analytic subjects such as programming would appear to lend themselves well to the creation and use of self-contained, decontextualised resources for learning. On the other hand, highly synthetic subject such as the social sciences may be less hospitable domains for the deployment of such resources.' (Conole and Oliver, 2007:130)

This reiterates the issue of disciplinary differences outlined earlier by Kemp and Jones (2007), and the importance of situating use of digital resources with reference to disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical frameworks. We explored further the issue of resource creation in the interviews by asking: What do you need to know in order to create good quality digital materials? There were some interesting variations in the responses regarding the level of support needed. Some respondents were keen to see much more technical support available within, or for, departments. For example, if creating a video resource, the time/expertise needed to effectively edit the material would be useful. Most respondents were not creating their own video material, but certainly many were creating resources for students which incorporated online video.The issue of copyright was unanimously agreed as being key to having confidence in creating and using digital resources. Many interviewees indicated that some form of copyright help or guidance existed within their institution, often through their institutional library. However, there was generally a lack of good quality information on specific issues such as downloading and using podcasts in lectures, linking into YouTube from lectures, or downloading and embedding video clips directly. As a general rule most people would instinctively seek permission from the owner of a particular resource. However, this is not always practical – a few interviewees were wary of copyright to the extent that they simply avoid the problem by adopting a policy of providing links to materials without embedding or re-using directly.

Resource creation and re-use: sharing digital resources

Although most staff indicated in phase 1 that they were willing to share resources created by themselves (83 per cent), those who were not willing cited copyright ownership and the training needed to develop good quality resources as factors that might encourage them to share in the future. The need for more guidance on sharing from departments was also a factor, although less so than the need for more training to develop confidence in using online tools. Some respondents also commented that they wouldn’t necessarily consider sharing resources owing to the bespoke nature of their modules. The perception of the individualised nature of teaching in higher education is an important issue when thinking about trends and practices relating to curriculum design. Interestingly, the issue of re-using or repurposing electronic teaching resources has been a factor in approaches to national e-learning development (JISC, 2006). (In case the reader is not familiar with the terminology, ‘repurposing’ simply refers to the process of taking existing learning content and adapting it for use by other teaching staff or for other pedagogic purposes). In our survey, 84 per cent of respondents indicated that if they used a resource created by someone else, they would have to spend time adapting it to their own teaching needs. Whilst desirable, the complexity involved in having to ‘unpack’ resources can often be detrimental to sharing. Table 5 gives a number of indications from the survey.

Table 5

As one of the interviewees noted, ‘An RLO [re-usable learning object] might have two hours of teaching time, but only a small part might be useful for my lecture.’ In fact, methods of describing learning objects with metadata and machine-readable vocabularies have been in development for some time in the field of learning technology (Conole and Oliver, 2007: p.136) with the intention of being able to separate out the component parts of, for example, a complex learning object into constituent media files (mostly for use between different systems and web platforms). However, unless one is familiar with these terminologies, most teaching practitioners will hold on to a simpler approach to ‘disaggregating’ materials, or simply prefer to use other material. Owing to the emergent nature of the area of learning technology itself as a field of study the academic practitioner is most likely to be relatively new to technology enhanced learning.

Perception of benefits, pedagogy and curriculum development

Alongside the recording of the use of tools, whether they are VLEs, web 2.0 or other, we were interested to get a sense of how people viewed the benefits, if any, of e-learning on pedagogy and curriculum enhancement. In phase 1 we asked, in the context of respondents’ own experience, if e-learning had facilitated notable benefits under four broad areas: individual student learning; student group learning; overall student achievement; and curriculum enhancement. The responses are given in Table 6.

Table 6

It is perhaps important to emphasise that these results are based on personal perception and judgment from a respondent’s own experience. The slightly higher figures for individual student learning perhaps reflect the earlier comments regarding the greater degree of difficulty in organising group work and supporting activities within (or outside) the VLE. Further comments in response to this question in phase 1 emphasised the benefit of having access to online materials as baseline e-learning provision, although other comments suggested that this only extended a ‘content-driven’ approach to teaching. Even so, the high figures for significant impact on individual learning and overall student achievement are encouraging. These kinds of figures are difficult to generalise widely from, and are not tied to any one specific tool or approach to using e-learning. However, they do capture the increasing interest in exploring the affordances for enhancing student learning through use of technology.

The more ambivalent response to the issue of curriculum design is interesting. In the phase 2 interviews we asked about curriculum planning in terms of periods of activity in the academic year. While times might vary over the year when staff are planning modules and courses, the notion of building some level of e-learning into curricula was a factor in all phase 2 interviews. Further comments indicated that, even for those who were more critical of e-learning as a ‘technical fix’, it was seen as offering an opportunity to think about the process of learning and the ways in which students engage with course material. We followed this up in the focus group, where participants commented on the value of a sound and developed pedagogical underpinning or ‘learning design’, although the difficulty was often in exteriorising the pedagogy. E-learning might help facilitate these processes, but was not in itself a solution which could be separated from the conditions of particular local context.

'The ‘grand theories’ of social constructivism don’t always engage colleagues … perhaps we should ask ‘How can this technology help me to understand what a particular pedagogy offers’?' (Focus group participant)

Reward, incentive and staff development

A specific issue that emerged strongly across all phases of the survey was recognition for time and effort spent in developing and using e-learning. This seems to be a critical factor in the success of establishing innovative practice with e-learning and is equally important in maintaining momentum once new practices within curricula are in place. Interestingly, the perceived need for reward and recognition can be contextualised by the general absence of specific recognition noted in phase 1. We asked respondents if their department offered some form of reward or incentive for creating or sharing electronic resources. Of the sample, 90 per cent said ‘no’, only 8 per cent said ‘yes’ and 2 per cent were unsure. Clearly, this is an issue that is not only located in social science subjects. However, it presents a challenge to all involved in course delivery and returns to a problem which many of the interviewees noted in passing: the assumption that ‘e-learning’ is posited as providing the answer to many of the issues of teaching within higher education (time management, student numbers) without the necessary support to produce high quality materials or thorough evaluations of effective practice.

'We need to recognise the enormous amount of time that is needed to learn new technology, then prepare materials using this technology … there needs to be some recognition of the labour-intensive nature of implementing e-learning.' (Interview participant)

Final thoughts

This scoping survey presents the beginnings of a longer-term conversation with social science academic staff on the question of where they are currently located with e-learning in terms of their teaching practice. It has also explored issues related to what they would like to know more about when working with or developing e-learning. One further issue we were keen to explore in the interviews was the notion of technology and the ‘personalisation’ of learning. This produced some divisions of opinion. We invited phase 2 interview respondents to critique the term ‘personalisation’, which is foregrounded in the HEFCE e-Learning Strategy, 2005. Many critiqued the assumptions behind the term and some wondered whether ‘individualisation’ was more apt. In fact, the difference of opinion expressed is perhaps best explained by the ambiguity of the word ‘personalisation’. Most interview participants felt, to some extent, that e-learning offered more flexibility in the means of delivery. Therefore, if you were a part-time student or distance learner, the learning might appear to be more ‘personal’. However, adapting course material to the needs of campus-based and remote-based students is only one part of the spectrum of e-learning approaches. Some interview respondents also commented on misunderstandings regarding technical solutions to different ‘learning styles’. In fact, the notion of students having ‘learning styles’ which can be accommodated through ‘personalised’ e-learning was critiqued by some of the interview respondents and also within the focus group. One focus group member suggested: ‘Learning styles don’t suddenly appear to students, they are things they take up given the circumstances.’ Further, it was also noted here that the tendency to treat higher education as a product rather than a service might obscure the true level of engagement needed by students in order to commit to learning. 'Porting' classes into Facebook, for example, might be novel but does not guarantee increased engagement with learning on the part of students unless it is built into a planned (and visible) curriculum. Even then, many other factors, such as the perceived invasion of student personal space, might intervene to compromise the learning outcomes.

Alongside this notion of personalisation is the issue of student expectations. In several of the interview responses to the question on personalisation the comment was made that students are often the ones driving the changes in teaching and learning methods and that staff should have the confidence to ‘let the students decide what works for them’. This does not of course mean abandoning existing practice, but rather giving students more opportunity to contribute towards the process of their learning, perhaps through evaluation. One of the focus group participants noted that a recent evaluation process in their department had involved year 3 students evaluating e-learning materials for first year students. The result was that many of these materials were revised and the assumptions about learning styles, which had been built into the materials, were unpicked and simplified.Although this scoping survey was partly an exercise to gain a snapshot of the use of e-learning across social science departments, we hope that C-SAP can respond to some of the issues and needs which emerged from the survey in future work. One such response might emerge in 2009 as part of a new JISC/HEA initiative to pilot the release of digital learning material under open content licences. Moreover, as courses and curricula in higher education are increasingly delivered and mediated through the use of technology, this leads us to constantly review our practices and understanding of the conditions of modern higher education. As Martin Oliver (2009) described in his keynote speech for the C-SAP Virtual University? conference, whilst the continually changing landscape of educational technology might create a sense of constant re-invention, this in itself might not be all bad, so long as we review and develop our pedagogical frameworks within which to understand the implications of each new technology, and set these within the needs of practitioners working in subject areas with their own cultures of learning and teaching.

Note

The original survey report, Marsh, Pountney, and Prigg (2008) is available from the C-SAP website at the address given below. We welcome a continued discussion on the findings and outcomes of this survey. If you would like to comment, please do so using the available functions in ELiSS, or email Darren Marsh (darren.marsh@c-sap.bham.ac.uk).

C-SAP would like to thank the JISC and the HEA for supporting this research as part of the second phase of DEL funding. Thanks to Eddie Gulc and the team at the HEA for their support.

References

Beer, D., Burrows, R. (2007) ‘Sociology and, of and in Web 2.0: some initial considerations’, Sociological Research Online, 12 (5). Available at: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/12/5/17.html (accessed 30 January 2009).

Blair, A. (2006) ‘Teaching politics in UK universities: a survey of the profession’, LATISS, 3 (2), 119–132.

Conole, G. and Oliver, M. (eds.) (2007) Contemporary Perspectives in e-Learning Research: Themes, Methods and Impact on Practice, London: Routledge.

Fletcher, S. and France, D. (2007) ‘E-learning in the UK: perspectives from GEES practitioners’, Planet, 18 (June), pp. 3–5.

JISC (2004) Effective Practice with e-Learning: A Good Practice Guide in Designing for Learning, Higher Education Funding Council for England.

JISC (2006) Distributed e-Learning Programme. Higher Education Funding Council for England. Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/edistributed.aspx (accessed 28 January 2009).

JISC InfoNet (2008) Exploring Tangible Benefits of e-Learning: Does Investment Yield Interest? JISC. Available at: http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/case-studies/tangible (last accessed 28 January, 2009)

Kemp, B. and Jones, C. (2007) ‘Academic use of digital resources: disciplinary differences and the issue of progression revisited’, Educational Technology & Society, 10 (1), pp. 52–60.

Littlejohn, A., Cook, J. Campbell, L., Sclater, N., Currier, S. And Davis., H. (2007), ‘Managing educational resources’, in Conole, G. and Oliver, M. (eds.) (2007) Contemporary Perspectives in e-Learning Research: Themes, Methods and Impact on Practice, London: Routledge

Lightfoot, S. (2004) ‘Can Blackboard help support politics students?’, LATISS, 1 (3), pp.169–180.

Marsh, D., Pountney, R. P. and Prigg, R. (2008) C-SAP Scoping Survey on the Use of e-Learning in the Social Sciences, C-SAP, Higher Education Academy. Available at: http://www.c-sap.bham.ac.uk/subject_areas/elearning/csap.htm.

Oliver, M. (2009) Keynote presentation at C-SAP “Virtual University?” conference, 16 January. Available at: http://www.c-sap.bham.ac.uk/events/conference_jan_09/ (accessed 28 January 2009).

When Eric met Sally: putting the drama into ethics teaching

Dave Middleton, The Open University
d.j.middleton@open.ac.uk

The author

Dave Middleton is a senior lecturer in the social sciences faculty at the Open University. He is also a director of the Research Training Consortium which developed from the HEFCE-funded PARLE project and now includes ten universities from across the UK. Initially a sociology graduate from Cardiff University, Dave obtained his PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London, and has published on the morality of respect as well as his developing interest of multimedia learning.

Abstract

This paper considers the use of a scripted drama in the teaching of ethics to postgraduate research students. The drama was developed as part of a suite of research training materials called Doing Political Research. These materials were developed with the purpose of using multimedia within an active learning environment. The paper argues that the approach is based on an appreciation of the role of film drama in teaching contexts. Whilst those who have used commercial films in their teaching have questioned the authenticity of the materials, it is argued that a specially scripted drama turns the relationship around. Instead of learning being implied through drama, the drama is constructed specifically to facilitate learning. This use of drama is based on aspects of role-play theory. Students are asked to empathise with the characters in the drama and to draw conclusions about the appropriateness of the characters’ actions.

Keywords

drama, pedagogy, multimedia learning, research methods, ethics

Introduction

In this paper I would like to reflect on the experience of using an audio drama to teach research ethics to postgraduate politics students. This was an attempt at using a novel and entertaining approach to teaching a topic which, while interesting in its own right, can be relatively mundane when taught.

I will give some background to the project that contained the teaching – PARLE (Politics Active Research Learning Environment) – and discuss the use of multimedia materials in teaching more generally. However, most of this paper will concern itself with the process of producing a scripted drama for teaching purposes, including some excerpts from the material. The project’s primary aim was to produce a portable learning resource. In the event, this was a DVD-rom called Doing Political Research. The short duration of the project (two and a half years), dominated as it was by the production of the materials, left little time for extensive evaluation.In 2004 the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) put out a bid for innovative teaching and learning projects in politics. The Open University, in collaboration with the universities of York and Huddersfield, submitted an ambitious bid to produce a suite of teaching materials for postgraduate research students. In January 2005, the £250,000 project commenced. The project was not without its difficulties and problems (for a discussion, see Middleton and Bridge, 2008), but, in the event, 13 tutorials based on the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Postgraduate Training Guidelines (2000) were produced. The aim of the project was to provide an entertaining and stimulating learning experience for postgraduate students in a subject area that is often regarded as a chore by both students and lecturers.

The project team took a similar view to that of Adams (2001: 3): ‘Research methods is one of the toughest teaching assignments in academia, but it can also be one of the most productive.’ A number of different approaches were used to ensure that the 13 tutorials were interesting and entertaining. What follows is discussion of just one approach used as a way of bringing the ethics tutorial to life. Ethics is clearly important in research methods teaching, particularly in the context of universities’ increasing fear that a failure to address ethical issues adequately could see them in the courts.

It is worth stating that none of the eight or so authors had worked on anything similar in the past. We quickly discovered that writing for an interactive medium was an entirely different approach to teaching than, for example, producing a textbook. Academics still tend to see their role as producing text, and the use of technology to enhance the learning experience is driven by technology rather than pedagogy. (I explore this in Middleton, forthcoming.) As Robberecht (2007) has pointed out, ‘While the technical aspects of e-learning are often performed by technical personnel and instructional designers, such personnel do not have the pedagogical expertise of an experienced educator.’The DVD was launched in June 2007, but not fully completed until September that year, just in time for the new academic year. By January 2008, six departments had signed up to the Research Training Consortium which was formed to continue the work started by the PARLE project (see www.DoingResearch.org). In March 2008, telephone interviews were carried out with postgraduate students from five of the user departments (one student from each). In addition, 35 level 3 Open University students were asked to assess three of the tutorials on the disc, including that on ethics, for inclusion in an Open University master’s course. Reference to these interviews and the written comments are included in this paper. Whilst I am happy to acknowledge that these lack a scientific basis (that is, they are not statistically significant in any way), they are, nonetheless, indicative of the responses from students who have used the resource so far.

Although the response has been overwhelmingly positive, one student remarked that they found the video sequences used in the ethics tutorial ‘tedious’. On the other hand, the DVD’s interactive approach has been praised. One master’s-level student made the following observation: ‘It was actually quite handy being able to take the DVD away and sit at home and just sort of look at it’; while a second-year PhD student endorsed the approach: ‘You’re almost like teaching yourself with what’s on the disc. It seemed to me to be much better than somebody standing in front of the classroom and perhaps trying to, you know, explain something that you just know because you do it so much.’

Multimedia materials in teaching

Very often people are driven by a desire to use whatever the latest technology might be. Given that much technological innovation these days is web-based, it is tempting to say that it must have educational value. Academics have embraced a technology because it is there, rather than because it offers any great pedagogic advance. Others, of course, take a different view (see, for example, Bell et al., 2007; Salmon, 2005). Discussion forums, wikis and other online communication forms have all been heralded as new and innovative ways of producing education (from a growing literature, see, for example, Aspden and Helm, 2004; Thurston, 2005; Concannon et al., 2005; Kirkwood, 2003). However, their success in engaging students has been limited. We felt that, rather than using whatever technology happened to be flavour of the month, it was more important to provide an entertaining environment. We used a variety of approaches including video, audio and graphical interfaces. The disc continually prompts students to interact with a variety of interactive quizzes and games. Overall, the package appears to have hit its target. As one third-year PhD student enthused, ‘fun is really important because research methods are such a boring topic’. She pointed out that, unless some ‘fun’ was put into research methods teaching, students were likely to lose interest very quickly. This is especially so for research students, for whom research methods can appear a chore compared to other aspects of their studies. Our aim, therefore, was to use the ‘multi’ in multimedia to enliven the teaching of research methods. These comments relate to the disc overall, rather than just to the ethics tutorial which is the focus of our attention in this paper.

Despite the fact that it remains a relatively new pedagogic approach, there has been a considerable amount of research on the use of multimedia learning (see, for example, Mayer, 1997; Tellez, 2007). Most research suggests that multimedia learning is beneficial. It allows students to engage with, and reflect upon, the learning materials without the pressure of a pace dictated by the fastest learners. However, whether this translates into quantifiable results is less clear. It is worth making this point as we are often asked what the effect of the DVD Doing Political Research is on the retention and completion rates of those using it. It’s a good question, but one without an answer given that the disc is only now in its second year of use and that the retention and completion rates on postgraduate degrees are likely to be affected by a multitude of variables, not least the motivation of students themselves.

Faced with the task of developing an innovative approach to research ethics teaching, we wanted to explore what the medium might allow. In the earliest drafts of the material the struggle to move beyond a text-based approach to learning was clearly evident. The tutorial was to consist of a series of screens, each containing text, an image and possibly – the ‘radical’ bit – a hyperlink to associated web resources. In this early version of the tutorial, the only real advantage of a web-based interface was the ability to move easily between ‘chunks’ of text.

The DVD, rather than being just a showcase of technological innovation, is steeped in what Bonwell and Eiser (1991) have called ‘active learning’. This is a method of delivery that aims to enliven students’ learning experience and their retention of key information. They state (1991: 2): ‘Active learning [can] be defined as instructional activities involving students in doing things and thinking about what they are doing.’ One way in which teachers have tried to involve students in empathetic understanding is through role-play scenarios (for example, see Van Ments, 1983; Alexander and Dickson, 2006). In role play, students are asked to step into the shoes of ‘the other’ to explore their emotions and motivations in relation to a scenario which has been constructed to bring out specific learning points. As Druckner and Ebner (2008: 466) put it, ‘Learning objectives are thought to be accomplished by providing realistic, but controlled, environments in which students are guided only by implicit rules.’ The ethics tutorial, in common with other tutorials developed for Doing Political Research, was a form of active learning in that it was designed to involve students. The role-play element of empathising with another, in this case a student, was also clearly evident. Students were not asked to ‘play’ the student or supervisor, although that would be an interesting approach to developing the material in the classroom. Rather, the drama was an opportunity for students to ‘become more aware of their own roles and understand more clearly other people’s points of view’ (Van Ments, 1983: 30). Undergraduate evaluators were impressed with the approach, describing it as ‘an excellent set of materials’ and ‘the best approach I’ve seen yet’. Whilst they enjoyed the drama, they also made reference to the interactive elements that were used to support and reinforce the learning.

Using audio-visual media in teaching

The use of drama as a medium for generating discussion in classroom situations is neither new nor innovative. Commercial films have been used by lecturers both to explore issues and to allow difficult or dangerous topics to be brought to life in the safety of the lecture theatre. Films have been used to teach organisational leadership (Barbour, 2006), English literature (Ostrander, 2003), medicine (Rosenstock, 2003), psychiatry (Sondheimer, 2000) and even political theory (Woodcock, 2006). The use of films allows educators to provide students with ‘real’ characters to empathise with. In using fiction to teach about conditions such as schizophrenia it can ‘enhance empathy for patients and inspire interest in the illness’ (Rosenstock, 2003: 119); whilst Zerby (2005: 29), who uses the 1950s film Invaders From Mars in his psychiatry teaching, claims: ‘The medium of film allows for concise audiovisual depictions of a rich variety of subject matter.’

In clinical settings, film is often used as a means to generate discussion of particular conditions. The use of drama as a means to teach has, therefore, a long history. There are, of course, limitations to using film as a proxy for real-life events or medical conditions. Rosenstock (2003: 118) comments on the use of the highly successful film A Beautiful Mind:Clinicians and trainees have wondered about the nature of some of John Nash’s symptoms, since having fully formed, interactive, and associated visual and auditory hallucinations is relatively uncommon ... Although the movie is based on a true story, the director has admitted taking liberties for dramatic effect, raising doubt as to how much should be believed.

The sense that a drama is not real life may be important in teaching terms, but students seem able to enjoy the approach regardless of its artificiality. An undergraduate noted of the ethics tutorial: ‘The end game of the story was a bit obvious and thus less valuable … but very good fun.’ A third-year PhD student, when asked to comment on the most useful parts of the DVD, picked out the ethics tutorial: ‘I thought what was really interesting was the interviews between the PhD student and the professor.’ Another undergraduate seemed to understand the role of the drama: ‘The progression of Sally’s study provided a framework in which to explore the complexities involved in ethics.’ These remarks indicate that not only did students find the drama plausible, they also found it a stimulating approach to learning.

The use of multimedia materials to introduce contemporary debate has probably been used less in the social sciences, although Woodcock’s (2006) use of The Simpsons TV programme to introduce political theory remains one of the most innovative. One use to which film has been put is in developing observation techniques for sociology students. Tan and Ko (2004) used two ‘high quality’ films, Tokyo Story (first released in 1953) and How Green Was My Valley (first released in 1941). The authors asked their research methods students to watch the films and observe age and gender interactions. The use of film, rather than sending students into the field for themselves, had definite advantages in teaching terms:

'One reason is that members of the class are called upon to observe the same phenomenon. If students are sent into a variety of fieldwork situations, there are no checks, by either the instructors or fellow students, on what is being observed. Moreover, films provide a confined text that can be shown repeatedly, permitting one to replay scenes and analyze and discuss what has been observed.' (Tan and Ko, 2004: 116)

However, this advantage is offset by the artificiality of the film setting. The students understand, it seems, that this is drama and not an actual event which they are being asked to describe.What I am describing is a situation where academics use the artefacts of popular culture in their teaching. However, when putting together the PARLE project, we decided to use a method that is less often used. In order to explore the main issues in research ethics, we were to use a scripted, but still fictional, audio drama between a research student and their supervisor. What we aimed to produce was a ‘realistic’ dialogue that would bring research ethics to life for the listener. Rather than finding teaching points within an existing drama, our approach was to construct the drama around the teaching.

When Eric met Sally

It may be of interest to briefly describe the way in which our fictional supervisor, Professor Eric Hafabee, and his postgraduate student, Sally Jenkins, came into being. As the PARLE project developed it was clear that we were devising an interface that was colourful, entertaining, interactive and educational. As each tutorial author developed their ideas for how their particular tutorial should look and feel, a number of devices were used. These included images, hyperlinks, drag and drop exercises (an early favourite), interactive quizzes, specially designed software games (eventually only used in the epistemology tutorial written by Stuart McAnulla) and some planned video content (for interviewing, focus groups and sampling). Not everything we tried in the early prototypes survived to the final cut. However, the variety of approaches used also provided a welcome difficulty. How exactly was each tutorial to be different to the others?

Having struggled to develop a text and image-based tutorial that covered all the important issues around political research ethics, I came to an important decision. The material was boring. Although it was possible to explore an issue such as the epistemology of ethics, it was difficult to do so in a way that maintained the interest of the reader. Or, at least, so I thought. Most academic writers will have experienced the feeling of inertia, or writer’s block, as they struggle to translate their ideas onto paper (or, in most cases, a word-processing screen). On one such day, I decided to abandon my work for a walk in the park. (My dog is always grateful for these moments of self-doubt which leave me feeling unable to write anything!) As I walked, my head was still full of the material I wanted to introduce to the students. I began to imagine a student discussing ethics with their supervisor. What kind of questions would they ask? And what kind of issues might they be faced with? During that walk Eric and Sally were born.

Initially, the plan had been to record a real discussion between a student and an academic. However, we quickly realised the danger of this approach. What if the questions asked by the student did not cover all the issues that we had identified? More important, what if the academic did not provide answers that covered the correct ground? Or, more likely, what if they had a particular view of ethics and were unwilling to deviate from it? The obvious answer to the student question problem was to furnish them with a set of questions which they had to ask and allow them to ask others as they felt appropriate. The academic answer problem was less easy to solve. Giving an academic written answers was likely to prove difficult, as no academic would want to be associated with answers with which they fundamentally disagreed. We were also concerned that a real dialogue might be marginally less interesting than an overheard conversation in the local post office.

It was at this point that I sat down and wrote a series of questions that we would want answered. But, as I did this, I began to imagine what the answers might look like. As I wrote the dialogue it began to resemble a script, and it was about this time that I took the decision to develop the script as an audio drama. So, instead of just a series of questions with answers, we were able to include discussions around the practical results of failing to take ethics seriously. The characters of Eric and Sally developed as a part of this process, and before I knew it most of the teaching was being produced through the use of a dramatisation of the errors made by a student in a fictional university.

There is little documented evidence of the use of specially scripted dramas in teaching. An exception is a report of the use of scripted drama to teach science. The authors note:

'A conversation, whether scripted or those casual ones of daily life, offers opportunities for both expository and narrative features. Daily conversation, after all, has rules on maintaining a topic, negotiating meaning, and providing enough interest to continue. The best explications of knowledge should offer the same characteristics.' (Begoray and Stinner, 2005)

Students certainly supported a view that a scripted conversation could be an appropriate learning method. One undergraduate stated: ‘The way ethics was presented by the videos and news flashes was very good. I found I really got into the story.’ Another commented: ‘I realise now that ethics is a minefield!’

Since the project team had no professional scriptwriters, the drama was scripted entirely by myself and a postgraduate student, Alexa Kellow (now conducting PhD research at the University of Southampton). We did not experience any significant problems in developing the drama, or for that matter in recording and editing it. In fact, both authors, I think it is true to say, found the process both enjoyable and exciting.

What we were trying to teach – our learning objectives

We were seeking to create a tutorial on ethics which not only covered the main issues but did so in a way that made it clear to students that ethics were an ‘essentially contested’ area of research practice.

Many textbooks treat research ethics as if they are an issue mainly for qualitative researchers. Oppenheimer (1992) in an otherwise excellent book on questionnaire design devotes precisely 150 words to the subject. This is essentially to warn would-be questionnaire designers that they should not harm their respondents nor coerce people into taking part in a study. Earl Babbie (1992) similarly devotes more attention to the ethics of experiments and field research than to questionnaires, although to be fair his exemplars include a questionnaire that was to be compulsorily given to students and the use of data collected from students that might later be published. However, interestingly, Babbie does not locate ethics within an epistemological tradition, but rather as a set of rules which researchers should follow. In other words, the politics of ethics are rather underplayed. Likewise, Neumann (2000) provides a list of dos and don’ts around ethical issues but does not locate these in any epistemological tradition. Whilst Tim May (2001) discusses deontology and consequentialism, he tends to view these as two ends of a bipolar relationship. For the would-be social researcher, therefore, the view is that you must sit within one of these camps. And it has to be said that, like positivism, deontology appears the least flexible of the two camps.

Influenced partly by Thrift’s (2003) chapter on Spinozan ethics, we sought to consciously undermine the view that ethics could either be reduced to a list of dos and don’ts or that researchers could easily fit into one of the bipolarised camps. We were clear that the aim of a tutorial on ethics was to introduce students to the main issues whilst at the same time making it clear that ethics were themselves an object of contention. Issues such as harm avoidance are more complex in practice than portrayed in textbooks. The dialogue format enabled our concerns with the research literature to be voiced as the concerns of a student grappling with the complexity of the issues. This is illustrated by this clip where Eric and Sally are discussing the harm principle.

Transcript 1

Sally: 'It seems to me that it’s one thing if your research happens to hurt others and you couldn't have anticipated it, but it’s another entirely to do research knowing that people will get hurt. I remember reading somewhere that in America in the 1930s doctors deliberately withheld treatment from black men who had syphilis so they could study their symptoms. Well, that’s disgusting, I think, and goes over a line which shouldn't be crossed.' Professor Hafabee: 'Yeah, you’re talking about the case in Tuskegee, Alabama, and you’re quite right. It’s become notorious as an example of racism and ethical considerations being ignored. In fact that case only came to light in 1972 and it was immediately followed by the setting up of a National Commission on Medical Ethics by the US Congress in 1973. But let me just be clear – are you saying that under no circumstances should harm ever come to a research subject?' Sally: 'No, not under any circumstances, because wouldn’t that involve researchers having a crystal ball and being able to predict the future? If I could do that I wouldn’t bother with research, I’d predict Saturday night’s lottery numbers.' [laughs] Professor Hafabee: 'Absolutely.' [laughs] Sally: 'No, no, my view is that we should not knowingly do anything to cause harm to others. Professor Hafabee: 'OK, I think at this point we‘ve agreed that research ethics are more difficult than they may at first sight appear. At the practical level that's certainly the case, and as you start to collect your data you’ll perhaps need to revisit some of the issues we've been discussing.'

As this clip shows, we were keen to air the discussion, whilst at the same time including factual information. We wanted to provide students with a sense of where the debate lies. We chose to do this by introducing three epistemological positions: the deontology of Kant, Mill’s utilitarian consequentialism and Spinoza’s emergent ethics. The important point here, as far as we were concerned, was that it is likely that most social researchers would lean towards one camp but still be influenced by the others. This was a deliberate move away from the more traditional approach to ethics as a dichotomous relationship between bipolar opposites.

We also set out to show that codes of ethics which are heavily influenced by the deontological tradition are themselves also designed to protect universities as much as, if not more than, researchers. The increasing codification of research ethics has been described as a ‘straightjacket’ by at least one senior academic (see Times Higher Education Supplement, ‘Ethics guards are ‘stifling’ creativity’, 25 August 2006).

In this next clip Sally has been persuaded away from the idea of a questionnaire. She meets a group called SPAT and decides that she will do covert research on them. However, in doing so, she simply takes an opportunity that presents itself, regardless of the obligation upon her to abide by university rules. In this clip we can see that Sally regards these rules as something of a nuisance, a position which many would-be researchers will no doubt identify with.

Transcript 2

Professor Hafabee: 'Look Sally, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way. I am pleased that you’ve shown this initiative, but I think I can see one small problem with what has happened I’m afraid.' Sally: 'Oh?' Professor Hafabee: 'You really should not be in the field, so to speak, without having got ethical approval. You have rather dived in, haven’t you? I think it would be best if you just, well, just pulled back a little. Of course, it will need to go to the university ethics committee.' Sally: 'Will it? I had no idea; it’s not like I’m doing proper research – all I’ve done is join a group, see how it goes.' Professor Hafabee: 'Well, hold on Sally, you can’t have it both ways. You’ve just shown me your field notes and identified your key informant. Well, that rather sounds like proper research to me. I’m afraid you will have to submit this to the ethics committee.' Sally: [Resigned] 'Oh, no … how long will that take?' Professor Hafabee: 'Oh, they meet every month. Actually, I’m on it and we have a meeting this afternoon, so the next one would be in a month’s time.' Sally: 'I can’t possibly wait that long.' Professor Hafabee: 'Well, you’ll have to Sally. The procedures are there to protect everybody. The best option for you is to write your proposal, including the ethical issues, and why you feel you should do what I assume is going to be covert research, then wait for the committee to decide. Are you absolutely committed to doing field research?' Sally: 'Yeah, I think I am. To be honest, I never thought it would be this exciting.'

We also wanted to make the point that ethics applies equally to every area of social research, not just field research. In the tutorial we wanted to make the point that the selection of a particular methodology is more than just a technical issue about how best to obtain the data you want. The choice of method is, at least in part, an epistemological question, and that is also an ethical choice. For example, epistemologically one may believe that only data collected in the field is valid data, but this then raises issues of deception, honesty and the researcher’s place in the research process. All of these issues need to be dealt with and this was a point we were keen to make. Having made the point that all research methods have to deal with ethics, we then chose to place Sally in a field setting for maximum dramatic effect. This was as much a dramatic as a pedagogic decision. Despite our desire to explain that all methods have an ethical dimension, we took the soft option in going for a field setting where ethics is clearly problematic. In retrospect, we can now see that we could have retained the drama and used other methods as pegs to hang it on.

Finally, we wanted to ensure that students were aware that research is an essentially political as well as a moral act. How we treat others in the research process is important, but understanding the political nature of social research is perhaps even more so. By introducing this theme into the tutorial, we found ourselves dealing with issues such as university funding which remain potentially divisive and troublesome.

What was in the drama: the storyThere is a tension between the ‘drama’, which keeps the listener interested, and the ‘teaching’, which is actually the point of the whole thing. As we developed the script, we began to have a clearer idea about the characters and the ‘story’. Not everybody will agree that a story is an appropriate means of presenting material to students in higher education. This accusation was levelled at me at one seminar when an academic said that I was ‘dumbing down’ higher education by turning ethics into a soap opera. But stories can and do play an important role in our lives. As Ulich (1998: 33) has commented: ‘Creating and interpreting stories is an activity that involves a conscious process of encoding and decoding, stimulating the “construction of meaning” in both storyteller and audience.’ With our story we wanted students to be able to recognise the situatedness of Sally and to empathise with her character, but we also wanted students to reflect on (to decode) the meanings of her actions. In a sense, students were invited to empathise with Sally as a student but learn from the mistakes that she would make. But, equally, we wanted the story to be a story in its own right. We sought to create a piece of entertainment, albeit one grounded in a set of learning objectives. This meant that the dialogue had to seem ‘real’. We worried constantly and perhaps obsessively about the realism of the characters, their dialogues and the situations we were inventing.

Despite our intention to create a drama worthy of the name, we never lost sight of why we were doing this. Being aware of what we wanted to teach was the first step in designing the tutorial. It is worth stressing this point, for although the decision to place Sally in the field was taken partly for dramatic reasons, even if we had not done so, we would have required a discussion about the role of ethics in field research.

Sally Jenkins (played by professional actor Harriet Carmichael) is a second-year PhD student in her mid-20s. She is passionate about her research and about the issues she cares about, but also displays a certain naivety which is useful in constructing a drama. Initially, the drama was to be played out as a set of conversations with her supervisor Professor Eric Hafabee (played by former Open University academic turned actor, Mike Bullivant). The early thoughts on the drama were that we would explore with Sally, through a series of conversations, the ethical dimension of social research. It was always intended that Sally would sink deeper and deeper into a quagmire of ethical decision making, although when we started writing the drama we had no real idea about how it would end or what would happen as it developed. We started with a list of learning objectives rather than a set of dramatic turns. This is important for, unlike the use of commercial films, we were not seeking teaching points in drama but rather constructing drama to illustrate teaching points. The open-endedness is evident in an early clip where Sally seeks advice from Eric. In this clip she is deferential and unsure of her own views.

Transcript 3

Sally: 'Well, I think I could just do with some advice on where ethics fits in with my research. I’m worried that I may end up just using people for my own ends. I don’t particularly want to do anything unethical.' Professor Hafabee: 'Of course you don’t, and as far as I can see there is no danger of that at this stage. I think the best approach in these instances is to move away from the particular to the more general. Let’s explore the ethics of research a little, shall we? Tell me, what would you regard as the main issue for researchers when it comes to ethics?' Sally: 'Um, well, well, in the lectures it seems we have a duty to make sure that no one is harmed by our research.' Professor Hafabee: 'Ok. So you’re arguing for what we might term, in more technical language, a principle of harm avoidance in your research?'

In this conversation Sally is presented as a keen student with a willingness to learn. She is, like many students, not entirely clear where her research is taking her. She has an interest in the animal rights movement and a suspicion that some sections of that movement may have links to extreme right groups. The point for Sally is how to investigate this problem. For Eric, as interested as he is in Sally’s research question, he is also keen to explore with her the more technical side of doing research.Initially, Sally intends to give a questionnaire to members of a group of animal rights activists that we called SPAT (Society for the Prevention of Animal Torture). The names were chosen deliberately to be fictional. Web searches were carried out to ensure that we were not accidentally using a real organisation. We had no desire to get sued! Sally’s desire to use a questionnaire allows for a discussion of access and whether the data is likely to be reliable. Eventually ruling out either questionnaires or interviews, Sally decides that she should go into the field and conduct covert observation research. She easily joins SPAT and investigates its links to the more extreme CAT (Citizens Against Torture). But before embarking on her field research, Sally and Eric discuss the questionnaire as a possible means. In the next clip Eric – ironically, given what happens later – leads Sally away from her initial enthusiasm for the questionnaire and toward a more qualitative approach.

Transcript 4

Sally: 'I thought if I contacted a couple of the groups engaged in direct action that I could ask them to distribute the questionnaires to their members. I was going to put in a stamped addressed envelope, but have no way of identifying the group members, so they’d be totally anonymous. What do you think?' Professor Hafabee: 'Well, anonymity in this particular instance would certainly help. But I’m a little doubtful that the groups would want to distribute a questionnaire which could prove embarrassing for them later. You are intending to tell them what you are interested in?' Sally: 'I wasn’t sure about that, but, even if I didn’t, it would be obvious from the questions, wouldn’t it? Do you think they’d co-operate?' Professor Hafabee: 'I think it’s highly unlikely. And even if they do, how do you know that your sample is in any way representative? They could well filter the sample by only giving them to people whose histories they know to be spotless. But even if they were to distribute them to all their members, this is highly sensitive information. How can you guarantee that they’ll tell the truth?' Sally: 'Yeah, I can see that there are going to be real problems with this. So do you think I should go back to the drawing board?' Professor Hafabee: 'No, I didn’t say that. What I’m saying is that I’m by no means convinced that, given your research question, a questionnaire is the most viable method. Even if – and it is a big if – you manage to get them filled in, it's unlikely that they’ll reveal the information that you’re looking for. I think that if you're interested in these questions of political affiliations of animal rights activists you need to approach the question slightly, well, slightly differently.' Sally: 'What do you suggest?' Professor Hafabee: 'Well, of course Sally, this is your research so ultimately it's your decision. Have you ruled out the possibility of some interviews with members of the groups? I’ve always thought that if you want to know something, the best way is simply to ask. It might be possible to explore these links using a small sample of key informants and conducting in-depth interviews with them.' Sally: 'Yeah, but wouldn’t the same issue apply as with the questionnaires? Wouldn’t they only tell me what they want to hear?'

The decision to infiltrate SPAT brings Sally into conflict with both her supervisor and the university. Initially, Sally has gone into the field without telling her supervisor that she intends to do so, and without gaining ethical permission from the university’s ethics committee. Sally’s impetuousness is shown by her reluctance to wait for permission, and seizing an opportunity she begins to attend SPAT meetings. A little implausibly Sally gets ethical permission to continue her research. Anne Grinyer (Lancaster University), our critical friend, pointed this out to us, but also noted that it was clearly a necessary dramatic device. Anne has written fairly extensively on research ethics (Grinyer, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2007) and so we felt was a good person to have on board. In the event, her suggestions for change were relatively minor, but nonetheless incisive. In addition, in response to my constant concern about the authenticity of the drama, she wrote: ‘The dialogue rings true; so as far as authenticity is concerned I am impressed’ (personal email). When discussing the use of commercial films in teaching, we noted the importance of plausibility; but we took the view that, while it was unlikely that Sally’s research would be given ethical approval, it was not impossible.

Once inside the group, Sally becomes friends with the leaders Alice and Spud and is desperate to verify her hypothesis that some SPAT members are members of right-wing groups. She is convinced that one member, Steven, is right wing and uses remarks of his to suggest that there is evidence of links to other more extreme groups. The evidence is highly circumstantial, but already we can see that for Sally the PhD is not to be merely a piece of research but something that packs a punch. As the research develops, Eric becomes concerned about Sally’s lack of objectivity. From his perspective she begins to lose her focus on the group and rather becomes an advocate for their beliefs. Indeed, she begins to target her anger on a local cosmetics company – Fragrencia – who the group believe is conducting animal testing.

The link to Fragrencia begins a sequence of events which result in Sally landing in jail. Fragrencia plays an important role as the story develops for it turns out that not only does the company conduct experiments on animals, it is also a funder of the university, and, in particular, of a chair in Sally and Eric’s department. Told by Eric not to attend a demonstration by SPAT on college property, Sally finds it hard to avoid attending without losing her ‘cover’. It is this demonstration that leads to a dramatic confrontation, part of which occurs in this clip.

Transcript 5

Professor Hafabee: 'Oh, and what are you getting into now?' Sally: 'Well, you know I just said they’ve been targeting Fragrencia?' Professor Hafabee: 'Yes, I have some information about Fragrencia, actually, and I am not sure you’ll be glad to hear but carry on …' Sally: 'OK, well, apparently Fragrencia are going to be one of the organisations involved in a big meeting which is happening in Kentonville. The idea is obviously that they want to show what an ethical company they are and how socially responsible. The usual stuff really.' Professor Hafabee: 'Mmm …' Sally: 'Well, at our meeting on Tuesday night, we decided to demonstrate outside the meeting. Spud said they wanted as many people to go as possible to really make an impact, and Alice got really into the idea and asked me straight out if I was gonna go.' Professor Hafabee: 'Right, Sally. I see, well … so this is a demonstration against Fragrencia?' Sally: 'Well, not just them, there are other companies involved, but Fragrencia’s the main one.' Professor Hafabee: 'And where is this demonstration?' Sally: 'Well, that’s the funny bit really. It’s here. Apparently they’re having their meeting in the new conference centre.' Professor Hafabee: 'Sally, you cannot possibly be serious. You simply cannot be involved in a demonstration on university premises.' Sally: 'Why not? I thought the university supported free speech!' Professor Hafabee: [Distractedly] 'Yes, of course it does. Erm, this is going to be peaceful, isn’t it? Oh my goodness, it would have to be Fragrencia. And it would have to be here.'

Eric eventually convinces Sally that she should not go until he has had chance to speak to his head of department. However, Sally finds herself in a bind when members of the group turn up at her flat, so she attends with them. At the demonstration, a group of activists, including Sally, manage to breach the security and get inside the meeting. Once inside they simply make a lot of noise, but when the police arrive all escape with the exception of poor Sally who is taken to the local cells for the night. This turn of events means that Sally is loathe to continue her research and decides that a change of focus is required. Abandoning SPAT, Sally decides that she should investigate the links between Fragrencia and university funding. Eric himself comes under intense pressure from his head of department, Verity Strange, to prevent Sally from embarrassing the department by exposing its links with Fragrencia.In this clip, following her night in the cells, Sally has realigned her research. Unable to find a link to right-wing organisations within SPAT, she decides to concentrate on the relationship between Fragrencia and the university. Although this would be an unlikely move in the circumstances, it allowed for an exploration of the role of funders in research. For obvious reasons the increasing commercialisation of university research is not an issue that gains much coverage in academic journals. But this section allowed us to raise funding as an ethical issue while at the same time returning to the role of codes of ethics.

Transcript 6

Sally: 'As I said, I’m sorry, but that doesn’t change the fact that I simply don’t agree. I realise that my conclusions about SPAT were tenuous, and that I should never have gone against your advice and gone to the demo, but that really isn’t the issue now.' Professor Hafabee: 'No – you are right. The issue is not your past behaviour but your obligation to future researchers. The ethical guidelines, which you seem anxious to ignore, are very clear about the duty of a researcher to leave the field in a way in which others could return. If you were to upset Fragrencia, it could irrevocably damage relations with a very important funder.' Sally: 'I have read the guidelines, but when I studied these guidelines in research methods, it seemed to me that the obligation was to ensure good future relations with subjects, not with funders – who, I may add, aren’t even my direct funders!' Professor Hafabee: 'Well, let’s look them up shall we? I mean, where’s that file?' Sally: 'Oh, no – you lent it to me, remember? I think I've got it with me. Here you are.' Professor Hafabee: 'Right, there’s a relevant section in the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and the Commonwealth guidelines, I think. Er – yeah, here it is. It's on page 7: ‘Anthropologists bear responsibility for the good reputation of the discipline and its practitioners. In considering their methods, procedures, content and reporting of their enquiries, behaviour in the field and relations with research participants and field assistants they should therefore try to ensure that their activities will not jeopardise future research.’ Sally: 'Yeah, but it doesn't say, ‘Do not report the dodgy dealings of unethical companies with universities’, does it? In fact, let me have that file … Er, yeah, er, here you are, the PSA guidelines specify that ‘members have the responsibility not to engage in actions that impede the reasonable professional activities of colleagues’. Aren’t you and Professor Strange impeding my reasonable professional activities if you prevent me from doing research just because it might be embarrassing for one of the university funders?'

What we can also see in this clip is a process which will be familiar to many supervisors. The student has transformed from a state of awe with regard to their supervisor to a state where they feel perfectly able to confront them as an equal. In a sense this is a process all students go through, from being learner to teacher, which can be a confusing transformation for the student and an unsettling one for the supervisor. Normally, of course, such a transition would be welcome, but in this case it is hard not to feel some sympathy for Eric as his student hurtles out of his control at breakneck speed. As he says in one sequence, ‘Yes, I’ve had easier students to supervise.’The drama reaches its conclusion as Sally receives information from an unidentified source. The material contains evidence that not only has Fragrencia paid to prevent research which might embarrass it, but that one of the recipients is actually Eric’s head of department, Verity Strange. Eric, at first entirely hostile to the use of what may well be stolen documents, becomes very interested when he realises who is named. Despite this, he tells Sally that this evidence cannot form part of her research and that she must remove all references to Fragrencia.

Transcript 7

Professor Hafabee: 'Uh, let’s see: ‘I read about your arrest. Here is some information that you might find useful. A friend’ – well, I just can’t believe this!!' Sally: 'I know! Isn’t it strange! And the photocopied papers …' Professor Hafabee: 'No, no, hang on a second Sally. These papers, you don’t know where they’re from – they're obviously stolen, possibly by a member of SPAT or CAT or whoever they are!' Sally: 'No, you don’t know that Eric – it could be a whistle-blower from inside the organisation – I think that's a perfectly legitimate basis for research.' Professor Hafabee: 'But are you sure these papers are genuine? You have to be very careful using stolen papers, you know.' Sally: 'Well, maybe, but well, hang on a second, I found out that …' Professor Hafabee: 'No, no Sally. I really don’t think that you …' Sally: [Having to speak over him, loudly] 'Eric, just take a look …' Professor Hafabee: 'Sally, this is not amusing! And I do not want to see those documents, those stolen documents. Sally: 'We don’t know they are stolen, but they do seem to prove that Verity Strange has taken a huge amount of research money from Fragrencia – but has actually produced very little research.' Professor Hafabee: 'What? Hold on – give me those here'. [Rustles through the papers] 'Good grief! Well, I never!'

Concluding reflections

Whilst the evidence contained in this paper would not convince those who require statistical validity, it does support a more general claim that we would make. The use of a scripted drama is a viable and productive use of a multimedia learning environment. Drama is an effective way of delivering learning objectives in a way that is both entertaining and informative. The drama has to have a certain level of plausibility, but students are, on the whole, prepared to go along with the dramatic elements in order to access the learning on offer. Students are not naïve; they did not believe that we had secretly bugged the University of Kentonville. They understood fully that what they were listening to was a drama. The production values and the performance of the two main actors were such that it was not ‘cringe-inducing’. Indeed, we would argue, it makes reasonable listening regardless of the teaching points made.

However, having said that, we were aware throughout that we were in the business of teaching not drama production, so the drama elements always had to have a teaching point. This is rather different from educators who have used commercial film to make teaching points. Here, the relationship between the film and the student is rather different. The film has been produced entirely independently of the classroom situation where it is being experienced. In this sense, the artificiality of the film is more apparent to the student and therefore perhaps more problematic. It is also the case that when using commercial films what will be seen by the student are the salient parts as decided by the teacher. This is rather different from the process of constructing a drama from scratch where the entire production is salient.

Drama has some, though not all, of the advantages of role play in that students are able to enter the lives of others from the position of observer, without intruding upon those lives. Indeed, the lives of Eric and Sally were constructed to be observed. In this they have something in common with other fictional characters. Nevertheless, dramatic events can be brought to life without anybody being hurt, or embarrassed. Students are able to identify with the characters but at the same time are prompted to analyse those characters’ actions and motivations without fear that the feelings of the characters will be unsettled. More important, the situations in which the characters find themselves are similar to those that may be faced by the students. The difficulties encountered by Sally may seem, to some students, unlikely to happen to them. But in thinking about the situations, students can learn that ‘some aspects of behaviour, such as the development of good human relations, require specific skills’ (Van Ments, 1983: 26). In this case, students will hopefully learn that ethics are more than just a set of technical requirements but are, in the words of one student, ‘a minefield’.

If drama has rich potential in its ability to facilitate learning, the multimedia aspect of Doing Political Research provided the context for which this learning was to take place. A role play in a classroom or a discussion of a film is an event that might enliven a specific learning occasion. A DVD of resources has the added advantage of containing a number of elements of ‘active learning’. Students do not just listen to the drama and then offer their opinions as to what has happened. The tutorial also contains a number of devices aimed at engaging the student, so that key points are reinforced and learning is achieved through active engagement with a range of materials including but not consisting only of the drama itself.A final thought. The drama is only as good as the writing and production. The resources available to us during the PARLE project enabled the use of a professional production team and professional actors. They were able to bring the material to life. The scriptwriting was a departure from normal academic practice. We feel we did a good job, although of course that is not our evaluation to make. Nevertheless, cost would be a factor in the use of scripted drama in the classroom setting, and the ability to write the script and keep it plausible whilst entertaining could be difficult for those with no particular interest or skill in that department. I have had the opportunity to develop other scripted dramas and the requirements of the drama are often in tension with the requirements of the teaching. For this reason, my view is that when using drama it is always necessary to be clear that the drama must be secondary to the learning objectives.

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Engaging students beyond the classroom: the experience of a podcasting project

Jason Ralph, Naomi Head, and Simon Lightfoot
University of Leeds
s.j.lightfoot@leeds.ac.uk

The authors

Dr Jason Ralph is senior lecturer in international relations and director of research at the School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds. His most recent publication is Defending the Society of States. Why America opposes the International Criminal Court and its Vision of World Society (OUP, 2007).

Dr Naomi Head is lecturer in international studies in the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds. Her main research interests are critical international theory, conflict resolution and dialogue.

Dr Simon Lightfoot is senior lecturer in European politics and chair of the e-learning working group in the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds. In 2008/9 he was awarded the Bernard Crick Award for Outstanding Teaching (main prize) by the Political Studies Association and a developmental teaching fellowship from the University of Leeds. He is the author of Europeanising Social Democracy: The Rise of the Party of European Socialists? (Routledge 2005).

Abstract

This paper explores one attempt to integrate podcasts into the teaching of US foreign policy. It highlights how this initiative provided new and stimulating opportunities for learning but also presented a number of challenges. Three main elements run through the paper. First, we outline the pilot project, its pedagogic background and what we did. Examples of a social bookmarking site, student podcasts and lecturer podcasts can be accessed via a blog. The second element, utilising student surveys and student focus groups, describes the positive and negative experiences of the students who took part. The third element discusses the practical problems encountered in putting the pilot into practice and how these were overcome.

Keywords

podcasting, pedagogic research, politics and international relations

Introduction

This research project explored the use of podcasts in the learning and teaching of politics and international relations (PIR) in a UK higher education institution (HEI). Podcasts are said to appeal to the ‘iPod generation’ or ‘digital natives’ and offer a means of stimulating new interest in material that might otherwise fail to capture the student imagination (see Lane, 2006; Lee et al., 2008; Swain, 2006). The primary research question posed by the project was as follows: Within a strategy of blended learning on campus, what added-value can the consumption and production of podcasts bring to the learning process within PIR?

During the period of the grant, a research assistant was employed, whose role was to help survey student opinion, collect relevant podcasts for the students to ‘consume’ and help students produce their own podcasts. The project team assisted students and teachers in the consumption of podcasts by creating a website and a ‘listening list’ of relevant material. We surveyed student attitudes on the use of podcasts in higher education, and we worked with staff and students to produce podcasts. This paper identifies the key findings of the project, demonstrates podcasts produced by both staff and students, and provides an overview of some of the practical and technical issues associated with the use of podcasts in teaching and learning in higher education.

Activities

This project was based at the University of Leeds, UK. The initial proposal was to engage PIR students and tutors at two UK universities. However, the comparative element of the programme was subsequently dropped due to problems at the second university, an issue that will be explored later. One module, PIED3402 American foreign policy, at the University of Leeds, was chosen to act as a pilot. We chose this module in part because the use of podcasting as a medium for the conduct of politics is particularly pronounced in the US (Windham, 2007). Podcasts can also help students and teachers overcome one of the challenges associated with studying politics and international relations; that of currency. As a discipline we are forced to confront the problem that our subject changes more quickly than many other subjects. The recent change of administration in the US provides an excellent example. Barack Obama has now been President for over 70 days and in that time has made some radical changes to the direction of US foreign policy. The nature of academic publishing means that these changes are not yet being analysed in books or journal articles. This gap can partially be filled by podcasts produced by US think-tanks, academics and politicians themselves. A wide range of material is also produced that students and teachers alike can utilise. A brief look at the range of material on the iTunes U site shows that, as a discipline, we have an amazing amount of material to tap into. Despite this, the use of podcasts in undergraduate modules is a relatively new phenomenon, especially in the field of international relations (see Roberts, 2008, as a notable, but US-based, exception)¹. Dr Ralph had been using podcasts from major American universities, think-tanks and other research institutes to inform his research for a number of years. It was his attempt to link this method of research to his teaching that inspired the project.

We set out to ensure that the use of technological innovations enhanced rather than replaced good standard practice. To achieve this, we carefully considered the use of podcasts in light of the pedagogic research, student focus groups and, perhaps most important, the overall module aims and objectives². The module is structured around the key ideas that shape the American national identity (for example, exceptionalism, republicanism, liberalism) and its foreign policy (for example, internationalism, isolationism, realism, neoconservatism). Many of the podcasts discussed above cover these topics and give UK-based students an excellent insight into the debates these types of topics stimulate in the US. Actually, hearing the debates rather than, say, reading them online can really show the controversies these issues raise for students who may not be familiar with the political context.

Initial plan

The initial plan was to create a web-based library of audio material that had been podcasted. The difficulty with this was that copyright laws prevented us from uploading material that had already been downloaded from another source. Our solution was to use a social bookmarking site, grazr³. Social bookmarking allows those interested in a particular topic to create a link to a relevant site that like-minded individuals can follow. Our pod library, in other words, is a collection of links to websites that host podcasts rather than a collection of files that have been downloaded and then uploaded again. In addition, a social bookmarking site potentially allows us to create a ‘community of practice’ whereby we can share information with other users, including other users posting relevant files. Unfortunately, we had a particular problem with grazr and we did not find it to be user friendly. It was not clear how users could upload information without going through the project team, which defeated the object of this part of the project. Unless this issue can be resolved, we would recommend using other social bookmarking sites.

Nevertheless, the links to podcasts were integrated into the module by embedding the links within reading lists and lecture slides and also via a blog. Evidence of student uptake of this resource was available in student essays, particularly on the subject of the ‘Israel lobby’ and US foreign policy – a debate that has in part been conducted through audio programmes that have been podcasted⁴. One student noted that ‘the blog had a lot of useful material in it, much of which I ended up using for my dissertation and essays’. Further research needs to be carried out on what impact, if any, using podcasts has on student performance, as neither this study nor previous studies can provide conclusive evidence either way as to their effect, although students often attribute good performance to podcasts (see Deal, 2007).

One pedagogic benefit of podcasts is that it encourages students to critically assess digital media in the same way as students are encouraged to assess printed material. It reaffirms what the student has heard from the lecturer and read in the literature, but it does so through a different medium, thereby enhancing the teaching and learning experience for the student.

The project also aimed to assist students to produce their own podcasts. We were interested in examining the pedagogical benefits for the students of producing their own podcasts. Did it assist them to achieve the module aims and objectives? Did it contribute to the knowledge of the subject area? To discover student attitudes to our plan, we conducted a survey of all POLIS students studying politics and international relations. It was managed via the Bristol online survey tool using questions already asked of medical students and professionals (see Sandars and Schroter, 2007). An incentive was offered to take part in the survey, with one student winning £50 worth of Amazon vouchers. The overall response rate was approximately 17 per cent (87/500), which we feel is relatively good for an online survey. There is, of course, the suspicion that the 17 per cent are the ‘digital natives’ who engage with technology (Prensky, 2001), although obtaining high response rates in student surveys is hard – just look at some NSS response rates!

Our survey concurred with existing studies (Gribbins, 2007; Lane, 2006; Sandars and Schroter, 2007) which showed that, despite having MP3 players or phones, the majority of students listened to podcasts on their personal computers. Our survey findings also showed that the overwhelming majority of students rejected the idea that pre-recorded lectures should be used in place of the traditional lecture that requires attendance (for similar findings, see Edirisingha and Salmon, 2007; Clark et al., 2007; Draper and Maguire, 2007). As Table 1 shows, there is a clear indication that students would prefer to use downloadable audio files as a way of reinforcing, reviewing or revising what had been discussed in lectures. Only one respondent said that they would not use the downloadable material.

Table 1:

As a result of this survey, we abandoned plans to replace a lecture with a podcast, although we did upload one full-length lecture. Students were more receptive to what became known as ‘podules’. These are small files (with technical advantages, outlined below) of 5 to 10 minutes listening duration, produced by the lecturer to summarise the key points of the lecture, highlight a particular issue or act as a guide to further reading or listening. Our use follows the models trialled by the IMPALA project (Edirisingha and Salmon, 2007) and the University of Sydney (see Clark et al., 2007). The podules were set up for an RSS feed. It is this RSS feed – essentially a URL that can be inserted into an aggregator (for example, iTunes) enabling subscribers to receive automatic downloads – that is seen to be what makes a podcast a podcast.

The podules acted as a means for the lecturer to do several things, such as relate the lecture to the reading material, relate the student podcast, which summarised the classroom discussion, back to the lecture and link it to the forthcoming lecture. The idea here was to try to enhance the sense of continuity across the module and, where necessary, correct the students on points of fact. This was an important function as a decision was taken not to edit the student-produced podcasts for accuracy. The aim was that their podcasts were their work, warts and all. However, one student told us that they ‘brought more to the table in terms of their research and insight because they were aware that their peers would be using the material for revision in the run up to exams’.

The next aspect of the project involved the project team asking groups of students to produce their own podcast summaries of the seminar discussion. They would decide how they wished their podcasts to be constructed in order to present the material in the best way (some chose interviews, others three-way discussions). The session was recorded by the project research assistant, using software called Audacity, and was then given an RSS feed. This method of producing the podcasts was created mainly because of the difficulty students would have had using Audacity on their machines. We felt that, had the technology been readily available, it would have been easy for the students to use the package independently⁵. Alternatively, digital recorders could be used to record the discussions. To a large extent, it is not the ability to use the technology that is a concern; it is getting easy student access to the technology on campus that is the main problem.

The resulting podcast was placed on a module blog only accessible to students registered on the module. These student-produced podcasts demonstrated excellent group-working skills, initiative, self-organisation and time-management.

Here we provide examples of two staff podules and two student recordings to demonstrate the above points in action. To provide some background, podule 1 is the response by Dr Ralph to the student podcasts on US constitutional and foreign policy examined in week 2. In particular, it examines the role of Congress and the courts. Alex, Faye, Jamie and Jeremy summarised the discussions that took place in their respective seminar groups (and included some singing!). The students were asked to examine the following questions in their respective seminar groups:

• Why were the founding fathers so keen on the ‘separation of powers doctrine’? How does the constitution separate foreign policy powers?
• What structural problems prevent Congress from taking the lead in foreign affairs?
• How has the ‘Israel lobby’ ‘managed to divert US foreign policy … from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest’ (Mearsheimer and Walt, 2006a: 1)?’

 Student Podcast 1:

Student Podcast 2:

The two student-produced podcasts above show the level of engagement and intellectual insight the students brought to the task. These podules illustrate not only their revision function but also how they allow the tutor to expand upon debates raised in the lecture and to link this module to previous modules. If you look at the blog, you can see Dr Ralph’s responses to students’ comments in their podcasts, developing some of them and guiding students to further reading.

Tutor Podcast 1

The same format was used in week 4, when the module covered the views of the realists, who examine the role of America as ‘a normal state’. The seminar questions were as follows:

• We have come across Hamilton before as ‘Pacificus’. In week 2, we find him arguing, in relation to the Constitution, that the President should be allowed to take the lead in foreign policy. This is a key realist principle. Further on in his writings as Pacificus, he gives advice on how the President should act in relation to other states (in this case, France). What are the realist principles on display here?
• What does Walter Russell Mead mean by ‘continental’ realism? How does it differ from what he calls ‘Hamiltonian’ or ‘American’ realism?

One group was asked to summarise the ideas of one of the following realists: George Kennan, Hans Morgenthau. Henry Kissinger.

Student Podcast 3:

Student Podcast 4:

Tutor Podcast 2:

The student podcasts here provide excellent examples of how the podcasts enabled students to engage with question 1, in particular, in a novel way. Being able to listen again to the student debates and the lecturer’s podule from week 2 would not have been possible without the podcast, and their existence brings clear value added here. Whilst all the student podcasts are available on the blog, we chose examples from weeks 2 and 4 precisely because, to our mind, they illustrate nicely how podcasts can help students re-visit material throughout the module.

What these student podcasts also show is the how the same format was used in different ways by the four students. If you listen to both podcasts you can appreciate the advantage of using verbal summaries as a teaching and learning tool. They also highlight how, in seminars, the students pick up on different aspects of the question. As one student noted, ‘Whilst their primary reading was the same as our own, the secondary readings and discussions often differed from our own, and thus offered additional insight into the topics.’ Other formats were also utilised throughout the module, including a question and answer format.

Asking students to summarise seminars can be seen as students participating in their own learning or active learning (see Powner and Allendoerfer, 2008). Indeed, Lee et al. (2008) argue that the true potential of podcasting technology lies in its knowledge-creation value, and its use as a vehicle for disseminating learner-generated content (p. 504). On a more practical level, it allows students to gain an insight into the seminar discussions in other groups.

To corroborate our findings and impressions, we undertook focus groups of final-year students⁶. The main point that came out of these groups was that having the podules was useful. One student stated: ‘Listening to the podcasts was useful as a kind of consolidation of some of the more complex issues which arose in the module.’ Another argued that directing students to a ‘wide variety of sources [is] helping us to deepen our understanding of the discourses surrounding American foreign policy’.

Of particular interest are the student-produced podcasts as they provide an innovative and interesting way for students to demonstrate achievement of the module aims, especially in developing a reasoned argument, synthesising relevant information, exercising critical judgment, and communicating effectively and fluently⁷. According to one student, the podcasts ‘made learning the subject more of a proactive and engaging process, rather than simply absorbing designated information for analysis, by forcing us to discuss and decide what was worth focusing on, what wasn't and what else we could find that had been overlooked etc’. Another argued that the process ‘not only deepened my understanding of American foreign policy but bolstered my ability to articulate the arguments involved’. It could be argued that these comments could have as easily been about presentations or reporting back to a seminar group. However, there was something about producing a podcast which would be listened to by both staff and students (and that could be listened to again) that focused the minds of the students who produced the podcasts. This is one of the main advantages of using podcasts: the process of recording student presentations for consumption changes attitudes to the process.

In relation to attendance, there were some interesting comments. Students like going to lectures and therefore do not want them to be replaced by podcasts. ‘The University of Leeds is not a virtual university’, as one said. Another said: ‘I quite like going to lectures. I like listening to people. I like going to seminars as well. I like talking to people and interacting with people. Actually, I like getting a broad range of resources. It makes it more interesting if you’ve got a range of stuff to go to.’ One anecdote from a conference was that it was like going to the cinema versus watching a DVD at home. You see the same film but sometimes the collective cinema experience adds a new dimension (Kiernan, 2008).

One of the perceived advantages of podcasts is that they appeal to students with different learning styles; they also overcome the issue associated with traditional lectures – you only get one chance to hear it (Campbell, 2005; Knight, 2006). If you learn better through listening than through reading, this creates problems. For many people, a text can be re-read until it is understood. Auditory learners learn best through hearing the information again, and yet in a lecture or seminar environment this option is not open to them. Podcasting lectures or seminars give students a choice about where and when to access digital material and how many times they wish to repeat it: ‘I think it [a podcast] would be good because sometimes if the lecture goes too fast you can’t actually take down the main point, so if you can pause it and play it whenever you want to then you can kind of note down the points at your own pace’; ‘I found week 8 so helpful for recapping and filling in which bits I missed in the lecture’. It also appeared to stimulate discussion outside the classroom, with one student stating: ‘We also found that because of the ease of access to the audio files on the blog many more students had been through a large percent of the material which led to discussions in the bar and outside of classes.’

Podcasting lectures or seminars gives students a choice about where and when to access digital material and how many times they wish to repeat it. Student opinion can be summarised by these statements: ‘I think I would listen to it, for example, on the way into uni or into town ... so I can kill two birds with one stone’; and ‘There is plenty of time to kill on the bus ... time’s not an excuse not to listen particularly to a 5-minute summary’ (Campbell (2005) also notes this advantage of podcasts). One student found that producing podcasts helped them consider how the spoken word can differ from written text in putting across meaning appropriately for academia.

The seminars on this module encourage students to examine the issues surrounding US foreign policy. However, students only get to hear the views of students in their own seminar group. Asking students to summarise seminars can be seen as them participating in their own learning or active learning. Indeed, the literature suggests that the true potential of podcasting technology lies in its knowledge-creation value and in its use as a vehicle for disseminating learner-generated content. As one student noted, podcasts allow for ‘a deepening and widening of debate and discussion beyond confines of seminar’. Another noted that the student podcast would be ‘something different, to see what other opinions are in other seminar groups’.

Students expressed a preference for a podcast using an RSS feed. They thought this would make it easier and therefore more likely that they would use the additional material: ‘It would be easier if it came to you on iTunes rather than having to seek it out every week’; ‘It’s nice to have it delivered to you, to use when you want’. It was interesting that most students listened to podcasts on computers. One said: ‘I set up an RSS feed, and then listened on my laptop. I don’t own an MP3 player, and I think it is important to remember that not all students do, though I appreciate the majority probably do!’ Another interesting issue arose with some students stating that they did not want their private and university lives to mix. Their MP3 players were there for fun and entertainment, not for politics and international relations podcasts!

Students thought that podcasts could be made part of a structured learning process. Some asked for podules to be available prior to the lecture: ‘It’s the habit you could get into, just listening to the summary before you walk into the seminar or walking on your way to the lecture. If you listen to the summary first you know what he is going to talk about and then you could maybe take it in a bit better.’

Technical difficulties

The project was affected by a number of technical problems. Whilst the creation of the pod library was a success, it did not, as noted above, work quite in the way we intended. In part, this was due to technological problems that limited uploading rights to the member of the project team that had created the site, which meant that the social networking site did not function as ‘the community of practice’ as we intended. The other issue was how to handle large audio files. We created a blog to try to overcome space issues. The file sizes in MP3 format, even for the short time span of the podule, were too large to be handled by the university’s portal (which had an upload limit of 1 MB!). We also ‘tagged’ these files so that they would be picked up by the student’s aggregator (for instance, iTunes) and automatically downloaded for them when they subscribed to the module blog using the RSS feed. This meant that we could combine the storage elements of the blog with the interactivity a blog provides. This was created successfully, but the fact that students had to go to a separate site for PowerPoint slides (the university ‘portal’), to the blog for produced audio files and to the social bookmarking site to consume podcasts was not necessarily user friendly. The introduction of a new virtual learning environment (VLE), Blackboard, at Leeds should, in future, allow all elements to be in one place and enable better monitoring of usage to be carried out. (Readers who wish to download a podcast of one of the authors discussing some of these and other issues connected with the project at the ALT-08 conference can do so via this link: http://pppsig.podomatic.com/entry/2009-03-04T06_29_04-08_00.)

Other issues

There were a number of issues that prevented our partner institution progressing at the same speed as at the University of Leeds. These included the fact that the module we identified as being most appropriate could not be taught by the proposed lecturer due to her taking on a major administrative role. The person who taught the course did not share the enthusiasm of the project team and failed to promote the survey or encourage students to produce podcasts. We hoped that the lecturer originally proposed would be in a position to facilitate focus groups, as students had been exposed to the use of podcasts in previous modules, but her departure from the university meant that this could not happen.

These problems with our partner institution highlight a classic problem associated with the use of IT in teaching and learning generally: how to encourage staff to engage with its use and not be frightened of the technology. Also, some members of staff see the start-up costs associated with the use of e-learning tools, such as training and obtaining recording equipment, as too high. Perhaps more of an issue is that there often needs to be a time commitment on the part of staff. This is often ‘additional work’ for colleagues, which often goes unseen in workload models and the like, that can act as a disincentive for staff to become involved (see Gribbins, 2007).

Implications

Our podcasting experience has met with a variety of reactions among students and staff. Overall, it must be said, they have been positive reactions. We have identified genuine benefits and concerns, as voiced by students, relating to the addition of podcasting to the range of methods currently used in academic teaching. While the concerns need to be taken seriously, they do not rule out its further use as learning and teaching tool. We are conscious of the fact, however, that the present project has only actively engaged a minority of students. The majority in general seemed rather apathetic and did not (despite the reminders) fully engage with the project. To some extent this was associated with the module running in the final semester of year 3. The lack of a formal mark associated with participation led some students, who viewed their degree rather instrumentally, to believe that the ‘extra’ work involved was not worth the effort. Our project could therefore be accused of allowing the majority to free-ride on the work of the minority. However, there is nothing unique about the use of podcasts in this regard. Whether we are discussing group work or participating in a seminar, there are long-standing issues regarding ‘free-riding’ by students (see Maranto and Gresham, 1998).

Our view is that either the module needs to be totally restructured around the use of podcasting to increase the uptake of the additional material provided or that it needs to be utilised in a more systematic fashion at all levels in the School. Our study has shown that the technology has clearly worked and it has revealed the potential, in particular, for directly integrating student podcasts into the structure of the module. There is, it seems, no obstacle to either replacing or supplementing the traditional student presentation with a student podcast. Making this compulsory and assessing it would obviously increase student engagement with this practice. These trials have clearly demonstrated that the technology can be used to assess presentation skills, although it may raise ethical issues that need further exploration. Furthermore, the technology provides a record of presentations that can be consulted by external examiners in ways traditional classroom presentations cannot.

Our project also contributes to the debate about learning styles. There is considerable research (see Kolb and Kolb, 2005; Ramsden, 2003) that highlights that students have different learning styles and that some of these learning styles are not normally favoured by traditional teaching methods in higher education. Although they do not focus on the above styles, Fox and Ronkowski (1997) have demonstrated that students in political science courses use a variety of learning styles and they suggest that instructors should expand their teaching methods to address a broader number of learning styles. This finding is supported by Sims and Sims (1995), who argue that course design needs to accommodate this diversity of styles.

Podcasts clearly appeal to auditory learners, those who learn best through hearing things (Meng, 2005). An issue here is whether podcasting would change the balance between auditory learning and reading. In a traditional PIR course the emphasis tends be on the latter and there is perhaps a danger that the use of podcasting may raise the false expectation that a student can do well in a module without doing the necessary reading. Indeed, some are now arguing that e-technologies appear to be leading many students to use ‘lowest common denominator’ information, with some arguing that e-technologies are more damaging to undergraduate research and learning processes than they are worth (see Dolowitz, 2007). We feel that to place the blame solely on the shoulders of e-technologies is a bit like shooting the messenger. We do accept that e-technologies must be used appropriately, hence our project carefully considered the pedagogic research, student focus groups and, perhaps most important, how podcasts might help the overall module aims and objectives. As we have argued before, ‘Podcasting is merely a means of delivering teaching material; it does not dictate the nature of that material or its educational value’ (Ralph, Head and Lightfoot, forthcoming).

There is also evidence to suggest that the traditional 50-minute lecture is far from the most effective way of making use of the average student’s attention span (Read, 2005). Lecturers support these findings, with anecdotal evidence of ‘losing’ the students in the second half of the lecture. Providing podcasts gives students a means of ‘re-attending’ the lecture in their own time, or at least having the capacity to revise those points that may have been delivered at a point beyond their attention span (see Kumar, 2003).

The pedagogic issues associated with podcasting include the fact that not all students will have access to or be familiar with the technology, students with some disabilities will have difficulty using podcasts, and listening to podcasts could be a passive learning activity (see SDDU, 2007). This paper is not the place to engage in a full debate about whether or not current students are digital natives. However, it is clear that being familiar with certain aspects of technology such as video games, mobile phones or Facebook does not always equate to familiarity with the types of technology used in universities. There is also the question of attendance at lectures. The availability of full lecture podcasts could contribute to a decline in class attendance, resulting in students failing to build up relations with their tutors or peers. They could also fail to learn crucial skills such as note taking. Supporters of podcasts argue that ‘students are more likely to go to class and participate in the conversation because they are not worried about writing everything down’ (Knight, 2006). Indeed, studies have shown that students supplement their lecture attendance with podcasts (Copley, 2007; Malan, 2007; Roberts, 2008).

What we have discovered, however, is that it is both possible and desirable to take the next step and think of ways of integrating the practice of producing podcasts into the learning methods and objectives of PIR modules. Lee et al. (2008) argue that podcasting allows ‘students to articulate their understanding of ideas and concepts, and to share the outcomes with an audience they value, such as their peers’ (p. 518). We concur with this argument, believing that the act of producing podcasts can concentrate student minds on refining presentation and broader academic skills as well as enhancing their general learning experience.

Footnotes

¹ Readers interested in podcasting in Higher Education in the UK should look at the excellent podcasting for pedagogic purposes website: http://pppsig.podomatic.com/

² See the following link to see module aims and objectives: http://webprod1.leeds.ac.uk/banner/dynmodules.asp?Y=200809&M=PIED-3402

³ See http://www.c-sap.bham.ac.uk/subject_areas/politics/polcasting/socialbookmark.html

⁴ Those interested may wish to listen to the debate: http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2007/04/23/podcast-aipac-us-foreign-policy-debate-between-james-petras-norman-finkelstein/

⁵ Audacity is set up like a simple tape recorder. You simply press record, speak into a microphone that is connected to the relevant socket of the PC, and the software records your voice.

⁶ Two focus groups were convened at the start of the semester 2 trials and two at the end. The focus groups were self-selecting from students who were willing to attend (despite an inducement). Each group comprised about six students, which included some of the students who made the podcasts, but not all of them

⁷ See the blog for all the student- and staff-produced podcasts.

References

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Acknowledgments

Lessons from America: teaching politics with the Google generation

Dr Stephen Thornton, Cardiff University
thorntonsl@cardiff.ac.uk

The author

Stephen Thornton is a lecturer in comparative politics at Cardiff University, and has a long-standing interest in information literacy and its potential implications for the teaching of politics in UK universities. His monograph on Richard Crossman and the welfare state was recently published by I.B. Tauris.

Abstract

The superabundance of information available, particularly through the internet, is posing many challenges to the traditional pedagogy of higher education. Much of this concern is focused on the ubiquity of the search engine Google, with Tara Brabazon amongst the most conspicuous to claim that ‘the popularity of Google is facilitating laziness, poor scholarship and compliant thinking’ (Brabazon, 2007: 15). At the very least, it is clear that Google – as well as the more specialist Google Scholar and the (mostly) open-edited online encyclopedia Wikipedia – have quickly established prominent positions in many students’ strategies to locate information for various assignments. This has led to particular cohorts of students being dubbed, often in a derogatory fashion, the Google generation. While making it clear that many of the stereotypical claims made on behalf of this group are unfounded, this paper will present evidence to support some of the concerns made by Brabazon and others. In addition, it will define the concept that many have recognised as the potential solution to this problem, and will examine one ambitious attempt from the US to confront these problems directly. Moreover, it will be argued that adoption of similar strategies in the UK might address some important criticisms levelled at general university-level politics education in this country.

Keywords

Google generation, information literacy, politics learning and teaching

Introduction

The rapid expansion in the availability of information, most notably though the internet, has changed the ‘rules of the game’ regarding university pedagogy. Where once students – and, for that matter, academics – were generally restricted to information physically located on the shelves of the university library, in the twenty-first century an astonishing amount of information, of all sorts, is readily available. And where once print media provided the fount of almost all knowledge, databases, search engines, websites, wikis, blogs, podcasts, mashups, moodles and other various Web 2 technologies are now available to spice up the mix. Indeed, it could be argued that, after years in which the availability of information was largely under the strict control of editors, librarians and academics, information has recently become rather promiscuous. And, of course, for many younger people, this era of relatively instant information gratification is all that they have experienced.

This easy availability of information in numerous forms has proved a terrific boon in many respects. For example, undergraduates now have ready access to much primary material that was once the preserve of a fortunate few, and the new media have opened up many exciting new opportunities for learning and teaching, a matter currently being explored by the Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience led by Sir David Melville. It has, however, also caused much alarm in some quarters. Tara Brabazon – as part of a wider assault on recent developments in university education – has been particularly riled by a growing proportion of university students who, she argues, do not use the library to consult scholarly texts. Instead, she suggests, they develop an ‘avoidance strategy’, which involves the utilisation of ‘poor quality online materials … Clicking replaces thinking’ (Brabazon, 2007: 16). Likewise, Peter Godwin has suggested many starting university expect ‘a single search box like Google or Amazon to give instant satisfaction. They say “I’ll Google it” and they guess that their present research needs and what they need to know for the rest of their lives can be answered by a Google search’ (Godwin, 2006: 33). Inevitably, this cohort of students has been attached to various labels, such as the ‘net generation’ and ‘digital natives’, but the alliterative allure of the term ‘Google generation’ has proved the most catchy.

A study by the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research (CIBER) at University College London (UCL) – commissioned by the British Library and Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) – examined some features of this Google generation, defined as ‘the world of a cohort of young people with little or no recollection of life before the web’ (CIBER, 2008: 5). They date this generation as those born after 1993; however, it is stressed there is little evidence of a significant difference in information behaviour between this generation and the previous one born in the early 1990s (p. 21). The study challenged many of the myths about the Google generation, such as the charge that they ‘have zero tolerance for delay and their information needs must be fulfilled immediately’ (p. 19). The study notes there is no hard evidence to suggest that young people are any less patient than older age groups. The accusation that they, more than any other age group, ‘prefer quick information in the form of easily digested chunks, rather than the full text’ is also dismissed. All age groups are deemed guilty as charged: ‘The popularity of abstracts among older researchers rather gives the game away. Society is dumbing down’ (p. 19). Equally, the claim that the Google generation, because of their early immersion in the digital world, are expert searchers of information is, in the words of the study, ‘a dangerous myth’ (p. 20). As the study explains, ‘Digital literacies and information literacies do not go hand in hand.’ (p. 20). Moreover, although evidence suggests members of this particular generation are probably more competent with technology, ‘the majority of young people tend to use much simpler applications and fewer facilities than many imagine’ (p. 18).

However, despite the disposal of some myths, the CIBER report did acknowledge some issues of concern. The Google generation does appear to show increasing preference for visual information over text, and less respect for the concept of copyright. Perhaps more important, the study suggests that a large minority of young people ‘think that everything is on the web (and it’s all free)’ and that ‘there is much evidence that young people are unaware of library-sponsored content, or at least reluctant to use it’ (CIBER, 2008: 20). Moreover, addressing the serious charge that the Google generation is, to a greater extent than other generations, ‘the cut-and-paste generation’, the study suggests this is a valid accusation and that ‘plagiarism is a serious issue’ (p. 19). Thus, according to this recent study, although some of the wilder claims made about this young generation of students can be dismissed, some of the concerns made public by Brabazon and Godwin remain to be addressed, and swiftly.

The Google generation and politics

There is very little research into whether politics students have been displaying traits associated with the Google generation, but over the past few years this author has been conducting some small-scale questionnaires to assess whether students on various politics modules at the School of European Studies, Cardiff University are displaying some of the characteristics noted above by CIBER, Godwin and Brabazon. These results have been made available (Thornton, 2006; 2008a, 2008b), and they appear to confirm at least some of their concerns.The most recent survey involved 80 first-year students enrolled on the module entitled ‘Introduction to government’. Its results are worth re-examining as they provide an insight into the manner in which students entering university approach their assignments. These students were asked to respond to a number of questions which were designed to establish what, if any, training in locating, assessing and using information they had already experienced, what sources of information they had already used in relation to their studies, where they found this information, how they assessed the quality of this information, and how they formally acknowledged in their work where this information came from.

The anonymous responses from the questionnaire established that just over half (43 out of the 80 respondents) had received some training, though for most of these (34) this simply amounted to the library tour and/or lecture that took place in freshers’ week. Only 4 out of the 80 mentioned any relevant training at school, despite the existence of a government-led drive to enhance information skills in schools (Markless and Streatfield, 2007: 16). More encouragingly, in response to a question asking what types of information had been used when writing essays, books were identified as the most extensively utilised resource. After books, which all 80 students identified, websites were the second most popular resource, with 63 positive responses – which appeared a surprisingly low figure in light of the literature on the Google generation and earlier surveys conducted by this author. As will be made clear, responses to later questions suggest a wider use of websites than indicated by the reaction to this particular question. Forty-one students noted that they had used newspaper articles, 31 indicated journal articles, and 23 highlighted e-books.

Fittingly, in a paper discussing the ‘Google generation’ thesis, responses to a question that directly asked about the use of electronic resources suggested that Google remains the dominant digital port of call, with 76 positive responses for this ubiquitous search engine. As it is hard to imagine anyone using Google without accessing websites, this figure does seem at odds with the response to the previous question which suggested that only 63 students had used a website for writing essays. It is possible that the perceived discrepancy can be accounted for by noting that the third question simply asked which resources had been used for ‘work’ at school or university, not, as with the previous question, what resources had been used for ‘writing essays’. In addition, it is possible that some students were reacting to a climate in which websites in general appear to be regarded, by some academics at least, as infradig, and thus were reluctant to admit to using websites for academic work. A comment written next to the entry for Wikipedia would support this hypothesis: ‘I think this is a trick! I won’t tick it as it will probably result in expulsion’. Incidentally, Wikipedia did obtain the second highest response rate, with 41 responses, but comments such as this suggest that this number might be artificially low. Google Scholar received 26 responses, and the only response reaching double figures for a university-subscribed to database was for JSTOR, with 16 students claiming to have used it.

Responses to the question that asked about database searching techniques indicated that only 15 out of the 80 students were able to do anything more advanced than repeat key words taken directly from a sample essay question. The results of a question designed to find out what strategies were being used to assess the quality of information on websites indicated that at least 50 possessed some ability to discriminate, usually through identification of the author’s credentials or whether the piece contained references, suggesting that ‘clicking’ has not completely replaced ‘thinking’ in many students’ lives. However, many fewer provided evidence that coherent strategies – similar, say, to Jim Kapoun’s influential guide to evaluating the quality of websites (1998) – were being employed. Indeed, one considered response to the question of ‘how can you tell if a website provides information good enough to use in your assessed work?’ was simply ‘it doesn’t end in “-ikipedia”’. In response to a question about referencing, 37 students admitted that it was a skill with which they had problems, 26 suggested they had no problems, and the remainder left a blank. Seventy-two responses to a question about plagiarism suggested that a sizeable majority of the students were aware of this concept, though many simply regarded it as a synonym for copying. A final question indicated that 56 out of the 80 respondents could correctly identify, from a list of options, a particular citation as a chapter in an edited volume.

These results suggest there are some grounds for not exaggerating the corrosive influence of Google. In particular, there is little evidence here that – for these particular students at least – websites have comprehensively replaced books as the preferred source of information. Nevertheless, and in line with the CIBER study’s findings, the popularity of Google, Wikipedia and Google Scholar far exceeds that of university- or school-subscribed to databases. This indicates that students, now more than ever, need education that leads them to understand that quality of information is not uniform and that information needs to be used with care and with due consideration of its source.

Information literacy

For authors of the CIBER study, Brabazon and Godwin, and many others, the answer to this perceived problem lies, to a large extent, in the development of students’ information literacy. The focus of this paper will be an examination of an ambitious project which attempted to implement this solution with political science students in the US. However, it is important to first define this slightly allusive but increasingly popular concept. Information literacy usually refers to the acquisition of particular skills or competencies related to finding information, and, more important, evaluating the quality of this information and then using it wisely and ethically. At least some of this is suggested in one of the most widely quoted definitions of the concept, devised in 1989 by the American Library Association Presidential Committee on Information Literacy, which concluded that ‘to be information literate, a person must recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information’ (American Library Association, 1989: 1).

More recent attempts to define information literacy have gone beyond this narrow definition of skills acquisition. As Bruce et al. (2007) have suggested, information literacy can be perceived in various ways, in much the same way that the whole process of teaching and learning can be perceived through different ‘frames’. Bruce et al. note that, in addition to a ‘competency frame’, where information literacy can be regarded simply as ‘a set of competencies or skills’, there are alternative views such as the ‘learning to learn frame’ which adopts a more constructivist orientation in regarding information literacy more broadly as a way of learning (p. 41). Some of this conceptual development is visible in attempts by the Scottish Executive to develop a national information literacy strategy. As part of this process, NHS Education for Scotland has recently defined information literacy in this manner: ‘An information literate person can recognise an information need and is able to apply the set of transferable skills, attitudes and behaviours needed to find, retrieve, assess, manage and apply information in any situation, throughout life. Information literacy supports individual and organisational learning, creativity and innovation’ (NHS Education for Scotland, 2008). In short, information literacy is much more than knowing how to access, say, the British Humanities Index.

Information literacy and the pedagogy of politics

In addition to defining information literacy, it is also worth highlighting some of the synergies between this concept and the teaching and learning of politics at university level. Clear and numerous links between characteristics associated with effective learning of both information literacy and politics – the latter as evinced by the UK Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) subject benchmarks for politics and international relations – have been identified (Thornton, 2006: 32). In the US too, Gregory Marfleet and Brian Dille have plainly made a case that the interplay between information literacy and undergraduate political science makes a ‘particularly fertile ground’ for learning (Marfleet and Dille, 2005: 175).

To take this argument further, by adopting a pedagogy for university-level politics closer to that increasingly associated with information literacy, politics might be actively enhanced in the manner recently proposed by James Sloam (2008) in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations. To explain, a prominent advocate of information literacy, Susie Andretta, has criticised the traditional learning culture in many higher education institutions for ‘reinforc[ing] the spoon-feeding expectations of students by promoting a transmittal mode of delivery that prioritises regular face-to-face attendance rather than encouraging the self-discovery pedagogical model’ and has suggested that expansion of a ‘learning how to learn’ approach – favoured by the constructivist model of learning and increasingly strongly associated with information literacy – would improve matters significantly (Andretta, 2006: 13). This critique of university teaching in general mirrors James Sloam’s more specific criticism of the ‘highly structured and largely behaviourist’ (Sloam, 2008: 513) approach typical of many undergraduate politics modules, with its tendency ‘to encourage the passivity of the student’ (p. 514), and his call for the pedagogy of politics to edge closer towards a more constructivist approach which, he argues, would enhance deep learning and, moreover, ‘play a part in promoting the democratic engagement of young people’ (p. 520). Moreover, regarding Sloam’s final point about the importance of democratic engagement, it is significant that Stevens and Campbell (2006; 2007) – who have been conducting some of the most interesting developments in integrating information literacy within the political science curricula – have made a convincing case that information literacy can play role in prompting students to gain a ‘sense of themselves as global citizens, whose everyday decisions are inextricably linked to larger social, political, and economic forces and structures’ (Stevens and Campbell, 2006: 536). Information literacy could, in addition to tackling the problems posed by the Google generation, play an important role in making politics education more relevant and successful, as the following case study will demonstrate.

The West Georgia Model

There are many published examples of attempts to integrate information literacy into an academic curriculum (for example, Webb and Powis, 2004; Jacobson and Mackey, 2007). However, accounts that tackle the marrying of information literacy to politics are very thin on the ground. Of these few, one of the most interesting is that noted earlier, written by Christy Stevens and Patricia Campbell – a humanities librarian and a professor of political science respectively, and significantly. In the case study to be examined in detail here, they describe the early stages of a project at the University of West Georgia, US, which involved four overarching goals: to integrate information literacy instruction into a political science curriculum; to demonstrate that such instruction is needed across academic experience levels (while also demonstrating that information literacy improves with academic experience); to show that course-integrated information literacy instruction leads to learning; and to identify areas of information literacy found most difficult by students to highlight where additional instruction is needed (Stevens and Campbell, 2007: 127).

Their initial task was to align a particular set of information literacy standards and performance indicators with the general learning outcomes and narrower course and assignment-specific objectives from three different political science courses, with each course being at a different level. Table 1 provides one example of this.

Table 1

Standards	Performance Indicators	Learning Outcomes	Course Specific Learning Objectives
S3: The information literate student evaluates information and its sources critically and incorporates selected information into his or her knowledge base and value systems.	PI1: The information literate student summarises the main ideas to be extracted from the information gathered.	3. Students will accurately identify the main ideas and arguments in the texts they have selected for use in their research projects restating them in their own words.	Lower Level: In their Annotated Bibliographies, American Government students will summarise at least seven out of ten sources, clearly and accurately stating each author’s thesis and main supporting points. Mid Level: In their Final research papers, Comparative Politics students will accurately and clearly discuss the arguments from sources they use to support their own points. Upper Level: In their final research projects, African Politics students will provide an accurate and thorough overview of both the African Union and their assigned committee, paraphrasing source material appropriately.

As the above example suggests, written assignments were central to this political science/information literacy collaboration. Stevens and Campbell (2007) explicitly regarded these assignments less as a test of competence and more as an integral part of the instruction, ‘providing students with the opportunity to learn both through active engagement in various stages of the research process and through feedback on their performances’ (p. 128). As such, due dates for assignments were to be staggered across the semester, and various opportunities were to be provided for feedback to enhance student learning. In addition, the return of assignments was to be explicitly regarded as a ‘teachable moment’, in which examples of successful and less successful responses were to be used to prompt group discussion (p. 133).

Crucially, these assignments were not designed in order for students simply to ‘“find stuff” or to recall and transcribe correct answers’, but rather to develop their ability to analyse, synthesise and evaluate relevant information. Examples of this were the specially developed annotated bibliography assignments – each tailored to a specific course – where students were required to provide a summary of the key points made to support a particular author’s thesis, after which ‘students were required to assess the source, evaluating its reliability, authority, and underlying assumptions and biases’ (Stevens and Campbell, 2007: 128). These particular assignments were to be completed with ‘a reflection that required students to explain how the source was helpful, how it supported and shaped their argument, and how it affected the way they thought about the topic’ (p. 128). Other assignments included the construction of a research proposal, the writing of a research paper, and – in a later case study by Stevens and Campbell (2006) – the task of presenting their research to peers and academic staff. These were designed as a series of ‘scaffolded assignments’, where later assignments were explicitly designed to build on knowledge, skills and strategies learned in earlier ones (Stevens and Campbell, 2007: 132–3). The topics for these assignments varied from course to course; an example from the mid-level comparative politics course involved the selection of ‘a reaction statement from a pre-approved list that invoked a general comparative political controversy, such as “Democracy fosters peace”’ (p. 131).

In terms of implementation, semesters began, and ended, with standardised information literacy competency tests. In between, instruction was fully collaborative, with, in most classes, the librarian involved by providing assignment-driven instructional sessions on finding and evaluating relevant information. There were follow-up sessions in which the librarian returned to classes to discuss the assignments and, in particular, the assessment rubric to be followed. All students had opportunities to receive one-to-one instruction whilst working on their assignments, usually by meeting the academic or librarian involved during their respective office hours. All feedback and grading was conducted collaboratively between the academic and the librarian involved.

In their report, Stevens and Campbell (2007) explained that their project proved successful. They demonstrated that information literacy instruction could be implemented across the political science curriculum, and relatively low scores recorded in the tests conducted before the instruction suggested that there was a widespread need for this type of training, even amongst the more experienced students who, as accurately forecast, proved more information literate than those in their first year. Post-test scores improved significantly, particularly with those on mid-and upper-level courses, which suggested that information literacy did indeed lead to learning. The areas of information literacy that created the most problems were those relating to the higher-order skills such as assessment and evaluation of sources. This indicated to the authors that instruction and practice on these matters should be increased in future courses (pp. 137–43).Success was measured in other ways too. Student feedback was very positive. As the authors wryly noted, ‘For the first time in the political science instructor’s career, she heard many students praise a research assignment, some going as far as to say that they really enjoyed the process’ (Stevens and Campbell, 2007: 142). Collaboration between the academic and library worlds was also regarded a sterling success, not only because of the improvement in the students’ work but also ‘because of what we [the librarian and the politics professor] learned through the process’ (p. 140).

However, for the purposes of this paper, perhaps the most significant words of praise for the project came from the political scientist involved. After years in which she found the less worthy features of the Google generation outlined earlier becoming ever more exasperating, she discovered that this type of collaborative project could dramatically improve the learning experience of political science students:

'The quality of work turned in by the participating students evidenced remarkable improvement over the work that had been submitted in previous years without the benefit of IL instruction. Students selected and appropriately used key journals, referenced scholars in the field, and grappled with complex concepts and arguments. In the mid-level course, for example, many students selected the reaction statement ‘Democracy fosters peace.’ Rather than the usual passionate defense of democracy as an inherent good that ‘naturally’ produces good results, students wrestled with definitions of both democracy and peace, and the often inverse relationship between the two… Many students, in their reflections, noted that they had never thought about the complexities involved in such a statement until they began to read the academic literature that wrestled with this issue. Not only were students’ ideas challenged, but in many cases their opinions changed from reactionary to reformed.'

(Campbell and Stevens, 2007: 142)

Conclusion

The work of Stevens and Campbell and others (Thornton, 2006; 2008a) does suggest that certain negative ‘Google generation’ traits identified by the CIBER study, Brabazon and others – to which politics students do not appear to be immune – can, to some extent, be overcome by improving levels of information literacy. Indeed, as highlighted earlier, Brabazon’s own solution to these problems includes students ‘graduating to information literacy’ (Brabazon, 2007: 15). Thus, rather than succumbing to frustration, it is evident that politics lecturers, in collaboration with information specialists, now have available a number of ‘productive, concrete strategies’ at their disposal (Stevens and Campbell, 2007: 141). Moreover, by embarking on a project such as that undertaken by Stevens and Campbell, movement towards a more effective approach to politics teaching might indeed follow.

To elaborate, to improve political science education, Sloam recommends a strategy based on student-centred, active learning, ‘characterised by four general principles for communicative action in political science education’ (Sloam, 2008: 516). These are:

1. To investigate students’ own knowledge and understanding of politics
2. To make students aware of their own participatory activities in politics (broadly defined)
3. To increase understanding of political science through greater interaction
4. To consolidate these objectives, curriculum, assessment and teaching methods should be ‘constructively aligned’ (Biggs, 2003: chap 2).

Integrating information literacy would help fulfil all these principles. Referring back to the Stevens and Campbell case study, the constructivist nature of their approach is clearly evident in the way in which learning is explicitly a student-centred and reflective process, and one which encourages students to confront their own conceptions of the political process – though, perhaps, Stevens and Campbell’s emphasis on pre-determined outcomes and objectives undercuts some of the constructivist ethos. Nevertheless, it is clear from this case study, and even more from Campbell and Steven’s other case study involving the teaching of global citizenship, that information literacy can link education to students’ own experiences and thus enhance deep understanding. Furthermore, the approach is patently interactive, with a variety of activities designed to encourage contact between fellow students and their teachers. Finally, it is clear from Stevens and Campbell’s case study – particularly Table 1, which highlights just one small fraction of their attempt to marry information literacy standards and learning indicators with general learning outcomes for their classes and the course and assignment-specific objectives – that ‘constructive alignment’ was at the heart of their collaboration. It is also highly significant that Jürgen Habermas’s influential ideas on interaction through communication, which Sloam identifies as having significant implications for the teaching of politics in higher education, have also informed the development of information literacy (Whitworth, 2007). In facing the challenge of the Google generation, Stevens and Campbell have, perhaps, uncovered a very promising path for all political science education to follow.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the wonderful information specialists and students without whom my own case studies would not have been possible, the many knowledgeable individuals I have talked to – usually in coffee breaks at conferences – who have provided valuable information and insights, and the anonymous referees who supplied sage and friendly advice.

References

American Library Association (1989) Presidential Committee on Information Literacy: Final Report, Chicago, IL: American Library Association.

Andretta, S. (2006) ‘Information literacy: the new pedagogy of the question’, in G. Walton and A. Pope (eds.) Information Literacy: Recognising the Need, Oxford: Chandos, pp. 13–20.

Brabazon, T. (2007) The University of Google: Education in the (Post) Information Age, Aldershot: Ashgate.

Biggs, J. (2003) Teaching for Quality Learning at University (2nd edn.), Maidenhead: The Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press.

Bruce, C., Edwards, S. and Lupton, M. (2007) ‘Six frames for information literacy education: a conceptual framework for interpreting the relationship between theory and practice’, in S. Andretta (ed.) Change and Challenge: Information Literacy for the 21st century, Adelaide: Auslib Press, pp. 37–58.

CIBER (Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research, UCL) (2008) ‘Information behaviour of the researcher of the future’. Available at:
www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/reppres/gg_final_keynote_11012008.pdf (accessed 5 January 2009).

Godwin, P. (2006) ‘Keeping up with the Google generation: the challenge for information literacy teachers’, a paper presented at the Information Literacy: Recognising the Need Conference, Staffordshire University, 17 May.

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Kapoun, J. (1998) ‘Teaching undergraduates WEB evaluation: a guide for library instruction’, C&RL News, July–August, pp. 522–3.

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Markless, S. and Streatfield, D. (2007) ‘Three decades of information literacy: redefining the parameters’, in S. Andretta (ed.) Change and Challenge: Information literacy for the 21st century, Adelaide: Auslib Press, pp. 15–36.

NHS Education for Scotland (2008) ‘Better informed for better health and better care [draft document]’. Available at: www.infoliteracy.scot.nhs.uk/media/1012229/theframework.pdf
(accessed 6 August 2008).

Sloam, J. (2008) ‘Teaching democracy: the role of political science education’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 10 (3), pp. 509–24.

Stevens, C. and Campbell, P. (2006) ‘Collaborating to connect global citizenship, information literacy, and lifelong learning in the global studies classroom’, References Services Review, 34 (4), pp. 536–56.

Stevens, C. and Campbell, P. (2007) ‘The politics of information literacy: integrating information literacy into the political science curriculum’, in T. Jacobson and T. Mackey (eds.) Information Literacy Collaborations that Work, New York: Neal-Schuman, pp. 123–46.

Thornton, S. (2006) ‘Information literacy and the teaching of politics’, LATISS – Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences, 3 (1), pp. 29–45.

Thornton, S. (2008a) ‘Pedagogy, politics, and information literacy’, Politics, 28 (1), pp. 50–6.

Thornton, S. (2008b) ‘Assessing information literacy in a politics module’, paper presented at the PSA Conference, Swansea University, 1–3 April 2008.

Webb, J. and Powis, C. (2004) Teaching Information Skills: Theory and Practice, London: Facet Publishing.

Whitworth, A. (2007) ‘Communicative competence in the information age: towards a critical pedagogy’, Change and Challenge: Information Literacy for the 21st Century, Adelaide: Auslib Press, pp. 85–114.

Designing video and audio resources on the history of political thought

Dr Pete Woodcock, University of Huddersfield
p.s.woodcock@hud.ac.uk

The author

Pete Woodcock studied at the LSE and the University of Southampton prior to being appointed as a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Huddersfield where he is currently course leader of undergraduate courses. He has published a number of articles on teaching and learning issues related to the history of political thought, and his main academic interest is seventeenth century English ideas.

Abstract

This paper gives an overview of The Hobbes Project, a project based at the University of Huddersfield that produces a number of video and audio resources (VARs) and accompanying worksheets to support the teaching of the module entitled ‘Introduction to political philosophy’. In so doing, it will discuss the benefits of creating such VARs, comment on the format that these should take, include a discussion of academic decisions made about content, and offer tips on how to go about presenting VARs.

Keywords

philosophy, e-learning, politics, video, audio, resources

Introduction

This paper aims to provide a report of The Hobbes Project, a project based at the University of Huddersfield that produces of a number of video and audio resources (VARs) and accompanying worksheets to support the teaching of the module entitled ‘Introduction to political philosophy’ (a standard first-year history of ideas thinker-based module introducing students to the ideas of Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Burke, Mill and Marx). This module was chosen for the production of VARs because the author, who also led the project, is committed to the idea that when students have started to get to grips with the history of political philosophy, they relish it, as ‘it provides them with a space in which to reflect on their own, previously unexamined, but cherished, views on what politics is for’ (Coleman, 2000: 152). However, sometimes students need to be nurtured in the early part of their studies to get to this point, and it was hoped that VARs would help in this endeavour. As such, The Hobbes Project (named after the first video produced) can be seen in the same vein as other attempts to use informal educational methods within the university curriculum (for other examples of the use of informal means to teach political ideas, see, for example, Schaap, 2005; Woodcock, 2006, 2008).

This paper aims to briefly outline what was done in The Hobbes Project and also highlight why certain decisions were made so that it can be used as a guide for other academics considering creating VARs for their students. In so doing, it will discuss the benefits of creating VARs, comment on the format that these should take, include a discussion of academic decisions about content and offer tips on how to go about presenting VARs.

Summary of project

The Hobbes Project aimed to produce some reasonable broadcast quality, reusable learning objects (in the form of VARs combined with worksheets) to help teach the history of political philosophy. It aimed to host these on the university’s website and to make them available in a variety of different formats to ensure that they could be easily accessed. The VARs took the form of mini-lectures of approximately ten minutes in length on each of the thinkers discussed in the module in question. Each mini-lecture was simply a ‘talking head’ shot of the module leader (Pete Woodcock) filmed in a static format in order to a) keep filming simple and b) ensure that the file size was small enough to facilitate successful hosting on the web. These resources were available to students as a streamed video to be viewed online, a MP4 file, which could be downloaded onto a portable device, and a MP3 file for students wishing to use the mini-lectures in a purely audio form. Also hosted on the site were a number of worksheets designed to be completed by students as they used the VARs, in an attempt to make them interactive.

Benefits of mini-lectures

A popular way of using VARs in teaching is for lecturers to record lectures (either as a video or audio file) while they are being delivered in the usual fashion and for these files to be made available to students afterwards, perhaps via a virtual learning environment (VLE) of a university intranet. This approach has obvious benefits. It is relatively easy to do, and once the lecturer has got to grips with available recording equipment, it requires little additional time in terms of producing materials as one is already delivering lectures and simply recording them in situ. This approach also allows students who miss lectures to see an entire lecture in order to catch up or indeed enables revising students to view a whole lecture rather than just a portion of it. Recording entire lectures, however, is not without pitfalls. First, a lecture might be anything from 45 minutes to two hours in length, making the available VAR long and large in terms of file size. Students may be unlikely to view entire lectures on a regular basis, they may be awkward to host and distribute (especially in video format) or picture quality might have to be compromised in order to reduce the file size. Second, from the point of view of a lecturer, even the best lecture may be filled with awkward pauses, misquotes or ill-judged jokes, meaning that one might be uncomfortable about allowing them to be viewed later on. Lectures are generally delivered without a script and certainly without the aid of an autocue that helps smooth presentation on television, meaning that even the best lecture will struggle with coherency over a long period of time. Nor should a lecture be reduced to a recording session for a VAR as this will diminish the sense of spontaneity and reaction to the audience, which is stock-in-trade to the lecturer and vital in building social capital amongst the students on a module.

It was for these reasons that The Hobbes Project sought to deliver simply a number of short VARs, each approximately of ten minutes in length, which sought to sum up the key ideas of the thinkers in question rather than seek to emulate an entire lecture. It was thought that students might be likely to watch a ten-minute resume of a lecture, whereas they might baulk at watching an entire lecture of one and a half hours (the length of a lecture at the University of Huddersfield).

Format

We decided, for purposes of simplicity, that all the video mini-lectures would simply comprise a ‘talking head’ format. It is far easier to create files in this manner as a quiet room (a necessity when recording) can easily be found at a university to record several mini-lectures at one time. Changing the format would, no doubt, have made the clips more engaging and dynamic. However, this would have significantly lengthened the time needed to create them, multiplied the labour needed for the project and also increased the size of the files, making them more difficult to host and download. The first student cohort to use these VARs were given a form to feed back their comments on the resources. One student commented that the talking head format of the mini-lectures should be readdressed, suggesting that we ‘liven them up a bit.’ Another stated:

'I feel as you are static during the video there is little benefit to me watching them. So I have put them on my MP3. I really like them on this format, it also enables me to listen to them on the move.'

The overall feedback on the project was very positive, with virtually all students using at least one of the VARs, with comments ranging from ‘[they were] helpful when recapping lectures’ to just ‘[they were] ‘very very helpful’. However, one should be aware that there is a trade-off between the ease of creating talking head resources on the one hand and creating a dynamic resource on the other.

Choosing the content

Creating a ten-minute mini-lecture, of course, means that the lecturer is faced with the unenviable task of deciding what constitutes the ‘key ideas’ of a thinker, decisions that inevitably involve compromises. The link below provides access to the streamed version of the video mini-lecture on the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes to be viewed as an example of how to create the content for a video clip, and the decisions that were made regarding content.

The thinking behind creating this clip was to ‘boil down’ Hobbes’s thought to show students a) why he was still important and should be studied by politics students in the twenty-first century and b) the key tenets of his thought. As one can see from the video, I broke this down into three component parts, namely obligation, the state and sovereignty. In the section on obligation, I tried to show how the view of Hobbes differed from two competing definitions of why one should obey the state: the divine right of kings on the one hand and Aristotelianism on the other. Both of these are broad topics, of course, and therefore some level of reductionalism is necessary for a ten-minute introduction for first-year undergraduate students. Of course, any attempt to break down a set of ideas in the history of intellectual and political thought is fraught with methodological dangers.

On divine right, I was trying to show how Hobbes differed from those authors who saw kings as ordained by God. He saw the duty of the individual to obey the state as identical to the Christians’ duty to obey God and that, therefore, those who questioned the authority of government were ‘usurping upon … the office of God’ (James VI and I, 1986: 104). Hobbes gave grounds whereupon the rational man would not question the authority of the state – its powers came from the people via a contract not from God – and, as a result, he offered an ascending rather than a descending theory of how government obtained its powers. On the Aristotelian issue, I was trying to show how Hobbes’s views differed from concepts that saw man, by nature, as a political animal, and the state, and one’s connection to it, as being a natural process (rather than civil society and the state created as an artificial construct via a contract). Hobbes, of course, as I explain in the video, thinks man is far from being a naturally political being, and that, in his natural state, he would, in fact, lead a life that was in ‘continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short’ (Hobbes, 1651/1981: 186). In taking this approach I was attempting to enthuse students about Hobbes, seeing his attempt to answer the question ‘why should I obey government?’ as providing a different answer to the dominant trends in political thought at the time and, as such, his views being novel for the time.

The second section tries to briefly outline Hobbes’s idea, as outlined by Quentin Skinner (2006), that ‘the duties of subjects are owed to the state, rather than to the person of the ruler’, which was ‘a relatively new and highly contentious’ (p. 3) idea when Hobbes asserted it (see also Skinner, 2002). This separation between the state and the person operating the powers of the state is a crucial one in the history of ideas, and I felt it deserved mentioning in a mini-video resource that had the goal of explaining the relevance of studying Hobbes’s ideas. One thing to note when considering ways to expand upon points is to consider not using examples that might date the resource unnecessarily. The video was filmed in the summer of 2007. The reference to George Bush was relevant then; however, it is regrettable when viewed now.

The final section is a simple discussion of sovereignty, aimed less at explaining Hobbes’s ideas but rather linking his ideas with contemporary politics. There can be little doubt that Hobbes played a large role in developing the idea of state sovereignty that is common currency in contemporary discussions of politics; whatever one might think of their claims, a ‘common complaint made by Eurosceptics [is that European] integration means a loss of sovereignty’ (McCormick, 2008: 15). Consequently, providing a link that shows how the ideas of Hobbes helped to form the way we discuss politics today might help students see the centrality of his ideas.

Video and audio resources are expected by the modern undergraduate student; students are, in Prensky’s term, ‘digital natives’ due to the ‘rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the twentieth century’ (2001: 3). He notes that today’s students represent:

'…the first generations to grow up with this new technology. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and other toys and tools of the digital age … Computer games, e-mail, the Internet, cell phones and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives.'(Prensky, 2001: 3)

To this one might like to add the development of Web 2.0 applications such as YouTube that allow users to record, upload and view videos, often via their mobile phones; this simply supports Prensky’s assertion of the centrality of technology in students’ lives. So, whereas these trends might give us a compelling reason in and of themselves why we should produce resources such as those produced by The Hobbes Project, it should not blind us to the fact that they still support, in essence, a transmission mode of education. The real boon of computers and the internet with regard to creating learning resources is the ease of recording, editing, hosting, downloading and distributing that they afford. In essence, however, there is no pedagogical difference in downloading a MP4 file to one’s iPod and viewing a video created for that purpose; and there is only a slight jump from that to simply attending a lecture.

We concluded, therefore, that something more was needed to accompany the VARs produced by The Hobbes Project to make them slightly more interactive. The method we chose was a worksheet that was hosted alongside the video, which students could download and complete whilst watching the video (or, indeed, while listening to the MP3 file). Other, more elaborate forms of interaction are of course possible, such as online chat rooms or comments boards. However, these would have resulted in a considerably greater investment of time and the need for greater technical expertise. The link below will take you to the worksheet (in pdf form) that I devised to accompany the Hobbes video that you have just viewed.

Hobbes Worksheet

This worksheet begins with short and simple questions that can be answered easily by viewing the video. They get slightly more complicated as the worksheet continues, but again they can be answered without too much trouble as they follow the structure of the video resource. The purpose of these sheets is not to form part of a module’s assessment, but rather simply to give students a task to complete whilst viewing the video in the hope that this will help reinforce the key messages in the resources. Also, the structure of the VARs we produced, with each VAR being broken down into smaller sections, allows for greater ease of presentation as it is much easier to remain word perfect for a two- to three-minute section than for an entire ten-minute clip.

Presenting

The most helpful advice on the way to go about presenting these clips was given by Laing et al. (2006) who noted that it was best not to read from a script but to ‘be informal, be personal, be yourself, [and] use your passion for the subject to enthuse and motivate your audience’ (p. 514). Scripts were not produced, therefore, for two interrelated reasons. First, it is impossible to read a script while looking at the camera (essential if you wish to engage students who will be viewing the videos) without expensive autocue equipment. This is a downside, of course, to producing video resources as opposed to merely audio ones. Second, reading, it is often thought, prevents a video from appearing lively, fresh and engaging.

Rather than preparing a script for The Hobbes Project VARs, we found it helpful to prepare an overall structure (see above for a discussion of the academic side of this) of what was intended to be said that could be reviewed prior to filming each section to refresh the presenter’s mind. Occasionally, bits of paper with cues were taped underneath the camera that could be read with slight eye movement away from the camera. Also, sections of text were often read from a book out of camera shot. This seems acceptable, so long as extracts are kept to a minimum.

Conclusion

This paper has aimed simply to produce a report of what we achieved at the University of Huddersfield with The Hobbes Project in the hope that it might provide guidance for other lecturers wishing to embark on a similar enterprise. Its focus on the academic decisions made when making a mini-lecture is an attempt to justify our approach and to consider seriously the academic choices that the lecturer is faced with when creating such resources.

References

Coleman, J. (2000) ‘The history of political thought in a modern university’, in History of Political Thought, XXI (1) (spring 2000), pp. 152–71.

Hobbes, T. (1651/1981) Leviathan, C. B. Macpherson (ed.), London: Penguin.

James VI and I (1986) ‘The trew law of free monarchies (1598)’, in D. Wootton (ed.) Divine Right and Democracy: An Anthology of Political Writings in Stuart England, London: Penguin, pp. 99–106.

Laing, C., Wootton, A. and Irons, A. (2006) ‘iPod! uLearn?’, in A. Méndez-Vilas, A. Solano Martín, J. A. Mesa González and J. Mesa González (eds.) Current Developments in Technology-Assisted Education, Vol. I: General Issues, Pedagogical Issues, Badajoz, Spain: FORMAX, pp. 514–18. Available at: www.formatex.org/micte2006/book1.htm.

McCormick, J. (2008) Understanding the European Union, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Prensky, M. (2001) ‘Digital natives, digital immigrants: Part 1’, On the Horizon, 9 (5), pp. 2–6.

Schaap, A. (2005) ‘Learning political theory by role playing’, Politics, 25 (1), pp. 46–52.

Skinner, Q. (2002) ‘Hobbes and the purely artificial person of the state’, in Visions of Politics, Volume 3: Hobbes and Civil Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 177–208.

Skinner, Q. (2006) ‘The state’, in R. E. Goodin (eds.) Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 3–25.

Woodcock, P. (2006) ‘The polis of Springfield: The Simpsons and the teaching of political theory’, Politics, 26 (3), pp. 192–9.

Woodcock, P. (2008) ‘Gender, politicians and public health: using The Simpsons to teach politics’, European Political Science, 7 (2), pp. 153–64.