Perceptions of the Value of the Online Tools

Alessandra Abbattista and Ali Messer, University of Roehampton

Dr Arthur Chapman, Institute of Education

1.Undergraduate students’ perceptions

Early thoughts

• Students interviewed were very positive about some resources in particular such as the Old Bailey online task, and videos of historians

• Students interviewed were positive about quiz activities as they were enjoyable and had been linked explicitly to taught sessions

• Mahara was not easy to use and seeing examples before starting own portfolio could be more helpful next time

• Discussion forum posts more interesting if they knew the student posting; worth reading

• One student said he had not looked at any discussion posts; possibly seemed too like social media to him and he considered this a very unreliable source of information... (outlier?)

2. Postgraduate participants’ perceptions

The value of taking part:

• working alongside an experienced lecturer and working with students; • insights into how to plan a range of activities to develop skills; • creativity in learning and teaching combining new and innovative teaching and

learning; • insights into how to encourage participation and interactions between

lecturers, resources and students; • insights into the skills that undergraduates need and may lack; • experience of teaching and putting together online platforms. • insights into feedback and also in designing exercises; • opportunities to reflect on ways of teaching and of reflecting on the

effectiveness of different methods; • supporting students with research adds value to own understandings of

research; • experience of evaluation of the project enhances own understandings of e-

learning resources / approaches.

The nature of participation:

• Participation in design of module– Designing some exercises relating to source work and

independent research;– Designing quiz on types of historical thinking; – Looking at existing online tools and considering how

these could be enhanced and developed further.

The nature of participation:

• Developing and improving online learning– Giving feedback on draft e-portfolios:– Seminar activities with undergraduates:– Involvement in online forums – commenting and feeding

back;– Understandings of how to put together and use online

platforms;– Reflection on the value of matching videos and online

content to lectures.

The nature of participation:

• Experience of data analysis (evaluating the project)– Awareness of range of resources; – Awareness of new teaching methodologies and also

tools for evaluating them; – Opportunity to reflect on the value and limits of

pedagogies and resources – e.g. value of discussion boards.

Experience of formative feedback:

• Feedback opportunities:– Feedback on e-portfolios – experience of marking

valuable and has also developed insights into the effectiveness of various forms of feedback (e.g. effectiveness of online feedback compared to orthodox tutorials);

– Classroom experiences – giving feedback to students on online quizzes and encouraging students to reflect on their assumptions in class;

– Online discussion board feedback experience.

Experience of formative feedback:

• Learning about feedback– Learning about feedback and how to give it – a new

experience;– Giving feedback enhanced understanding of needs of

students and how to enhance their learning journey;– Insights into mistakes that students make when looking

at sources;– Insights into how to give feedback – the importance of

keeping it concise and the importance of positive and reassuring comments.

What has been most useful?

• Interaction and creativity have been enhanced by online approach: students have more opportunity to reflect and the combination of elements is particularly valuable (podcasts, lectures, online materials);

• Insights into how to construct good courses and portfolios by combining elements.

Barriers to UG participation?

• What have been barriers?• Undergraduate reluctance to use new materials and new

methodologies – self-confidence with digital tools is a barrier and so is a lack of experience of using these tools.

• How to overcome barriers?• Explicitly give students training in using online tools and show them

how these things enhance their capacities as learners; • Integrate online platforms into the classroom as much as possible to

overcome the lack of familiarity;• Link tool use to things that students already understand the value of to

demonstrate how they can add value to their learning

Improvements in Iteration 2?

• Provide more formal material – library exercise could be improved further:– Focus on developing awareness of the importance of independent

research so that students can come to understand the importance of this earlier (they cannot expect to have everything given to them in lectures).

• Enhance discussion boards and increase levels of participation – – Focus on the importance of these more when presenting the

course to students;– Increase interactive debates in class so that students are familiar

with debate before we ask them to engage with discussion boards

3.Lecturer perceptions

Benefits of new platforms:

Increased the cohesion of the learning experience on the module: • In the past the independent nature of the module tasks have made it

hard to give the module coherence. The online tools have given students things to do as a group in the lectures and also outside.

Increased engagement with the main learning objectives for the module:• Appreciation of the difference between university and school study; • Self-awareness of history as a discipline; • Increased awareness of the key skills (bibliography, source analysis,

independent research, developing their own sets of resources, academic writing). Making things more exercise based has really helped with this.

Benefits of new platforms:

Improved academic outcomes at the top end and value across the board:• Students are more engaged with the module as a whole (they are less likely to

go off and do their own thing). • Impacts on teaching style – a more exercise-based and student-centred

approach inside and outside the classroom using Moodle and other electronic resources to explore issues.

• Greater scope for students to play around with the ideas among themselves –impetus and space to explore ideas.

• The online resource prolongs the time that students spend on the module. • The online tools also provide some structure – it’s easy for independent work

to feel low on structure and other things can take precedence: the online tools help overcome this, providing intellectual prompts (now I need to be thinking about my question, now I need to think about building my bibliography, and so on).

What has been most useful?

• Online - gives flexibility in being asynchronous and also in the range of ways in which students can participate in it. We are no longer confined by a three hour slot. It opens things up for people who aren’t confident face to face. Students can chip in when they are ready. This is not the most important thing, however;

• The exercise based approach is very useful for things that are difficult to teach in a more conventional format (such as giving a lecture on bibliography). ‘Boring’ material can be delivered in exercises and can be much more interesting / accessible. Abstract material can be delivered in an accessible way (historiography).

Barriers / challenges?

Need to think through further what we need to set up before students joined in discussion boards . • Ground rules – no destructive criticism.• They have tended to think that they’ve done what they need to do

when they’ve made their post and they need to feel that there’s scope to discuss and debate further.

• Reluctance to debate with each other.

Improvements for iteration 2?

Discussion boards: • more guidance on posting and encouragement to post; • emphasise that it will be moderated so that people don’t need to worry

about the responses they might get.

Implications beyond the module:• One module at the beginning of the year is not enough; • Students have a habit of treating modules as separate entities and to

move on putting what they’ve learned in one module on one side when they move on;

• There’s a need to enhance reinforcement across modules in the history programme. Join things up and reinforce messages.