Elearning in Practice – Case of ComeniusUniversity

Mgr. Katarína Pišútová, MA, EdDComenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia

pisutova@rec.uniba.sk

Abstract—About a decade ago, when online learning wasintroduced to most public universities in Slovakia, focus washeavily on technology, rather then methodology. Up to thisday, many public universities provide their teachers andstudents with access to a Learning Management System,occasionally some technical training, but that is where theefforts ended. About three years ago, Comenius Universitystarted to offer methodological support and training to theirteachers. The goal was to improve use of LearningManagement System in a way that adds interactivity andinteresting elements to the courses increasing quality ofteaching.

Since 2012, at Comenius University, we attempted to addmethodological training and support to our teachers. In theFall of 2015 we conducted a small internal survey consistingof over 20 in-depth interviews with teachers andadministrators in an effort to see what elearning initiativesare in progress and how to improve our efforts in providingbalanced technical and methodological support.

Purpose of this article is threefold: 1. to briefly describe training and support provided2. to showcase interesting and innovative teaching

initiatives taking place at the University and 3. to identify the steps to be undertaken in order to

improve the extent and the quality of elearning atour University. These steps might be useful inother places where the elearning is in a similarstage of development.

1. INTRODUCTION – DEVELOPMENT OF ONLINE

LEARNING AT PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES IN SLOVAKIA

As opposed to in private or non-profit sector, onlinelearning development at Slovak public universities hasn'tbeen very fast. The continuing problems of the lack offunding and the lack of skilled educators, and hence, a lackof quality in teaching, presents major obstacles for allkinds of innovation in teaching at the universities, and thisis even more applicable to development of online learning.

Due to the fact that public universities can charge onlylimited fees for their part-time courses, there is a lack ofmotivation to invest into moving these programs online tomake them accessible to a larger volume of students.University administrators (being overwhelmed bycontinuous transition and lack of funding for basic needs)don’t invest into building support structures for teachers oronline students. Online courses at Slovak universities arebeing developed only either as an initiative of enthusiasticteachers, or when there is an additional external fundingopportunity for such a development [1].

First initiatives to introduce onlinee learning to Slovakhigher education dates back to 1990s.

From 1995-1999, there was a European Union fundedprogram called “Multi Country Cooperation in DistanceEducation”, which was trying to promote cooperation indistance education development between EU memberstates and accession countries [2]. This project’s goal wasto build completely new distance education programs incooperation with EU partners, based mostly on the UKOpen University model. In Slovakia, the interest amonguniversities in this project was not very high. Universitieshad enough problems already without changing theirform of delivery. Only a few universities, all technicallyoriented, applied for participation in this project. WithinMulti Country Project five distance learning centres werecreated at four different Slovak technical universities –Slovak Technical University in Bratislava, TechnicalUniversity in Zvolen, University of Zilina and TechnicalUniversity Kosice.

These centres were provided with technical equipment,and employees were trained in designing, developing andteaching distance learning courses. From 1995-1999,Slovak centres participated in creating and conducting anumber of distance learning courses. However, thesecourses were all in English and hence did not attractmany Slovak students, and only three of them had anyonline component. In 1999, when the Multi CountryProject had officially finished, a network of distanceeducation centres remained in place, each as a part oftheir host university’s infrastructure. But universities didnot have funding and also not much interest to move intodeveloping their own online courses.

On the other hand, this program created the firstpopulation of university employees trained in onlineinstructional design who later supported the first Slovakonline courses and training of people at other universities,non-governmental organizations and business companies.

Since then, online courses at Slovak public universitieshave been developing based on efforts of enthusiasts orfunding opportunities either from independent donors -such as the Open Society Foundation, or EU funds - suchas the European Social Fund, or Slovak state grantagencies.

The problem with outside grant funding is that very oftenthe university decides to create a particular course with aparticular focus based on the grant call, rather than themission of the institution. And after grant money runs out,the university often closes the course because they have noreal interest in the focus area and hence no motivation infinding funds to continue teaching it. In this way, many

courses created on EU and other grant money, simplycease to exist after the end of the grant.

A number of universities that tried to set policies andestablish systems for online learning seemed to be focusingsolely on technical aspects. The University of Zilina offersthe Moodle open source environment for all their teachers.They created a department for running and maintainingservers, and provide technical support for teachers willingto try to transfer their courses. The support is also providedfor students taking online courses [3], [1]. However, theuniversity does not provide any incentives for teachers totransfer their courses into online form, nor does it provideinstructional design support. A similar situation exists atthe Slovak Technical University, which also uses Moodleas a Learning Management System [4], or ConstantinPhilosopher University in Nitra [5], [6], University ofPresov [7], University of Economics in Bratislava [8] andthe Technical University of Kosice, which developed aLearning Management System of their own [9] and is alsousing Moodle [10].

An exception might be the private College ofManagement, which was created by the City University ofSeattle in the U.S. The College of Management offersonline and blended courses, and provides teachers withtraining and support to the same standards as CityUniversity of Seattle. The College of Management alsoseems to be the only higher education institution inSlovakia that emphasizes use of collaborative activities intheir coursework [11], [12].

In the last few years, due to the boom of Massive OpenOnline Courses (MOOC) and their massive publicity, thegeneral interest in online learning increased again and somenew initiatives and projects appeared at different Slovakuniversities. Worth mentioning is for instance Pre-University Mathematics MOOC course offered by theSlovak University of Technology [13].

2. ONLINE LEARNING AT COMENIUS UNIVERSITY

Comenius University created a team of experts to selectthe most appropriate Learning Management System(LMS) for the University's elearning in 2003. In 2004, theteam of experts settled for cooperation with companyTrask, s.r.o. and their LMS system eDOCEO. By 2006 itbecame clear, that there are some problems and issues withthe eDOCEO LMS system, that the company Trask wasnot able to fix. Parallely, the University started toaccommodate the open source LMS system Moodle,which was being adopted at roughly the same time bymany other public universities in Slovakia and CzechRepublic [14].

Center of Information Technology at ComeniusUniversity started to provide Moodle as a service availableto all teachers and students at the University since 2006.Trainings on Moodle use and html coding were alsoprovided. The number of teachers and students usingMoodle has been gradually growing over the years.

In 2012, we conducted internal survey of situationconcerning elearning at the University. We conductednumber of interviews with teachers, students andadministrators with following conclusions [15]:

1. University community has very low awarenesson elearning and hence also very low interest inits use

2. teachers have very low motivation to createelearning courses

3. teachers lack preparation (information andability) and also methodological support tocreate online courses

4. the university lacks legislation frame for creatingand using elearning courses

In 2013 we started efforts to increase awareness ofComenius University teachers and students aboutpossibilities elearning offers in form of workshops,seminars and courses and also started to offermethodological support for teachers who request help withimproving their courses.

Besides short workshops we also created and offeredlonger hybrid elearning course Planning and Managementof Online Learning focused on elearning methodology. Thecourse takes six weeks with two meetings in person andthe rest of the work conducted online. Graduate of thecourse should:

1. recognize basic principles of constructivism andconnection between constructivist approach toteaching and online learning

2. recognize basic models for approach to plan andcreate an online course, will know how toanalyze student needs and how to plan activitiesand support

3. know how to select and identify appropriateinteractive activities for students, how to planand conduct those

4. recognize basic principles of online assessment,evaluation of quality of particular activity or thewhole course

Since Fall 2013 we conducted four runs of the coursewith total participation of about 40 people. Many of themconsequently started elearning activities at theirdepartments and Faculties.

3. GOALS AND METHODOLOGY OF 2015 SURVEY

In the Fall of 2015 we again conducted a small survey ofelearning activities around the University. This time wefocused exclusively on people who have started and keepcontinuing elearning efforts at their respective Faculties andDepartments of the University. In September and October2015 we conducted 21 in-depth interviews (30 minutes to1 hour) with teachers and PhD students who have beeninvolved in elearning activities.

Figure 1: Elearning Methodology Course offered by Center forInformation Technology

The survey had two goals:

1. First goal was focused on evaluation of our owntraining and support provided by Center ofInformation Technology s well as to gain first-hand information on how to adjust training andsupport according to the needs of people who usethem.

2. The second goal of the survey was to create adatabase of our case studies – some kind of“elearning stories” to share within the Universityas well as outside. These should serve asinspiration for others as well as invitation toconnect.

Next part of this paper consists of selected case studiesdescribing some of eLearning activities from differentFaculties of Comenius University.

4. JESENIUS MEDICAL FACULTY IN MARTIN

Jesenius Faculty of Medicine (JLF) has been showinginterest in utilizing Moodle for learning support since2008. Even though their elearning courses are placed at theMoodle sever maintained by the Center for InformationTechnology in Bratislava, there is a dedicated administratorin Martin who manages the courses, provides on-sitetraining and helps teachers to plan, manage and teach theircourses with Moodle support.

Also, the JLF has received an EU funded grant in 2012focused on virtual and simulation learning [16], whichboosted use of Moodle at the Faculty. Currently, the JLFmaintains 45 courses within Moodle, all of them usingonline components. The main focus is on tests. For manyof the courses, databanks of questions were created, wherethe questions are selected by chance. Few of the coursesalso collect assignments from students.Gradually, usingMoodle at the JLF to support teaching became normal andregular occurrence for many of the teachers.

JLF though created their own portal in order to publishstudy materials. Since Moodle at the University is passwordprotected, enabling access only to students or employeesof the University, JLF teachers who want to publish theirmaterials online with free access for all use their ownportal.

5. FACULTY OF PHARMACY, DEPARTMENT OF

ORGANIZATION AND LEADERSHIP OF PHARMACY

At this department, Moodle was initially applied to solvean administrative problem. Students of pharmacy spendnumber of weeks every summer working in pharmacies asa part of their study. Every pharmacist, who supervisesstudents during the summer is obliged to send a weeklyreport on each student every week to the University. Usingelectronic means to send these reports is practical. As thereare hundreds of students out all over the country duringthe summer, teachers at this particular Department wereoverwhelmed by emails.

your A better way of handling the email was desperatelyneeded, and since 2013, after discovering options Moodleoffers through basic training, they started to use Moodle inorder to better organize the summer reports. Each weeklyreport was created as an assignment and pharmacistsstarted to upload reports into Moodle, where they weremuch easier to keep track of, organized and marked.

Figure 2: Courses at IPP at the Faculty of Social and EconomicSciences.

The teachers at the Department, while using Moodle,discovered other options Moodle offers and today theDepartment of Organization and Leadership of Pharmacymaintains 13 courses in Moodle on different subjects andthe number and different forms of use are growing eachterm.

6. FACULTY OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC SCIENCES –INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC POLICY (IPP) AND INSTITUTE FOR

EUROPEAN STUDIES AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

(IESIR)

In 2008-2012 the Institute of Public Policy managed anEU funded project focused on research of possibilities ofonline learning for public administration in the context ofCentral Europe. As a part of this project, by 2012, almost40 courses taught at the Institute of Public Policy gotestablished Moodle support within their own installation ofMoodle at a private company. After the project ended, theMoodle courses were transferred onto the server maintainedby the Center for Information Technology and teacherscontinue to use Moodle (mainly for materials anduploading assignments) to support their teaching.

Two teachers from Institute for European Studies andInternational Relations got inspired by colleagues fromIPP, asked Center for Information technology for trainingand support and launched their own course with onlinefeatures in 2014. Other teachers got motivated too andtoday there are 9 courses at IESIR that utilize Moodlesupport for material distribution and collectingassignments.

7. FACULTY OF NATIONAL SCIENCES – DEPARTMENT OF

GENETICS

At the Department of Genetics, after study stay abroadand experiencing some online courses, last year one of theteachers started to experiment with Moodle. Otherteachers at the Department joined and today there are ninecourses with online support with ten teachers involved. Thefocus is mostly on distribution of materials and collectingassignments. The teachers also provided links to Youtubevideos fro students to enrich the course content. After thefirst semester of running an online support for the courseon Evolutionary Biology, the teachers conducted a smallsurvey among their students getting feedback on theirMoodle use [17].

Their students seemed to welcome experience withMoodle. Some students mentioned, that they already knewMoodle either from high school, or from friends studyingin Czech Republic. They mainly welcomed the links tovideos. Some of the students claimed, that they tend to be

Figure 3: Course at the Department of Ethics and Civic Education,Faculty of Education, where they involve also external students viaMoodle

searching for educational videos themselves whilestudying for their courses, in order to understand thecontent they were not able to understand from plain text.Having videos “pre-selected” by their teachers wasconsidered a huge improvement. One of the students evenwrote :”I am pretty sure this course belongs to the bestexperiences I've had at this University so far”.

8. FACULTY OF EDUCATION – DEPARTMENT OF ETHICS

AND CIVIC EDUCATION AND DEPARTMENT OF PRE-PRIMARY

AND PRIMARY EDUCATION

The Moodle use at this department dates back about 6years ago, when a young teacher left for maternity leaveand the department could not find replacement to teach hercourses. So in the end, they worked out a system, usingMoodle, where she could stay home with her child whilestill teaching a course. The system turned out to beeffective and high rated by the students, so despite thatfact, the particular teacher has been back to full timeteaching again, her and few of her colleagues, who joinedcontinue to teach some of their courses in a hybridpartially online way. Some of these courses are alsoavailable for students in external programs.

In their courses, they cut down on personal meetingsduring the term and replace it by work online. The amountof personal meetings varies from course to course, but thereare courses with only three personal meetings during thesemester.

At the Department of Pre-primary and PrimaryEducation, some animations were created to teachchildren geometry and other parts of mathematics.

Figure 4: Course at the Department of Pre-Primary and PrimaryEducation, Faculty of Education.

Figure 5: Methodological online training tailored for SAS needs

9. FACULTY OF ARTS – STUDIA ACADEMICA SLOVACA

(SAS)

SAS is a department focused on teaching Slovak toforeigners. Every summer they organize a very popularsummer school of Slovak attended by students from allover the world. They have been working on preparingonline materials in Moodle for teaching Slovak toforeigners for number of years. In 2013, their efforts got anew boost, due to collaboration with Robert MorrisUniversity (RMU) in Pittsburgh. RMU is interested inoffering online courses on Slovak to their students andcommunity, which would be taught online by experiencedand qualified teachers, native speakers from SAS, whowill do the teaching while located in Bratislava.

Participating SAS teachers needed training in onlinecourse development and online teaching, that wasprovided by the Center for Information Technology in2013 and 2014 and development of SAS Slovak courses isunder way.

10. FACULTY OF ARTS – DEPARTMENT OF LIBRARY AND

INFORMATION SCIENCE AND DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL

SCIENCE

Department of Library and Information Science (DLIS)started to build their first courses with online support assoon as there was some Learning Management Systemavailable. Today, DLIS as a department with 46 coursesusing Moodle support every year is the largest Moodle userat the University. All teachers at the department areinvolved, along with PhD students that participate inteaching. Their courses have basic syllabi provided inMoodle, materials for students to download andassignment spaces, where students upload their work.Some teachers experiment with small group projects ordiscussions.

Few teachers from Political Science Department havebeen active in Moodle for many years, but interest reallytook off after one of PhD students taught an internationalcollaborative course with a teacher-partner from StateUniversity of New York. There were two courses (onetaught by the US teacher at SUNY in New York and one bythe PhD student in Bratislava), which were not exactlyidentical. However, the two teachers found some commontopics in the course and organized few collaborativeinternational discussions on these common topics duringthe term. Both the teacher and students evaluate theexperience very positively.

Figure 6: Collaborative course between Faculty of Arts, ComeniusUniversity and SUNY New Paltz, New York placed at the SUNY NewPaltz server

11. DISCUSSION

Conditions for development of online learning atComenius University is not optimal. Up to this day, theUniversity doesn't have a system, which would rewardteachers for innovative initiatives, offered grants orfunding. Funding needs to come from outside. LMS systemMoodle is in place, there are options for technical andmethodology training. However, motivation is missing. Inmany cases, online initiatives are personal initiatives ofthe few teachers willing to experiment with somethingnew in their spare time.

Use of Moodle is steadily growing though and we cansee direct correlation between growing number of peopleexposed to ideas and inspiration for online learning,whether this happens via workshops or courses offeredthrough the Center for Information Technology, or anyother means and the number of new initiatives.

As is also clear from the cases studied as part of thesurvey including those presented here, local inspiration isvery effective. If an interesting initiative starts at adepartment, more teachers from the same or closedepartment will get interested. Promoting local interestinginitiatives within University seems like a worthy effort,which will reflect on future activities at the Center ofInformation Technology.

It could also be very useful to share inspiration andsuccess stories among different universities, which is oneof the goals of this article.

12. STEPS TO IMPROVE QUALITY OF ELEARNING AT

COMENIUS UNIVERSITY

Clearly, methodologically focused workshops andtrainings have prove effective. Many of new initiativessprang up as a result of training or workshops focused onmethodology.

However, we need to focus on promoting options thatMoodle offers as simply a storage for course materials, orcollecting dropbox for assignments, or a tool for tests. If atraining is marked as “elearning”, many people won'tparticipate, simply because they don't have motivation,time and neither knowledge to attempt creating a fullelearning course.

Most of teachers however, start their initiatives as usingMoodle as a tool to make their life easier, only latergraduating towards using it to improve the way they teach.

Hence, we need to add workshops in the future whichwill focus on promoting Moodle as an electronic tool, notan elearning environment.

Second, one-on-one consultations and methodologicalguidance and consulting offered to some of the teachersproved very useful. At this point, such service is onlyoffered centrally for the whole university by Center forInformation Technology. It would be desirable if in thefuture, there will be a person with methodological trainingable to provide one-on-one consulting and support at eachof the faculties.

Third, the 6 weeks long hybrid course focused ommethodology hasn't (nor surprisingly) attracted very largeamounts of participants. 6 weeks long training requirescommitment, time and effort and there are no directbenefits offered to graduates at the moment. However,almost all university teachers and PhD students, whograduated from this course, have started some elearningactivities at their own faculties/departments. It clearlymakes sense offering this kind of training, even to smallamounts of students. Comenius University is also willingto offer this course to other universities.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The I would like to thank all the teachers and PhD.Students at Comenius University, who provided me within-depth interviews and agreed for me to use their work ascase descriptions: Katarína Korenčiaková of the JeseniusMedical Faculty in Martin, Peter Kečkeš and MiroslavaSnopková of the Faculty of Pharmacy, Oľga Gyarfášováand Matúš Sloboda of the Faculty of Social and EconomicSciences, Roman Dušinský, Katarína Juríková and ErikSzabó of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, KatarínaMinarovičová, Erich Mistrík, Katarína Žilková, LillaKoreňová and Edita Partová of the Faculty of Education,Jana Pekarovičová and Michaela Mošaťová of SAS,Katarína Buzová, Ľudmila Hrčková, Andrea Hrdináková,Aneta Világi and Pavol Baboš from the Faculty of Arts.

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