Reading Notes. Littlejohn & Pegler (2006). Cpt3: Devising blended e-learning activities

Littlejohn, A., & Pegler, C. (2006). ‘Chapter 3: Devising blended e-learning activities’, in Preparing for Blended E-Learning: Understanding Blended and Online Learning. London: Routledge. Pp 49 - 69

“Teaching is a social process and becoming more so all the time, as the reliance on formal didactic approaches to teaching declines.” Page 50

The social process brings a real world aspect to creative teaching, where it is very likely that students after graduating will need to be capable to speak about their work and share their practice.

It is important to plan student face-to-face time, but equally, time away from students. This self-paced time can offer reflection and feedback which is vital to learning.

“While some activity will remain individual student activity, most students would benefit from the opportunity to interact with peers and tutor as they need to, for example to ask questions or to share understanding.” Page 50

It is discussed how as learners become more experienced e-learners and gain confidence they will be more likely to post and address audiences that they do not know at times when no one might be listening. I have experienced this on this PGCHE course.

Large cohorts in taught in the same place ensures that all students are receiving the same information, although it isn’t clear whether all students are benefiting. Online large groups can be split into smaller groups while not changing the student’s location. This could result in students getting missed, lost or not having the chance to speak up. As tutors you can blend both methods.

For instance, face-to-face lessons for information transition, reinforced by online handouts and presentation slides. Online forums can also support discussion along with online polling and mind mapping which can be bought into seminars.

Page 52: talks about prompts to speak up – hand up prompt in online learning, or raising your own hand.

Online -Watching back, and re watching to avoid note taking and the missing of information.

In face-to-face learning students can be present or absent and miss out.

Main benefit of asynchronous teaching – even if you are not present at one time you can still take part in active learning, by entering discussions at any time of the day, giving flexibility. A drawback of this could be that it makes it very difficult for the tutor, trying to manage student’s online participation.

Scholarship brings up some quite good recommendation for synchronous and asynchronous teaching and shows how they can be blended together to form debate, voting could happen at the end to conclude an argument. This could be useful for allowing my art students to begin to form critique- a key skill in creative industries…

“One format for the debate was wholly asynchronous, with students presenting arguments and counterarguments in turn, each side meeting deadlines to do so and answering questions placed by fellow students. Another approach to the debate took place using both asynchronous and synchronous tools.”

This concept could be bought into my practice by presenting a popular artists work, which appears in the news onto a forum, and asking them what they like or dislike about it, to debate what makes ‘good’ art, commenting on each other’s views constructively. They could be invited to research what other forms of media are reviewing to consider their answers. This would meet: “organizational learning” with “knowledge management”, guiding students to take ownership on their learning. Page 54.

Once research has been carried out online, with students stating and sharing facts. Sides to different arguments will be more apparent.

“In the next stage the debating teams were identified by the tutor, with each team member then being allocated a role. The roles included those of proposer, seconder, researcher, scribe (to produce a summary of the early discussion) and technical reviewer (to comment on the experience of the technology). In this next stage the students were using asynchronous tools to gather and review the resources that they would use to support their side of the argument in the debate.” Page 54

Students could practice aspects asynchronously in their groups to prepare their argument. The final stage of the debate could happen in person, synchronously. Using online polling to vote.

This learning activity would be quite complex!

*“The synchronous events with which the asynchronous discussion is blended (or around which it is ‘wrapped’ – see Figure 2.1 in Chapter 2) could be a week-long residential event, or a regular weekly tutorial” page 55. This could be useable with an artist residence forming the synchronous aspect of the structure.

page 56

An effect of online asynchronous learning is that it creates a huge amount of data. How do you mark this? Gauge or track this? Interaction or performance?

Some ideas to manage this:

-Set clear end dates for the discussion

-Provide a summary of key points (This happens in our PGCHE)

-Moderating a discussion, could be I clear moderator or old messages are archived

-Using off forum tools to help

-modelling online productive discussion

-Using system tools and alerts, as you approach deadlines.

-Organise a forum so each one fulfils a role

“Mason (1994) has suggested that only about one-third of online participants will generally be very active” page 60 – visibly engaging, commenting, taking part.

A third, will sometime participate, and a further third will never. This statistic relates to classroom synchronous teaching.

“All teachers know from experience that students attending classes and participating in learning activity are likely to do better in assessment.” Page 60

Icebreaking activities can be used to start students working with the concept of forums.

(Source: Open University T171 Tutor’s conference

Planning for Accessibility and Usage

In person, some students would need to implement change in order to receive the same information – hearing loops, accessibility, braille, mobility planning.

Online assistance is quite different, although systems are being created. Large fonts, audio descriptions, audio reading, colours changed, These can be personalised for each student.