'Type' by Victoria Pickering is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
When it comes to publishing online – on NILE, MyPad or other websites – copyright legislation is an important consideration that can too often be overlooked.
Arbitrarily using text, images, audio or video from other websites in your work runs risk. It’s not great to use NILE’s password protection, or ‘it’s for educational use’ as legitimate excuses.
So to help you produce trouble-free online content we’ve put together a quick guide to what you can and cannot do, and good places to find great resources.
Copyright Basics
To help ease you into this complex world, the Copyright Hub has an interactive guide with a vast wealth of resources.
It’s worth remembering Copyright sits alongside Trademarks and Patents and Designs and is overseen by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO).
This is not to be confused with Data Protection and Freedom of Information which fall under the remit of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)
Copyright exists to protect work and permit its owner to dictate how, where and when this is used. It doesn’t always prevent republishing, but will dictate the terms of use.
Creative Commons
A common way to find and use material online, legally and for free, is by using Creative Commons content. Where applied, a copyright owner will permit the use of their work in the following ways:
- attribution only, with no further restrictions,
- no commercial uses of the work,
- no derivatives (adaptations) can made of it.
You may have already considered using this when posting your own copyright material on the web.
Websites
Information which is freely available on the internet isn’t necessarily free to copy. Websites are protected by copyright and some sites may also be considered as databases and be protected by database right.
The material published on a website is protected by copyright in the same way as print material. Most will have a copyright declaration or specify how material from the site may be used. Although if missing, it’s best to assume the usual restrictions apply and only use a small amount for private, non-commercial purposes.
If the information on the website is not easy to access – it’s password protected for instance – then this implies the owner is protecting their work and does not want it to be copied or distributed freely; even if there is no charge for using the site.
Not all the information on the internet has been posted legally, so be careful to check the source of the information where it is possible, and use your own judgement where it is not.
Images
When looking for images it’s tempting to use anything that’s readily available! Jisc’s interactive guide gives you a safer approach.
It’s better to use a search engine that displays only Creative Commons licensed images, or those that have been made available rights free.
- Creative Commons search
- Flickr (advanced search)
- Everystockphoto
- MorgueFile
- Open Clipart
- Xpert
- Canva
If you use Google Images, narrow the usage rights with an advance search. For further advice read Jisc Digital Media – Copyright of still images.
TV, Radio & Sounds
There’s a wealth of videos on sites such as YouTube which you may wish to use in your teaching. Although be mindful it’s not legal to download a video to upload it to your NILE site, or redistribute it in any way. However, it is legal and straightforward to add a link or embed the video in NILE.
The Educational Recording Agency (ERA) licence permits staff to copy, access and use broadcast output for non-commercial educational purposes. This means all scheduled free-to-air radio and television broadcasts may be recorded for the purposes of making ERA Recordings.
To save you the trouble of having to record programmes yourself, as well as providing guidance, the British Universities Film and Video Council also runs the Box Of Broadcasts (BOB) service, to which the University subscribes.
This makes available programmes from over 60 UK channels dating back to 2007 and can to be used in your teaching. What’s more, clips can easily be embedded into NILE.
For further advice read Jisc Digital Media – AudioVisual copyright
Books, Journals and Newspapers
All the electronic resources provided through NELSON are covered by licences. Most e-journal and e-book suppliers prefer their material to be deep-linked within NILE. Guidance on this is available in the downloads section of the Library webpage on the staff portal.
The same licences allow users to make single copies for educational purposes, so you could refer students to a reference or deep-link in these cases. Be suspicious if you find online copies of books or journals you would normally expect to pay for. They could easily be illegal copies.
The University’s CLA licence also allows digital scanned copies of both book chapters and journal articles to be placed into NILE legally (whether we own them already or not). Contact the Digitisation Team for help.
Open Educational Resources
Many institutions from around the world have made available Open Educational Resources (OERs). These are teaching materials including lesson plans, documents and media available for reuse.
It can be time consuming to adapt and localise materials created in other countries, so we recommend you use UK repositories in the first instance, where possible.
To sample websites that offer complete free open courses, have a browse around MIT OpenCourseWare and Saylor courses as examples.
Open Textbooks are available from BCCampus in Canada and a good selection of links are listed on Open Access Textbooks. These are free, open, reusable textbooks in HE and FE.
OMICS provides a list of open access journals in different languages and subjects. The OER Knowledge Cloud also offers many research reports and articles about OER.
And finally – did you know?
- Copyright does not need to be registered and subsists automatically from the moment an original work is created.
- Owning a piece of work, and owning the copyright of that work, are not the same thing.
- Commissioning work by a third-party doesn’t grant you copyright ownership – unless it’s stated in the contractual terms.
There were significant changes to copyright in 2014. Here are some links to explain further.
At recent events, including last week’s Learning and Teaching conference, the Learning Design team have been trying out some new activities to help teaching staff think about how they design for learning. You may have seen some of these new tools and activities described in earlier posts in this category, or had the chance to have a go at using them in development events. In this post I’d like to look at the bigger picture of how these might fit together with some of the other services we offer.
At the conference, we hosted a ‘cracker barrel’ table. The staff that came to see us were offered giant post-its (no small motivation!) in exchange for drawing us a picture of what they value most in their teaching. You can view these in our online album here (we’ll be adding more from other events to this album too):
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| What I value most in teaching |
The resulting images were not just works of art. They could also be seen as ‘teaching metaphors’ (McShane 2005). We asked participants to expand on these, and break down what was happening in the image using three key questions:
- what is the role of the tutor?
- what is the role of the student?
- what is the role of technology?
Common themes in the role of the tutor included motivation, guidance, facilitation and enabling, linking learners together and lighting ‘sparks’ and ‘light bulbs’ of understanding. There was also an emphasis on pastoral roles, being ‘approachable’, ’empathetic’ and a ‘confidant’. The role of the student was widely agreed to be participative, with comments noting the importance of engaging, contributing and becoming autonomous. Some comments also noted that the distinction between tutor and student is not so dichotomous, and that learning happens in a community where the participants all learn together. Comments on the role of technology mostly focused on supporting access to learning, as well as ‘fostering community’ and enabling sharing. You can see all the contributions in this PDF file (3.5MB, captured using the Post-It Plus app).
Sadly that was all we had time for on the day, but we did ask them to go away and think about how their image related to their own programmes and modules. Is that ideal teaching moment what’s happening in those modules now? And if not, what could they change that might enable them to do more of what they value?
This led me to think about a model that I had been introduced to by our very own Deborah Forbes, in a staff development session on Thriving in a Changing Environment*. The model is Appreciative Inquiry (AI), and as a positive approach to change management it has a lot to offer as we prepare for Waterside. Here’s what some of the experts have to say about AI:
“The traditional approach to change is to look for the problem, do a diagnosis, and find a solution. The primary focus is on what is wrong or broken …Appreciative Inquiry suggests that we look for what works in an organization …Because the statements are grounded in real experience and history, people know how to repeat their success.” (Hammond, 1998, pp.6-7)
And:
“[Appreciative Inquiry] deliberately seeks to discover people’s exceptionality – their unique gifts, strengths, and qualities. It actively searches and recognizes people for their specialties – their essential contributions and achievements. And it is based on principles of equality of voice – everyone is asked to speak about their vision of the true, the good, and the possible.” (Cooperrider, 2001, p.12)
Although there is no one definitive model for AI, the 4-D aproach is widely used. This consists of four main steps:
- Discover: The identification of organisational processes that work well.
- Dream: The envisioning of processes that would work well in the future.
- Design: Planning and prioritising processes that would work well.
- Destiny: The implementation (execution) of the proposed design. (Cooperrider and Whitney, 2005, p.17)
In terms of programme and module design, the steps we covered at the conference were targeted at the ‘discover’ and ‘dream’ stages – by helping staff to think about what works really well for them and their students, they can begin to think about what their programme or module might look like if they did more of it. This begins a process that then feeds in to the beginning of the CAIeRO, where staff are asked to outline their aims for the programme or module, create a mission statement for it, and think about the ‘look and feel’ (see this post for more on this). The CAIeRO process then leads the course team through the ‘design’ stage towards the ‘destiny’ or delivery of the new or re-designed modules.
Do you have positive stories to share about what you love about teaching, what’s working well, and what it should look like in the future? Would you like to contribute to the conversation? Then why not add your comments, send us a picture (along with a brief outline of what’s happening), or write us a case study? You can comment on this post, or email the Learning Design team at LD@northampton.ac.uk.
References:
Cooperrider, D.L. (2001) Why Appreciative Inquiry? In Cooperrider, D.L., Hammond, S. and Royal, C. (eds) Lessons from the Field: Applying Appreciative Inquiry. Plano: The Thin Book Publishing Company.
Cooperrider, D.L. and Whitney, D (2005) Appreciative Inquiry: A positive revolution in change. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
Hammond, S. (1998) The Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry. Plano: The Thin Book Publishing Company.
McShane, K. (2005) Metaphors for University Teaching. Learning and Teaching in Action. 4(1). Available from: http://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/ltia/issue10/mcshane.shtml [Accessed 29th May 2015]
* Look out for future sessions on the Staff Development site on NILE (note, you will need to be logged in to NILE for this link to work).
Or, how can Lego help you to build a course or module?
Introduction to Programme Design is a one hour staff development session for new academic staff. The session covers key information that staff need to know about how programme and module design works at the University, including signposts to the frameworks and regulations and an overview of the support available.
To help staff start thinking about the complexity of course design, we gave them some lego and asked them to work in pairs to think about the elements that need to be considered, and how they relate to each other.
Why lego?
Why not? Lego is a simple to use, non-threatening tool that helps to externalise people’s ideas in a visual way. It provides a framework for storytelling, and as you will see from the results below, can help teams to synthesise and communicate big ideas. It’s used in many companies as part of a design thinking approach, to help find creative solutions to complex problems*.
Here are some of the elements that Lego helped us to discuss. Each team was given a standard set, along with a single ‘random’ piece. Click on the thumbnail images to view the full scenes:
This team used the lego to show the lecturer and students working within and co-creating a framework, which included other elements like NILE and QAP. The bridge between the students indicates social learning. The scene also includes ‘steps to success’ and a diving board to launch them into their career. The little eyes indicate institutional oversight, and the web is used to catch the students who are not engaged and enable them to ‘bounce’ back in to the course.
This scene has a student at the centre, as the course design starts from their expectations and needs. Alongside the student is an academic and a member of support staff, indicating working in partnership. The shark is about risk: in the form of competition from other universities, and of distractions from learning – the wall is a protection against this. The raised platform indicates student support, including academic standards, facilities like NILE and IT, and skills for employability.
Stakeholders in this scene include service users and commissioners, who are central to programme design for Health courses, as these must consider the needs of the local area in terms of health provision. Other elements include the resources available (lecturers, skills), and the constraints e.g. professional body regulations and quality frameworks. The elephant is Waterside, which will have a ‘massive’ influence on how we move forward with programme design.
The students in this depiction were widely scattered around the room, indicating the ‘geographically dispersed nature of learning communities’. They are connected by mobile devices. The staff member has a movable ‘office’ (which could be at home, a hotdesk, overseas etc). There are signposts for learners throughout the course. The purpose of the course is to help students achieve educational, career and social mobility, indicated by climbing the ladder.
In this scene, the students (on the left) arrive at different levels and some progress faster than others. The programme lead is looking towards them to help them progress. Ahead is the University management and governance, leading the direction of the University. The horse is University strategy, leaping obstacles and providing support to students. On the right is a platform – both for celebration of success (award ceremony) and as a launchpad to a career.
The exercise helped participants to start thinking about the stakeholders that need to be considered in programme design, the aims of their programme or module, and the ways that students are supported. The discussions showed the complexity of the course design process, and shaped our conversations about how it should be supported.
If you were in this session and would like to expand on your model, or if you weren’t but you’d like to respond to the models (or create your own!), please leave us a comment below.
To sign up for a session, visit the Staff Development organisation on NILE (note: you will need to be logged in to NILE for this link to work).
*Although we didn’t have time to use it in this session, the Lego Serious Play website outlines a full methodology for this approach.
We have heard of some synchronisation issues with the Turnitin iPad app, particularly when large numbers of (or very large) student submissions are being handled. Joe Mills of LEAP at Hull helpfully identified that the problem can arise when an iPad ‘sleeps’ during synchronisation – this will prevent the process from completing, resulting in missing papers on your iPad. So, while marking with Turnitin, Joe recommends:
1. Go to Settings>General
2. Scroll down to Autolock
3. Turn Auto-lock to OFF (your iPad will not now go to sleep unless you press the power button)
4. Plug your iPad in to a charging source (you need to make sure your iPad does not run out of charge)
5. Open Turnitin App
6. Go to your class
7. Touch the ‘i’ icon top right to bring up the information about the class
8. Turn “Sync submissions” on
9. Press on screen to come out of the “i” panel
10. The submissions will now start to sync
11. This will take time…!
12. Do NOT switch to another app, open another app or generally do anything that puts the Turnitin app in to the background.
Joe also points out – rightly – that you will need enough space on your iPad to ensure that you can complete your downloads. Check ‘Settings’ / ‘General’ / ‘Usage’ to see your available storage. As a general rule of thumb, 1GB+ will probably be fine. You can use ‘Manage Storage’ to identify any apps that are using a lot of space.
A number of old themes are being retired in MyPad in June and have already been replaced with a new set of responsive designs that will work well on mobile devices. If you use a MyPad site for teaching or personal use it is worth checking whether you are using old themes (you will be prompted when you log in) and updating them or just consider one of the new themes to freshen up your site and make it smartphone friendly.
The NILE External Resources Site (NILEX), which lists free applications you can use to create content for use in NILE, has undergone such an update and continues to expand – there are now over 50 resources covered. Latest posts include Canva (an online graphics and infographics creator) and AppSheet (which creates free IOS and Android data-driven apps using Google Spreadsheets).
NILE sites have been, and continue to be, created for the 15/16 academic year for modules and programmes. We have changed the way that we roll out the sites, and are trialling automatically copying in content from last year’s site (with a matching site ID). There are a few exclusions to this which are mainly postgraduate modules. This is because the content that is copied is a snapshot of the 14/15 site at the time of copying . Therefore, for example, if we take a copy of the Spring NILE site last year into the Spring session for this year we could be taking content that is no longer used. It is more appropriate to wait and perform the copy from the Standard or Autumn cohort. This will need to be organised/managed manually.
Accessing and working on your 15/16 Sites
You can add sites to your NILE account by using the Manage My NILE Sites box on the Sites & Organisations tab, or get in touch with the NILE Administrator (Rachel McCart) to request the site is added to your account.
Your Learning Technologist (LT) will be in touch through Subject Leaders to organise workshop sessions where groups and individuals can attend and work on their sites to get them ready for the new year. Your LT will be in the session to help with any queries and provide guidance.
Submit your work
In performing the copies we had to choose to copy all the content or none. Unfortunately there is not a way for us to choose to exclude the ‘Submit your work’ area so we had to bring in that content too. As many of you may be aware this means that Turnitin submission links (Blackboard assignments are fine) will break, and therefore need to be removed from the 15/16 site (please DO NOT remove them from the 14/15 site), and new ones need to be created for assignments in the 15/16 year.
The NILE administrator (Rachel McCart) is working her way through performing this task on the new sites, but as I’m sure you can appreciate this is a lot for one person to do so it is taking some time. If you would like to expedite this process you can do it yourself. If you would like some guidance then check out the help tab on NILE and follow the link to Preparing your NILE site for the next academic year. Please just let Rachel know if you have done it, and which site(s) you’ve done it on so she can exclude them from her list.
What you will see in the new sites
You will notice that the content that has been copied in appears at the bottom of the left menu. You can click and drag this around to re-order it.
You will also notice that ‘Module materials’ has become ‘Module activities’, and ‘Assessments’ has become ‘Assessment information’. This is to move NILE sites in line with CAIeRO practice, and make it clearer to staff and students about what to expect when they click the link.
QAA Audit
The QAA audit is due to start at the beginning of August therefore your Sites need to be ready by the end of July: this is when a 10% sample of the 15/16 sites will be performed. For more details about the audit please get in touch with your Embedded Quality Officer.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, please comment on this post or email us at learntech@northampton.ac.uk
As part of the University Institute of Learning and Teaching funded Parklife project, Nick Cartwright has been piloting the use of a hybrid laptop. The project involved students working in open spaces of their own choice with Nick’s support, so a device capable of taking notes and sharing information with small groups of students was considered worthy of inclusion to support the process.
The device used – a Lenovo Yoga 2 11.6″ – was selected on the basis that it was capable of using the University’s common applications installed on staff and student PCs and that it appeared to offer flexibility in its physical use – it has a touch screen and can be used in stand, tent and tablet configurations, along with a standard laptop layout.
As many of the activities Nick would be carrying out mirrored some of the potential practices that might be used at the new Waterside Campus, LearnTech agreed to record Nick’s experiences to share with Waterside stakeholders. This is the first of a number of reviews we intend to publish – though we are not recommending the University or members of staff purchase this or any other particular model of laptop. We are just seeking to identify the strengths and weaknesses of such devices in the workplace and classroom.
The Yoga has been used to record notes and observations during Parklife sessions but – in practice – it has been relatively little used to share information with small groups of students. While Nick was impressed with the ability to be able to hook it over a chair back as an informal display, in practice the small screen didn’t make it practical to share with more than two or three students.
Aside from general web browsing and Office applications, Nick found it an excellent device to prepare Prezis with but found Turnitin did not respond well to the touch screen. That said, he did complete all his marking using the Yoga successfully. Its particular strength seemed to be that he could quickly move away from an area of disturbance to a quite corner with minimal disruption. Battery life was acceptable – enough for 3-4 hours and a fast one hour recharge was useful. Ultimately, Nick would like to be able to dock to a large screen with a full keyboard for more intensive text work but has found that almost all his work has been possible on the Yoga.
Its main drawbacks are the small screen and weight when used as a tablet – compared to an iPad (around 500g), 1.4 Kg would be uncomfortable to use for a long period – but the flexibility may well be worth this if the device is used in more than one mode. Some reviews suggest that the 802.11n only wireless connect might be an issue, but Nick has noticed no significant wireless connection problems. The mini-HDMI port is the only physical way to connect to an external screen or projector, so this needs to be borne in mind when considering use cases and the available infrastructure. But the fact that a colleague purchased the larger screen version of the Yoga 2 for herself after trying this machine over a period of time is a clear indication that this is a useful device.
Nick is continuing his evaluation in his Law teaching and hopes to try out Panopto at some point as the included web camera appears to be of very good quality. We will follow up on his experiences later in the year.
CC-BY 4.0 image from Wellcome Images
In an October 2014 blog post we looked at patchwork text assessment and discussed some tentative findings from the first year of a three year patchwork text project being run in the School of The Arts by Dr Craig Staff (Senior Lecturer in Fine Art) and Rob Farmer (Learning Designer). We have now collected the data from the second year of the project, so now seems like a good time to provide an update on how things are going.
The patchwork text project is designed to assess whether changing an undergraduate assessment from an 2,000 word essay to a 2,000 word series of blog postings improves the quality of the assignment submissions. In addition to this, the project is looking at impact on the student experience of this change and the impact on the workload of the staff assessing the blog postings.
So far, 235 participants have taken part in the project, which involves students from three Fine Art modules at levels 4 and 5. Of these participants, 58 (24.7%) have provided feedback to us via a voluntary and anonymous survey. In addition to the quantitative data we have collected, we also have over 3000 words of qualitative feedback, and we are now getting clearer picture of how these students feel about this type of assessment.
Whilst we don’t want to say too much until the end of the project when we will have examined the data is detail, the picture that is emerging so far is that the majority of survey respondents are feeling positive about the change from an essay to a patchwork text assessment. For example, of our respondents, 74.1% said that they liked being able to build up the writing over a series of entries, 70.7 felt that it made the writing process easier and more manageable, and 79.3% said that they would be happy to complete other assignments this way. And when it comes to their perceptions of their grades, it looks as if the respondents felt that they did slightly better in the patchwork assignment than they normally do in written assignments – but more data and analysis is needed here before we make any claims regarding the statistical significance of this particular finding.
One theme that has begun to emerge from the qualitative data is that patchwork text assessment can be difficult, especially at first, because the low word count for the individual entries means that students have to write in a very concise, precise and focused way. However, in most cases students manage to overcome this difficulty in the first few blog entries and ultimately appreciate developing the skills involved in this type of writing. Comments from students on this theme include:
“The process of summarising a topic and ‘making every word count’ can be demanding, but it is not without rewards.”
“At first I found it really difficult, trying to get such broad subjects into 250 words but by the end I was better able to evaluate and edit my work into a cohesive and intense 250 word blog.”
“I found that having to condense the key points of a particular topic into 250 words was extremely difficult. However, this forced me to think about the topic a lot more, and I found that it really helped with learning about each topic.”
“After writing a few blog entries, I felt more confident in what I wanted to say. What I mean by this is that my writing became more prescribed and focused, rather than writing ‘waffle’ as it were and rambling on. This has also helped me massively, in terms of my own artistic practice. It has enabled me to pinpoint exactly what my work is about.”
“The blog was a really good way to ease into the discipline of academic writing again. I settled into the work as my blog progressed, however I did find the word cap a little frustrating, particularly when I wished to add more substantial content. That said, this forced me to be concise and helped me to focus closely upon the salient points.”
“The nature of the patchwork essay is very positive. Having a restricted word count for each entry made the research more vital to certain key areas of the weeks lecture. This forced me to narrow down issues that seemed important/relevant or most interesting and link these to the overarching theme or topic of discussion at the given time.”
Nevertheless, the old adage that you can’t please all of the people all of the time still rings true, and not all of our responses were positive. A few students found it very difficult to get beyond the frustration of having to keep the word count at 200 words per entry, but fortunately these were in the minority, and hopefully this is something that we can work on addressing as the project moves forwards.
Following my Getting ‘Waterside’ Ready post last week about ways in which the Learning Designers can help academic staff think about how to develop their skills for more blended learning and teaching, I thought it would be useful and fun(!) to share some of the drawings produced by one staff team on what they value in their face-to-face teaching. And I expect that not many of them ever thought they would see their artwork in print!
In light of the fact that it is the 100 year anniversary of Gallipoli, this tutor perceived his teaching in terms of going over the top and everyone being all in it together. No-one was left behind in the trench, but they were heading into no-man’s land and getting stuck in, entering the battle together.
This image drew on the Greek idea of heaven. The various parts were all created and then everything was thrown up into the air and disrupted, before it all comes back down together as a composite whole.
This image is about inspiration and asking questions, but that we are all on a different journey but will all end up reaching the horizon / sunset.
There are lots of different expressions on the people in this picture, showing apprension, anxiety, excitement, worry … As staff we have to manage so many different things that are going on for our students which is hard, but also exciting.
This picture is of climbing a mountain – there are hard challenges ahead, but our role is to give the students structured support to help them progress and ultimately to achieve their goal.
This image captures the role of the tutor as someone who can provide knowledge, students can find things out for themselves, we offer them support (a strong arm) and time.
As tutors we can generate excitement. This is a modern lightbulb representing new ideas and students bringing their own ideas and capabilities. A new generation of ideas and lots of sparks going off, all around.
The idea of a teaching cycle is clearly apparent from this visual representation of what is valued in teaching. The notion of planting the seeds and nurturing the young plants as they grow into a mature tree that bears fruit in due time. Sometimes more seeds are needed but always the cycle continues.
Mature students can also be anxious about learning, but as they share their experiences this can lead to illumination and qualification.
This tutor conceived of his face-to-fae teaching as including lots of talking in a safe and secure environment where they can flourish and develop themselves. Drama and other physical activities take place both in and out of the classroom and the role of the tutor is to take that step back and watch the students flourish.
The notions about teaching in this image are that of encouraging the students to think differently and independently – they may well end up on a different route to that envisaged by the tutor. Includes the idea of being a rebel.
A number of ideas are expressed here – the notion of signposting students, mountains to climb and holding up a mirror to the students to get them to reflect and learn from themselves and others – they are their own resource.
This final image also captures a variety of concepts. There is the idea of dialogue leading to lightbulb moments both as students among themselves but also in discussions with tutors. They are also the drivers, the ones in control, but it isn’t a ‘journey’ – this tutor wants students to be bothered and to be rebels WITH a cause.
Q: How do you eat an elephant?
A: One bite at a time!
The move to Waterside can seem as if it isn’t really that long away, given all that you may feel you have to do inbetween now and then. Wondering where to start can also seem daunting and the mountain of work that you see ahead of you can be so huge that you can’t even see the summit, let alone work out a route to the top.
In supporting staff to get to grips with the course redesign implications that are predicated on a number of guiding principles about how learning and teaching will look, the Learning Design team came across a really useful set of blog posts by Tony Bates, a Canadian Research Associate who is also President and CEO of Tony Bates Associates Ltd and who, according to their website are “a private company specializing in consultancy and training in the planning and management of e-learning and distance education.”
The blog posts were written to help people understand and implement a series of practical steps to help deliver quality in their online learning materials. While I don’t wish to duplicate the posts here, I thought it might be helpful to summarise some of the key points in an attempt to help you to start thinking about how you might begin to eat your own elephant, or climb that mountain. I found some obvious points in the posts, some practical and straightforward suggestions and some real gems. There are also some questions and exercises to get you started along the road to redesigning your own modules.
I should also preface this post with the reminders that, as an institution, we are definitely NOT going fully online but will be exploring ways to enhance our learning and teaching using technology and that the precise nature of each blended module is for staff teams to determine.
The Nine Steps are as follows (each link will take you straight to the original post)
- Step 1: Decide how you want to teach online
- Step 2: Decide on what kind of online course
- Step 3: Work in a Team
- Step 4: Build on existing resources
- Step 5: Master the technology
- Step 6: Set appropriate learning goals
- Step 7: Design course structure and learning activities
- Step 8: Communicate, communicate, communicate
- Step 9: Evaluate and innovate
Step 1: Decide how you want to teach online
This step highlights the importance of rethinking the way you teach when you go online and redesigning the teaching to meet the needs of your online learners given that their needs may differ because of the specific learning context. The gem in this post is the emphasis on asking you to consider your basic teaching philosophy – what is your role and how would you like to tackle some of the limitations of classroom teaching and renew your overall approach to teaching? As Bates himself says: “It may not mean doing everything online, but focussing the campus experience on what can only be done on campus.”
Step 2: Decide on what kind of online course
Bates describes a continuum of online learning ranging from online classroom aids to fully online and explores four key factors that will influence the kind of online course you should be teaching:
- your teaching philosophy (see step 1)
- the kind of students you are trying to reach (or will have to teach)
- the requirements of the subject discipline
- the resources available to you
A number of subject groups and disciplines are already starting to explore what the current direction of travel for learning and teaching at Northampton might look like for them and developing models and suggestions for how to redesign their modules and programmes within a broader set of principles. It is useful to note that while Bates experience suggests that “almost anything can be effectively taught online, given enough time and money” (emphasis added), the reality is that resources are finite and that it is therefore imperative to work out what could and should be taught face-to-face and what could and should be taught online, remembering that we are still going to be primarily a campus-based institution. He begins the process by differentiating between the teaching of content and the teaching or development of skills and provides a useful example of how this might look in practice.
The gem here is his consideration of how to make best use of the various resources available to you including time (the most precious resource of all), your learning technology support staff (always glad to help), your VLE (NILE) and your colleagues.
Step 3: Work in a Team
Online learning is different to classroom teaching and as a result will require staff to learn some new skills. You are unlikely to have all your F2F learning materials in a suitable format for online learning. This post considers how the team of staff around you can help you to move from where you are, to where you want to get to given that “particular attention has to be paid to providing appropriate online activities for students, and to structuring content in ways that facilitate learning in an asynchronous online environment”. Working in a team can also, of course, help with managing the workload, and with getting quickly to a high quality online standard, as well as being a way to save some of your time.
Step 4: Build on Existing Resources
As one Deputy Dean said at a recent School Learning and Teaching Development Day: “Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater!”
This can include repurposing your own content, but also drawing on existing online resources (TED talks, The Khan Academy, iTunesU) as well as ‘raw’ content that you can use as the basis for developing learning activities and he argues that ‘only in the areas where you have unique, original research that is not yet published, or where you have your own ‘spin’ on content, is it really necessary to create ‘content’ from scratch”.
The hidden gem? Distinguishing between using existing resources that “do not transfer well to an online learning environment (such as a 50 minute recorded lecture), and using materials already specifically developed for online teaching”. He suggests that you “take the time to be properly training in how to use [NILE]”, recognising that a 2-hour investment now can save you hours of time later on.
Step 5: Master the Technology
That’s it really – come to some training on the tools that you would like to use and know more about! This includes learning about their strengths and weaknesses so that you know that you have selected the right tool for the job, but also have a clearer idea about how they might work in practice or how to avoid some of the pitfalls. There are plenty of tools out there, but selecting the right tool is an instructional or pedagogical issue that requires you to be clear on what it is that you are trying to achieve.
Bates’ gem (from my perspective) is his no-nonsense approach to engaging with central training and development initiatives. Here are a few that might help:
- The CLEO (Collaborative Learning Experiences Online) workshop that forms part of our C@N-DO staff development programme is a good way of putting yourself in the shoes of the online learning and experiencing first hand some of the obstacles that online learners face, in order to prevent your own students facing similar issues.
- NILE training (around specific pedagogical purposes) is provided by the Learning Technology team and in addition to regular scheduled training, can also be tailored to suit the purposes of your subject team or discipline. Please just ask!
- Spend a little time each year looking at any of the new features added to NILE during the year (Check out the Learntech Blog for updates).
Finally in this step is a discussion around why simply recording your lectures is not the best way to go. Definitely worth the time to read through his reasons, if this is something you were considering.
Step 6: Set appropriate Learning Goals
In short, should the learning goals (outcomes) for online/blended learning be the same as, or different to the same module delivered in a fully face-to-face mode? The key differentiator is that while the goals may well remain the same, the method may change. He also raises the question as to whether additional learning outcomes need to be considered in terms of the development of 21st century learning skills (in particular, learning the skills to ‘manage knowledge’ long after they graduate).
The link between learning outcomes and assessment is also explored here as is the way in which assessment drives student behaviour. He concludes by saying that “[b]ecause the internet is such a large force in our lives, we need to be sure that we are making the most of its potential in our teaching, even if that means changing somewhat what and how we teach”.
Step 7: Design Course Structure and Learning Activities
After an initial exploration between ‘strong’ and ‘loose’ online learning structures, Bates identifies the three main determinates of teaching structure as being:
- the organisational requirements of the institution;
- the preferred philosophy of teaching of the instructor; and
- the instructor’s perception of the needs of the students.
In the light of recent discussions here around what is meant by ‘contact’ hours (see this Definitions paper produced recently by the University’s Institute of Learning and Teaching), he identifies problems with this approach whilst simultaneously recognising that this is, nevertheless, the standard measuring unit for face-to-face teaching. One reason he highlights in particular is that it measures input, not output. Bates is also keen to ensure parity between online and face-to-face learning in terms of ensuring quality at Validation.
He discusses the time input as well as the structure of modules and how existing face-to-face structures mean we can already be some way down the path on module design, with the important proviso that it is important to ensure that content moved online is suitable for online learning. This is where the Learning Design team can help you to make decisions around what to teach or what to leave out, given that making some work optional means it should not be assessed and that if it is not assessed, students will quickly learn to avoid doing it.
This step concludes with a look at how to design student activities. This is typically something that would be covered during the second day of a CAIeRO curriculum redesign workshop, but anyone who has participated in any part of the C@N-DO programme will already have come into contact with some of these online learning activities / e-tivities. Some good points for consideration here though.
Step 8: Communicate, communicate, communicate
This steps explores the vital importance of ongoing, continuing communication between the tutor and the online learners, that is more than simply seeing them in class on a weekly basis. Maintaining tutor presence in the online environment is a “critical factor for online student success and satisfaction”, helping students recognise that their online contributions are just as much a part of their learning experience as the face-to-face components.
Creating a compelling online learning environment is possible but requires deliberate planning and conscientious design. It must also be done in such a way as to control the instructor’s workload. Bates has a number of ‘top tips’ for setting and managing student expectations online and emphasises that tutors should also adhere to these themselves. Like in the CLEO, he suggests starting with a small task in the first week that enables the guidelines to be applied, with the tutor paying particular attention to this activity. As he rightly points out …
students who do not respond to set activities in the first week are at high risk of non-completion. I always follow up with a phone call or e-mail to non-respondents in this first week, and ensure that each student is following the guidelines … What I’m doing is making my presence felt. Students know that I am following what they do from the outset.
There is a discussion here around the benefits and disadvantages of both synchronous and asynchronous communication – the decision again being based on pedagogical need. There is also a list of tips for how to manage online discussions for you to read an inwardly digest 🙂 and a consideration of how cultural factors can impact on participation.
Step 9: Evaluate and Innovate
We ask our students to do it all the time – let’s make sure we apply the same principles to our own learning and teaching development and complete our own reflective cycle. Bates has a series of questions to guide any evaluation of teaching (not just online teaching), linking it back to Step 1 where he defines what we mean in terms of ‘quality’ in online learning. This doesn’t have to be a hugely onerous task – we already have ways of answering some of the questions (e.g. student grades, student participation rates in online activities (track number of views), assignments, Evasys questionnaires etc).
Then consider what it is that you need to do differently next time, in this ongoing, iterative process of Quality Enhancement.
Hopefully you will have the opportunity to explore some of these blog postings as you begin to think about how to get ready for Waterside, even if you don’t agree with everything that Bates says!
