Case Studies in eLearning For Researchers, Teachers and Students
Edited by
Sue Greener
Case Studies in eLearning Volume One First published: November 2013 ISBN: 978-1-909507-81-4 Copyright Š 2013 The authors All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of critical review, no part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Applications for the copyright holder’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publishers. Disclaimer: While every effort has been made by the editor, authors and the publishers to ensure that all the material in this book is accurate and correct at the time of going to press, any error made by readers as a result of any of the material, formulae or other information in this book is the sole responsibility of the reader. Readers should be aware that the URLs quoted in the book may change or be damaged by malware between the time of publishing and accessing by readers. Note to readers. Some papers have been written by authors who use the American form of spelling and some use the British. These two different approaches have been left unchanged. Published by: Academic Publishing International Limited, Reading, RG4 9SJ, United Kingdom, info@academic-publishing.org Printed by Ridgeway Press Available from www.academic-bookshop.com
Contents Contents ................................................................................................ i List of Contributors .............................................................................. iii Introduction to Case Studies in eLearning ............................................ v Technical, Methodological or Psychological Preparation: a Case Study of Using Electronic Portfolio Assessment in Initial Teacher Education in Hong Kong.........................................................................................1 Jane Mok The Changing Roles of Staff and Student Within a Connectivist Educational Blog Model ......................................................................18 Elaine Garcia, Mel Brown and Ibrahim Elbeltagi "Digital Futures in Teacher Education": Exploring Open Approaches towards Digital Literacy ......................................................................36 Anna Gruszczynska, Guy Merchant and Richard Pountney The Yin/Yang of Innovative Technology Enhanced Assessment for Promoting Student Learning...............................................................62 Maggie Hutchings, Anne Quinney, Kate Galvin and Vince Clark E-Enablement in Distance Education – Engineering Growth: A Case Study of IMT-CDL ................................................................................80 Tushar Marwaha and Anita Mathew Learning Analytics Artefacts in a Cloud-Based Environment: A Design Science Perspective ..........................................................................103 Phelim Murnion and Markus Helfert eLearning: Tool to Ensure Growth and Sustainability of SMEs.........122 AndrÊe Roy Sharing and Shaping Effective Institutional Practice in TEL Through the 3E Framework ............................................................................141 Keith Smyth Challenges in Developing e-Submission Policy and Practice ............160 Alice Bird i
Case Studies in eLearning Tools for Evaluating Students’ Work in an Interactive (Open) Virtual Space: Case Study of an eLearning Course in an International Network of Universities .................................................................... 178 Jana Dlouhá, Martin Zahradník, Jiří Dlouhý and Andrew Barton Mutlimodal Teaching Through ICT Education: An e-Twinning Program as a Case Study of Intercultural Exchange........................................ 200 Paraskevi Kanari and Georgios Potamias
ii
List of Contributors Andrew Barton, Charles University Environment Center, Prague, Czech Republic Alice Bird, Liverpool John Moores University, UK Mel Brown, Plymouth College of Art, UK Vince Clark, Bournemouth University, UK Jana Dlouhá, Charles University Environment Center, Prague, Czech Republic Jiří Dlouhý, Charles University Environment Center, Prague, Czech Republic Ibrahim Elbeltagi, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK Kate Galvin, Bournemouth University, UK Elaine Garcia, Plymouth College of Art, UK Sue Greener, University of Brighton, UK Anna Gruszczynska, Sheffield Hallam University, UK Markus Helfert, School of Computing, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland Maggie Hutchings, Bournemouth University, UK Paraskevi Kanari, National Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece Tushar Marwaha, IMT-Centre for Distance Learning, Ghaziabad, UP, India Anita Mathew, IMT-Centre for Distance Learning, Ghaziabad, UP, India Guy Merchant, Sheffield Hallam University, UK Jane Mok, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Phelim Murnion, School of Business, Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, Galway, Ireland Georgios Potamias, National Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece Richard Pountney, Sheffield Hallam University, UK Anne Quinney, Bournemouth University, UK Andrée Roy, Université de Moncton, Moncton, Canada Keith Smyth, Edinburgh Napier University, UK Martin Zahradník, Charles University Environment Center, Prague, Czech Republic iii
Case Studies in eLearning
About the author
Dr Sue Greener is Principal Lecturer at the University of Brighton Business School teaching Learning & Development, HRM, Business Context and Research Methods and has received a Teaching Excellence award from the University. She is Programme Leader for the consortium FdA Business, Business Pathway Leader for Joint Honours Degree and Course Leader for BSc Business with Enterprise. Sue is also the Course Director for a fully online final year undergraduate course with students in diverse world regions. She researches, advises and supervises in the fields of e-learning strategy, Technology Enhanced Learning and reflective learning. Sue is the co-founder of the Business eLearning Research Group and a member of the CROME and CIMER research groups at Brighton Business School. She is Editor of the academic journal Interactive Learning Environments, published by Routledge. Sue holds a BA, MBA, EdD, FHEA and is a Chartered Fellow of CIPD.
iv
Nobody likes to be a guinea pig, but everyone likes innovation. Introduction to Case Studies in eLearning As technologies change our working patterns, our leisure and our learning activities in daily life, we strike positions on the technology adoption scale which show our greater or lesser degree of enthusiasm for technological change. Some of us are out and out enthusiasts, never happier than when we are trying out new gadgets or apps and coming up with new uses for these novelties in the way we contribute to learning. However, most learning practitioners are a little more cautious; not against the new, but concerned that short-term ideas could be adopted for the sake of novelty rather than as a considered response to genuine opportunities for learning and teaching. Where is the pedagogic justification, we cry? Well, this book is a collection of papers which answer that cry. Each has endeavoured to contextualise and justify the innovation demonstrated, and each has built upon pedagogic theory to offer a considered view of the ideas described. All the case studies here discuss innovations based on technologies for enhancing learning. Each describes the challenges, benefits and limitations of the innovation, and often their entailed complexities. At the same time, the very nature of the content means that we are dealing here with students and staff as “guinea pigs� who have experimented with technologies and who may not always be happy with the experience. This particularly applies when the experiments are driven by institutional decision-makers with little consultation, but even small-scale innovations at modular or project level can strike the actors in the experiment as unnecessary, or as following trends rather than considered approaches to improving the way we learn and teach. So the case studies in this collection have been chosen to represent a wide range of technologies, educational contexts and subject disciplines with the intention of presenting a state of the art picture from v
Case Studies in eLearning recent e-learning conferences. Here are the collected endeavours of a group of folk who urgently believe in the changes they discuss, and who have gone to considerable trouble to justify, evaluate and share their ideas and experiences for the benefit of the learning and teaching community. We have case studies based in countries from Atlantic Canada to Poland and Greece, set in young and older school-age groups, universities and workplaces. Research methodologies used include qualitative methods such as narrative analysis, interviews, surveys and social research, plus quantitative methods including learning analytics. Learning technologies explored include blogging tools, wikis, e-portfolios, computer-assisted assessment, audience response surveys through mobile devices, social media tools, peer review and grading software, Cloud-based computing and multimedia projects. Issues addressed include blended learning, esubmission, institutional frameworks for technology enhanced learning, power relations between stakeholders of change, collaborative learning and the use of Open Educational Resources. A cornucopia of experiences. The case study format is of vital importance for practitioners, especially those who want to adopt new practices and technologies but who face a whole range of practical or pedagogic questions for which they seek answers before following the innovators. Where new or changing phenomena are experienced, and this clearly relates to the world of learning technologies, it is so helpful to read of specific projects, associated with the practical data of time, number, delivery and outcomes which can help teachers assess the justification for change in their own circumstances. Cases allow evidence to be presented and tested by those engaged with applying and developing new ideas. Certainly they will not all offer generalizability, but what they lose here, they gain in accessibility to a wide readership (Nisbet & Wyatt 1984). Most of the studies in this book are of the exploratory or narrative kind (Yin 2000). They set out a clearly delineated example of educational practice which we can use to benchmark our own practice and identify trend movements in learning and teaching, offering us all a map for this new territory.
vi
Sue Greener Today's teaching and learning experience is a challenging one, but perhaps this has always been the case. There is a sense in which control is shifting away from teachers to learners, while at the same time quality assurance measures increase preparation requirements and over-focus on specific learning outcomes, taking us away from a wider, more open-ended learning experience in education. Teachers praise the virtues of self-directed independent learning, and this is a genuine goal for Higher Education in particular, yet they may not yet have fully faced the implications of students who can, with ease, shop around for input from other teachers at other institutions through their smartphones. Teachers who excel at delivering face-toface lectures will always find themselves in demand both offline and online, but not all teachers have that skill and feel threatened by Massive Open Online Courses, video-recordings of high status figures in their field, and those whose facility with information and communications technology may appear way ahead of their own. A number of the case studies in this collection discuss the notion of digital literacy and explore how different conceptions of digital skills, learning approaches and processes are affecting our understanding of effective learners and teachers. This book demonstrates that innovations do not come singly. The authors establish in paper after paper that not only the specific innovation or pilot study discussed in the case demonstrates creativity and challenge, but that frequently the context of learning and teaching for these cases is also of itself innovative. Simply reading through the cases as a range of strongly innovative learning experiences is a humbling but positive experience, let alone exploring the specific innovations evidenced in these contexts. Take, for example, the case study from Hutchings et al (2012), which discusses innovative assessment strategies, but at the same time is based in the context of a highly innovative second year undergraduate module. That module involves web-based case studies, narratives, poems, published research, videos and policies supplemented by lectures and group work. This seems to suggest that e-learning research practitioners tend to have an innovation mindset, rather than being focussed on single interventions, and they are likely to be the authors of series of innovations which lead their colleagues into experimentation. vii
Case Studies in eLearning Many of these cases discuss the tensions and divergent perspectives of learning technologies: for example the paper from Gruszczynska et al (2012) who present competing perspectives of digital literacy and Bird (2011) who presents competing stakeholder perspectives of a major cultural shift when introducing e-submission. How hard is it then, for teachers to introduce technological innovations to enhance learning? For the last ten years it has been relatively easy to gain opportunities for such innovation, given determination and an acceptance of considerable up-front preparation on top of normal teaching loads. However, these case studies suggest that the field of elearning is developing in maturity; that there is much more experience on which to draw, and much more critical and considered comment on the impacts and relevance of such innovation. Some believe that the objective is to lose sight of the technology and just be aware of the improvements in learning enabled by it. Others see added affordances of value from learning with technology which need to be recognised, not hidden. Perhaps ultimately we may have to accept that the nature of learning is changing: not just for younger people, but for all. As we struggle with information overloads, information filters are growing in popularity, making user-friendly decisions for us as to what we should find from search engines, and what we want to read at any particular time. As teachers and researchers in e-learning, we are becoming increasingly aware of the pitfalls of connectedness as well as the benefits related to learning in community. Technology is both reducing in visibility at the same time as mounting a takeover in our freedom to learn. It is through documenting each innovation through case studies such as those in this collection, that we document this revolution and resist the role of “guinea pig�.
Sue Greener November 2013 University of Brighton, UK
References Nisbet, J., & Watt, J., (1984) Case Study, Chapter 5 in Bell, K., et al (Eds), Conducting Small-Scale Investigations in Educational Management, London: Harper & Row Yin, R. K. (2009) Case Study Research: Design and Methods, (4th Edition). California, SAGE Publications.
viii