A facilitator; some guidelines; no questions; no answers; plenty of surprises; prizes up for grabs and the student is the star of the show!
Learning is a journey towards gaining new knowledge, experiences and developing skills. The lecturer plays a crucial role in guiding a student through this journey and a large part is down to the active participation and engagement from the students themselves. The boxes they choose to open, and the way in which they embrace their learning will have a dramatic effect upon how much value is put on what they gain from their student experience. One key question educators continue to ask is: “How can I encourage student engagement and actively engage the student body?” This is one of the questions this year’s DMU e-learning symposium attempted to tackle. However, this time, we added some real student participants and debated the benefits and limitations of e-learning with lecturers representing differing perspectives.
The pro e-learning lobby dazzled the audience with their knowledge of wikis, blogs and the use of blackboard. The opposition presented a balanced case, articulately argued in the corner for more traditional teaching methods, pointing out some of the key challenges and pitfalls of both perspectives. Despite the hostilities between the opposing lobbies, both groups acknowledged that e-learning is best used to compliment existing practice and should not replace traditional methods! Through this wrangling, we had the banker to call, so delicately played, also by the students. They were able to shape the debate by leading the discussion to consider the learning from the student’s perspective. They managed to exhume the following considerations when designing/refining modules to include e-learning:
· "E-learning should support traditional learning methods rather than replace them! It can be used to make a module become alive and more dynamic to the student’s needs and reflect the real world (e.g. links to useful resources provide fresh updated materials, tools adopted by industry etc.,)"
· "Consider the diversity of needs and differing attitudes towards learning; a range of means for communication may improve feedback as well as reach and involve more students. But we don't want to be distracted or bogged down by technology!"
· "Consider how we learn and develop skills that impact upon the way in which we deal with issues in the workplace. If more learning takes place in 'cyberspace' how do we, for instance, develop effective communication, discursive, critique and other social skills?"
· "Understand the principles under which social networking sites, such as Facebook, have become popular. Embrace those ideas that could be used within education (e.g. formation of communities for common interest, discussion boards, live threads, etc). But please avoid my social space! Add this capability to an internally accessible system such as blackboard"
To develop and understand how best e-learning can compliment traditional methods, focusing on the points raised by the students in the symposium they will be implemented in a BAL module with a large and diverse student body. This year's students will be invited to act as a team of consultants for an organisation of choice, developing responses as they apply theory discussed in class to analyse and evaluate management practise. In addition to lectures, tutors will also focus time in tutorials to guiding students through case-study analysis of a selection of organisations and facilitate the transferability of knowledge and skills to their chosen organisation. This will be achieved by posting directed exercises and suggestive courses of action onto a module blog, so that students can formulate responses collectively, using the group wiki tool inside blackboard (see figure 1 and 2). Students are also invited to comment on their experience, knowledge gained and essential skills developed during the group activities and from lectures and tutorials using a private blog (an online journal). This enables students to learn management and strategy first hand by both practicing the theory they learn but also to critically evaluate the theories in real world situations. Assessments will focus on each individual's analysis of separate issues, critically engaging with the literature in a short briefing paper to the organisation and a short pre-appraisal summary to the consultant line manager prior to the submission of a group report in term 2. This allows both the assessment of the process (developing skills, engagement with applying theory to practice) as well as an output, which attempts to imitate the reality of the workplace. Empowering individuals in a supportive team environment of differing skills, experiences and knowledge should inspire students and enable reflection on progress made, whilst providing feedback from peers and the tutor.
Figure 2: An example of a group wiki page that is a collaborative tool to share knowledge and research, providing a learning experience in which to apply theory within various practical settings
In order to ascertain the benefits and limitations of incorporating such e-learning tools into the BAL module, a focus group will be used, with questions designed to understand how/if the addition of e-learning tools (other than the widely used Blackboard), have benefited the student’s learning experience. Student evaluations of the module learning practices can then be compared to previous year’s feedback and module performance. From this we hope to identify some good practice and understand any challenges that may be faced when adopting e-learning.
Ultimately, determine whether it is a good deal?
