Macquarie University

Keywords: Online learning, flexible learning, teaching and learning, WebCT, sociology, tertiary education.

Article style and source: STAR Report.Original ultiBASE publication

Contents

• Situation
  • The existing face-to-face unit
• Target
  • Preparing to convert the unit to online
• Activities
  • Reconceptualising structure
  • Reconceptualising teaching
• Results
  • Considering the online experience
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Important information for students
  • Managing time and studying on the Web
  • Guidelines for Web study
• Notes
• References

Situation

When asked if I would convert an existing postgraduate unit so that it could be taught online, I jumped at the suggestion. I remember thinking that it would be an easy task since the unit I intended to convert already ran successfully. And anyway, I had meant to learn something about online technology. This, I thought, would be an ideal opportunity to do both. In hindsight the assumption that the task of conversion would be easy was both arrogant and naïve. I did learn something about online technologies though and found the experience of online teaching extremely rewarding. This report outlines some of the lessons learned from this activity and emphasises the importance of educational design in online teaching and learning.

The existing face-to-face unit

At Macquarie University I teach a postgraduate education unit EPG870: Sociology and Education. In this one-semester unit contemporary themes in educational sociology are presented to students, most of whom have studied education, but usually have no background in sociology. Prior to 1999, when the unit was first offered online, students met on a weekly basis for a two-hour seminar. The seminars were scheduled to run from 5:00PM to 7:00PM on a Tuesday evening. This was not a fantastic time. For me it was the last teaching segment of the day, but I had the option of not starting until 11:00AM. However, for most of my students (who were teachers, nurse educators, workplace trainers and the like) it was a class they travelled to attend after their regular day's work. Generally classes didn't really begin until 5:20PM, when sufficient students had arrived, and finished by 6:50PM. Even with the two hours reduced to one and a half, I felt that I was overtaxing the students' concentration spans.

As an organisational device, students were asked to each lead a seminar by presenting a specified reading. This both shared the workload among students and established the required reading. Consequently, the majority of students attending any given seminar would have read the prescribed reading, but attendances would drop as workload pressures (for this and other units) increased. There was also a pattern of students not attending the week after they had presented in class. Assessment for the unit was based on two essays, one on a set topic and the other negotiated. This was the unit that I planned to convert and teach online. top

Target

Preparing to convert the unit to online

'Sociology and Education' was to be converted to electronic form as part of a larger project [1]. The aim of the project was to have ten postgraduate units converted for online delivery by the end of 2001. A software product, WebCT, was to be used as the development and delivery platform. WebCT is an authoring and teaching delivery environment. In practical terms WebCT allows for teaching materials to be displayed on a password protected Internet location, and for students to be able communicate with each other and the tutor via public Bulletin Boards or by private e-mail. As part of the project, funding was made available to provide 39 hours time release from teaching to assist in preparing the materials that would become the components of the online unit. The materials would then be handed (or otherwise conveyed) to a Web Developer to 'mark up'. I had assumed that I would take the existing materials (unit outline, lecture notes, timetable and assessment instructions) and divide them according to the desired WebCT format. Having done this I imagined that gaps in the material would become apparent and that it would be a relatively simple task to write the material to fill these gaps. However, the task of conversion was not so straight forward.

A member of the Centre for Flexible Learning was assigned to coordinate the project, to provide liaison and technical support, and a number of meetings with project members ensued. These meetings helped to clarify what WebCT looked like and how it operated, but not how the unit needed to be conceptualised. A review of available literature on the subject of converting material seemed to lack coherent advise on how to conceptualise my project. The economic, the management and the efficiency advantages that accompanied using online technology were widely proclaimed, but these rarely discussed how to achieve educational benefits. Some advocates for the delivery of educational material online cited 'flexibility' as a key reason for using the medium (see Mitchell, 1999; Stark & Warne, 1999). Flexibility meaning that by not having to attend formal classes, students are at liberty to choose where and often when they conduct their study activities. The potential to provide additional resources (Laurillard, 1993; Phillips, 1998) and greater interactivity (Lander, 1999; Yeo, Loss, Zadnik, Harrison, & Treagust, 1998) have also been proposed as advantages of teaching online. However, I was aware that I needed to reconceptualise the unit in order to make the conversion.

Being inclined to develop my understanding through experience, I enrolled in a course, 'On-line teaching and learning', offered by the Macquarie University Centre for Professional Development. My performance in this course was abysmal, and this realisation was quite a shock. However, the experience stimulated some valuable insights into participation in online study. These revelations were documented and made available to students beginning the online version of the EPG870 unit. This document was grandiosely titled Important Information for Students, and is linked here.

My previous approach to designing a unit had been to establish a sequence of topics, to select appropriate readings, and to develop an assessment schema that conformed to an overall theme. My delivery style, with this framework, was to pace the presentation of the content to accommodate student needs. Basically, to customise the delivery of content as the unit progressed. As I attempted to transfer the material from a face-to-face to an online format it became clear that this approach would not be workable. The majority of the unit content needed to be finalised before any teaching commenced.

The reconceptualisation of the unit gathered momentum when I re-examined some basic educational questions. What did I want the students to learn? What conceptual and practical 'tools' would they need to have to do this? How would I know when this had been achieved? Previously these matters had been resolved through observations of in-class discussion, students presentations and the submission of written assignments. top

Activities

Reconceptualising structure

During the early stages of reconceptualising the unit, it became clear that the online format enabled a move away from an incremental development of the content. Rather than think of the unit in terms of thirteen weekly meetings, it was more practical to imagine the unit as consisting of five modules and to design activities that introduced both content and cultivated skills in using online facilities. The module structure is outlined below.

Introduction to the EPG870.

To welcome students to the unit, and to using on-line technology.

Sociology of Education.

To introduce the sub-discipline, sociology of education; key concepts, themes, debates and prominent figures

Theorising education, culture and society.

To examine theoretical perspectives articulated in nominated chapters of the set text.

Contemporary Issues.

To explore contemporary issues in the sociology of education.

Reflections.

No content was specified for this section.

Once the five module structure had been conceived, an assessment task could be devised for each. The detail of the unit structure, the tasks and assessment are displayed in the table below. top

Structure of the unit EPG870

The table below contains the elements in the unit EPG870, and the sequence in which they would be discussed. It was anticipated that students work together during Modules 1. and 2. (weeks one, two and three), but during Module 3. students would work together in smaller online groups. In Module 4. students exchanged information on specified topics while working independently on preparing an essay. The assessment information for each module is linked to the elements of the table.

Assessment information

Because EPG 870 is taught entirely on-line, students final grades for the unit were based on Bulletin Board contributions and the assignments submitted. In order to do these things it was necessary for students to have some capacity to use the WebCT technology. However, the activities were designed to develop knowledge of both educational sociology and the information about this discipline area that was available online. top

Module 1 Introduction to the Unit EPG 870

Activity:

Students were asked to provide a brief biographical note about themselves and exchange this information with other students via the WebCT Bulletin Board. The information students provided was predominantly about what they hoped to gain from studying the unit. Since it was not anticipated that participants would meet in person (because there was no unit requirement to attend), this activity was an important means of developing a sense of group cohesion.top of the table

Module 2 The sociology of education

• Origins of sociology
• Inequality and education
• Rise and demise?

Activities:

Conduct a search of the Macquarie University library catalogue for books on the sociology of education and share your findings.

• What descriptors generated the greatest number of useful responses?
• When were the majority of these books published?

Conduct a search of the Internet for useful sociology sites and share any interesting discoveries.

• Resource allocation
• Legitimation
• Authorisation

Activity:

After reading Brown, Halsey, Lauder and Wells (1997) 'The Transformation of Education and Society: An Introduction', chapter one in the text (Halsey, Lauder, Brown and Wells (Eds)(1997) Education: culture, economy, society, Oxford University Press, Oxford), consider the following question and provide a short (50 &endash; 100 word) response.

How relevant is the 'sociology of education' and is there any value in retaining the term? top of the table

Module 3 Theorising education, culture and society

Students are asked to read a chapter from Part 1 of text either:

• Bourdieu, 'The Forms of Capital'
• Giroux, 'Crossing the Boundaries of Educational Discourse …'
• Kenway, 'Having a Postmodernist Turn …'
• Weiner, 'Feminisms and Education'

Which students will read which particular chapter will be determined via discussion during weeks two and three of the unit.

Activity:

Working in collaborative groups on-line, students will discuss the chapter and draft a response to the following question.

Considering the arguments put forward in the chapter that you have read, in what ways can education be said to be a 'site of struggle'?

After further discussion with group members, the responses can be revised and submitted for assessment. The submissions should be about 800 &endash; 1000 words in length. top of the table

Module 4 Contemporary Issues in Educational Sociology

Students choose to write a 2000 to 3000 word essay on one of the topic areas suggested as a contemporary issue. The issues are as follows:

• Global concerns
• The State and teaching
• Markets in education
• Knowledge and the curriculum
• Merit and exclusion
• Technology and education

Activities:

In addition to writing the essay, students are expected to read the overview of each issue provided in this module, and respond (via the Bulletin Board) to the questions and virtual exercises given.

Module 5 Reflections on content and the learning process

The final assignment is for students to write a piece reflecting on the content of the unit, and on the learning process. The piece of writing can be in the form of a report, a diary or journal entry, a song, a poem … just something that can be transmitted electronically. top of the table

Reconceptualising teaching

While reconceptualising the content and assessment aspects had considerable importance, I had presumed that it was the teacher-student engagement that would constitute the teaching of the unit. This seemed to be the way the on-campus unit had run. In hindsight, this assumption was misguided. Firstly this view assumed teaching and learning to be largely synonymous, secondly it gave minimal regard to any self-directed learning and thirdly it scarcely acknowledged collaborative learning.

The online teaching was initially conceptualised as if it would be a continuously accessible, on-campus exercise. Using a 'metaphor of a classroom' had successfully been used to organise flexibly delivered undergraduate material [2], and it seemed that this image could also be employed here. The lecture theatre component was replaced by the content provided in the modules. These separate chunks of text provided an orientation, posed questions for students to explore and indications of contributions to be made. The seminar room activities were planned to take place in the WebCT 'forums', via threaded, e-mail discussions. Prescribed readings all came from a recently published text (Halsey et al, 1997), which also contained additional resource material. All information pertaining to unit organisation was provided at the WebCT location, and students were given a handout, when they enrolled, containing a brief written guide to using WebCT.

Some of the students who enrolled in the unit had little or no experience using e-mail or the WWW and few used WebCT. There was some urging to run an introductory class to teach people how to use the technology, and to allow the students to meet. However, I had decided that if the unit was to be online, it should be run completely online. My colleagues who were also converting units were proposing to have three of their thirteen sessions on campus. They justified this by suggesting that an initial face-to-face meeting would develop a cohesive student group and allow people to 'put a face to a name'. This seemed contrary to the purpose of running a unit online. If a principal advantage of online learning was the flexibility gained by not having to attend classes, why schedule them? At a more fundamental level, if the online mode was to be viable then there seemed little point in relying on face-to-face meetings to overcome difficult issues. Partially, my objective in running the unit entirely online was to see if it could be done satisfactorily from both the students' and the teacher's perspectives.

Anticipating that students may have different levels of experience in computer use, the first activity was designed to both build group cohesion and oblige computer contributions. It also established who had joined the class. In module two, students were asked to contribute the products of various online searches. This was intended to encourage students to investigate available Web based resources, and yielded a variety of websites. Students commented on how useful they found the websites, located by themselves and others, as a way broadening their understanding of sociology and of how to use the Internet. At the suggestion of one student, the sites were gathered onto one 'links' page with the annotations made by students included. This links page was mounted on the WebCT front page and became an additional resource for the unit. In module two students were also asked to consider the scope and nature of educational sociology. During the work on modules one and two students (the first three to four weeks of the unit) students contributed ideas to common discussion forums. It was made clear the while students were expected to make at least one contribution per week, no marks were given for the length or quality of the offerings. I had hoped that participation would become irresistible once students had experienced contributing ideas online.

In module three students were asked to read one of four chapters and make contributions to a forum designated for that appropriate chapter. My aim here was to cause students to work in groups and to inspire collaborations, and to a degree this happened. What I also found was that very capable students participated in amore than one discussion forum. Some participated in all forums. A surprising aspect of these discussions was the complexity that developed. Often three or four lines of discussion were maintained simultaneously, at least one concerning the designated chapter and others adding to on-going jokes or side issues. Students submitted a 800 &endash; 1000 word piece for assessment following these discussions. In their evaluation of the unit some students commented that they had little left to say about the chapter after their forum discussions.

Students were asked to submit an essay by the end of module four. Six discussion forums were established and students were asked to create a topic relevant to one of these forums. It was hoped that students would make use of the discussions in the development of their essays. In addition to the research and discussions on their selected topic area, students were also expected to make some contribution to the other forum discussions, this was to ensure an acquaintance with a range of topics in educational sociology. Students had the option of submitting these essays to the discussion group for responses before revision, or they could be submitted directly for assessment. In the final module, where credit was given for submission but content was not assessed, students were asked to make evaluative comments about the unit. top

Results

Considering the online experience

The experience of reconceptualising an on-campus unit so that it can be taught online raised a number of issues. Firstly practical issues surrounding computer use and user-computer interactions. There was the potential for students without much experience of using e-mail or navigating the Internet to be overwhelmed. Even a relatively straight forward matter like being prepared for answering a large, continuous amount of correspondence could be stressful, as my own experience had shown. It is necessary for teachers to be aware of potential student frustration and able to offer appropriate support. Yeo et al. (1998) also note the likelihood of problems occurring when the demands of operating the computer conflict with the learning required in the unit. Students may place undesirable demands on themselves if they expect to learn everything about using the Web and an academic unit simultaneously.

While I had anticipated that the online format would give temporal flexibility, I had not imagined that the discussion forums would become like a 24-hour tutorial room. To avoid being overwhelmed by the impulse to continually check for mail I logged-in to the unit each morning to respond to new messages and to participate in discussions. While I had spent a large amount of time conceptualising the unit and an appropriate mode of engagement, this was not unlike the time spent in developing any new unit. Using WebCT it was easy to introduce new discussion forums and to modify the content of the unit while in progress. For example, during the teaching of EPG870 a side issue relating to a State government election became a prominent theme of discussion. To cater for these comments a new forum was created. This was done to allow some distinction between themes of discussion, and rather than stifle debate this new forum yielded a number of insightful observations. In some modules additional resource material was added as it was found.

In spite of my initial concerns, in Sociology and Education it was not difficult to engage with students. This was perhaps because my involvement was as a participant rather than as a leader. As in a good seminar the material was discussed by the majority of participants with a mixture humour, curiosity and enthusiasm to learn. There were some occasions when students needed to reminded to respect the rights of others, but this too was little different to dealing with heated tutorial room debates, except that here it was written out.

The online medium clearly suited students who wrote well and worked confidently with written text. These students were able to quickly contribute large amounts of text with well structured sequences of ideas. Other students clearly benefited from seeing arguments developed in this way and modified their contributions accordingly. One discussion theme that emerged early in the unit concerned spelling and the benefits of 'chunking' of ideas into paragraphs, separated by paragraph breaks. It is surprising that any postgraduate students should have been aware of these formatting conventions, but the clarity of their arguments improved once these techniques were adopted.

Some students contributed a lot of material to the discussion forums and others not so much. A major difference between participation in on-campus and online seminars is that if you are not contributing to an online seminar you become invisible. On-campus if you attend you are present whether you contribute or not. However, since time was available to formulate contributions, the standard of comment appeared to be generally higher than in on-campus seminars. top

Conclusion

Many of the discussions regarding online teaching have emphasised the technological aspects; the software, the possibilities for including video and sound files, the potential for synchronous chat, etc. However, it is clear that good teaching rather than technology should be the focus of debates. This experience of converting an existing unit for teaching online has demonstrated the importance of the process of reconceptualising in online learning. The time/space flexibility offers possibilities to both students and teachers, but must be combined with an appropriate teaching philosophy and good teaching practices. top

Appendix: Important information for students

If you have not used electronic means of communication (eg. e-mail, listservers, and Internet chat rooms) or have not studied via Internet, I invite you to read on. The information below may save you time and frustration.

Managing time and studying on the Web

The following is a humble confession, and a cautionary tale about enthusiasm, personal limitations, and the need to balance the two. I elected to offer EPG 870 'on-line' for three reasons. Firstly, I believe that studying on-line has the potential to genuinely benefit students who have difficulty attending seminars, and secondly, well, because it was suggested that I could and thirdly, because it seemed like a good idea. And further, it seems that this 'flexible learning' stuff gets talked about quite a bit and for me, a good way of finding out about something is to try it out. (However, I might add that I don't extend this approach to certain high-risk activities like bungy jumping though.) So, I set off to reconstruct EPG 870 for on-line teaching.

Time, work and domestic pressures being what they are, I didn't get the preparation for converting EPG870 done as quickly as I had hoped. In fact, one of the biggest problems for me was to envisage what the unit would look like and how it would operate. I didn't want to just replicate the on-campus unit, and had doubts about whether that would even be possible. Eventually the concept began to emerge, but the work of producing the modules was not happening as fast as I needed. Then I decided to enrol in a professional development course entitled, 'On-line teaching and learning'. This course had the relatively modest aims of exposing participants to using listservers and WebCT. It was here that my trouble really began.

My recent experience of formal education has been as a teacher rather than as a learner. I'm used to being the one asking the questions and the one giving the answers. Basically I'm used to being in control of the time in which things happen. But doing the 'On-line teaching and learning' course, I realised how quickly things can get out of hand.

The course was to run for six weeks, beginning and ending with a face-to-face session, and students were to read certain articles and communicate with each other using the various tools throughout. I managed to attend the first session. I subscribed to the listserv (the first task in the course) then my attention was diverted to some more immediately pressing tasks, preparing on-campus lectures, tutorials and the like. By the end of that first week a file server fault had occurred. (By the way, I do understand that computers, printers and other pieces of essential machinery, have a propensity to fail just when they appear to be needed most.) It took a week for the file server problem to be rectified. Even at this early stage of the course (the end of week two), things for me seemed to be really out of hand. There were so many messages on the listserv to catch up on, and how do you manage to get back into an electronic conversation that you have not yet been part of? However, there were some valuable lessons here for me, and it is the product of this thinking that I would like to pass on in the form of suggested guidelines. top

Guidelines for Web study

The tasks for EPG 870 include:

• Reading in preparation for weekly sessions
• Corresponding with others on-line
• Reading to prepare for assignments
• Thinking about assignments and discussions
• Writing and revising papers to submit.

This suggests to me that time needs to be set aside for weekly preparation and at least weekly correspondence, and that additional time needs to be set aside for the preparation of submissions.

Working on-line demands different skills from those needed in tutorials and seminars. Firstly, if you have felt that your attendance in a tutorial (in the form of just sitting in the tutorial room) had in the past been sufficient, you will find that in an on-line unit if you merely 'log-on', nobody will know that you are there. In fact, it is unlikely that anyone else will be on-line at the same time as you because most of the correspondence will be asynchronous.

Secondly, sending messages appears more permanent than talking. In tutorials, some people depend on their ability to 'make sense' of things as they go along. On-line there is a greater obligation to have something to say before you say it. (This comment is made more byway of embarrassed acknowledgment of my own performance in tutorials, than as a criticism of others.)

To deal with the regular correspondence issue, I suggest making frequent (daily if possible) checks of the bulletin board. This process is made easier because WebCT alerts you by e-mail when you have new messages. But you have to log on to e-mail in order to see the messages. My failure to do this was my down fall in the 'On-line teaching and learning' course.

People are welcome to study where ever, and when ever, they please. Some may like to set aside the tutorial that has formerly been used for this unit (5:00 PM to 7:00 PM on a Tuesday), this may ease the transition from on-campus to on-line. You may even like to use the facilities provided in the library. This could be advantageous if you have an on-campus session from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM, or if your access to the Internet is limited.

For me, where I work is important. There are some places where I seem unable to cobble together two coherent ideas, some work-spaces where I just don't feel comfortable. This has a lot to do with whether I feel like I will be interrupted and how I have things set up. For example, at the moment I find I can do routine things in my office at Macquarie, but find it hard to read articles or write papers there. Some of us it seems that we don't have a great deal of choice about where we will work. It may be that you have access to an Internet connection at your place of work, it may be that you work best in your lounge room. So, it is necessary to also consider the next point.

This is probably the most important point of all. Having worked out how much time your studying will take, work out when you will do it. A great deal of my studying has been done in the evenings when the house is quite, after others have gone to bed. Consequently, a lot of my work has been done between 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM. This has also necessitated rearranging other aspects of my daily timetable. I guess that's the thing, since studying does take time, that time needs to be allowed for. Nobody really benefits from you overloading your timetable or pretending that it's not an issue.

In writing this I am hoping to help you avoid some pitfalls, and be able to learn from my mistakes. I have rarely found projects characterised by frustration and stress to be enriching. Happy studying, I had better get on and finish my 'On-line teaching and learning' course. top

Notes

1. This project was entitled 'Macquarie University Centre for Flexible Learning and the School of Education's development of on line postgraduate units'.

2. In the School of Education at Macquarie, all undergraduate core units have been made available on the WWW under the leadership of Dr Geoff Riordan. These units all use a 'banner' to give them a similar appearance, and the titles in the banner refer to the convenor's office, tutorial room, lecture theatre etc. top

References

Halsey, Lauder, Brown and Wells (Eds)(1997) Education: culture, economy, society, Oxford University Press, Oxford

Lander, D. (1999). Online learning: ways to make tasks more interactive. ultiBASE(May).

Laurillard, D. M. (1993). Rethinking university teaching: A framework for the effective use of educational technology. London: Routledge.

Mitchell, F. (1999, 27 March). The asynchronous classroom and professional identity: am I teaching yet? Paper presented at the College composition and communication, Atlanta Georgia.

Phillips, R. (1998). Models of learning appropriate to educational applications of information technology. In B. Black & N. Stanley (Eds.), Teaching and Learning in Changing Times (pp. 264-268). University of Western Australia, Perth: UWA.

Stark, S., & Warne, T. (1999). 'Connecting' the distance: relational issues for participants in a distance learning programme. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 23(3), 391-402.

Yeo, S., Loss, R., Zadnik, M., Harrison, A., & Treagust, D. (1998). Interact ive multimedia: What do students really learn? In B. Black & N. Stanley (Eds.), Teaching and Learning in Changing Times (pp. 341-347). University of Western Australia, Perth: UWA. top

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About the author

David Saltmarsh
Department of Education
Division of Early Childhood and Education
Macquarie University
NSW 2109
Australia

E-mail: davids@deakin.edu.au