Learning Design

Five reasons why using technology could make your teaching and learning better!

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The use of technology is an issue that is danced around quite a lot, especially here at the LSE. Technologists, academics, students all debate the notions of pedagogy before technology and how we can avoid the pitfalls of technological determinism or the replacement of every one of us with the robot Sheldon from the ‘Big Bang Theory. The reality is that this should never have become a polarised debate, where the choice was either the unregulated and ill-defined change agenda driven by technological adaptation or the last line of defence of the ‘way it has always been’. Technology (if such a concept can be simply defined) is a means; a society changing and generation shaping means for sure, but a means nonetheless. LTI are here to be part of your approach to engaging with technology to enhance learning and teaching. From the simplest innovation to the most transformative intervention and at a pedagogical or instructional level, technology is a critical part of modern teaching. So, if you are thinking about whether you should use ‘technology’ in your teaching or learning, contemplating a change in pedagogy or simply finding out what your colleagues or learners are doing with their technology, then maybe these five reasons might help shape your thinking.

1. All your students are already using technology to a wide variety of degrees
This is a simple assertion. All of us are using technology; from cash machines, to smartphones, to laptops to tablets to our oyster card. Each of these pieces of technology serves a purpose. They change the way we do things. They change the language we use and they shift core practices around processes (such as paying, communications, processing and thinking). There are no universal rules about this. Generations after us are not naturally better than their parents at being technologically adept. These technologies are simply there. They develop, change and progress like most other means. In your classroom you have an array of devices more powerful than any of the ones that went before. There are ways to use that technology for the benefits of learners and learning. Instant communications, collaborations, interactions outside the classroom, annotations, engagement with readings, critical thought, right down to managing the calendar. These skills are not native, nor are they uniform. Learners and teachers may need support, training, mentoring and practice. That’s where we can help.

2. All the jobs students will do are shaped in part by technology
We use technology to do all our jobs. You are reading a blog now. Almost every discipline has been impacted by technology; from research practice to visual rhetoric through to open access. How do we integrate these changes into curricula, teaching and assessment? Like any other programme/design process, we are research informed, we maintain rigour and we understand what skills and knowledge graduates will need to be develop expertise and understanding. Technology is just another part of that. Technology can help simulate real world employment situations, global phenomena or inter-personal scenarios. Technology can develop the communication, collaboration, identity or teamwork skills required in most modern workplaces. Technology skills such as media making, coding, social media or searching are critical trans-disciplinary concepts. Either inside or outside teaching and learning, having access to these skills enhances the employability of your graduates. LTI have a number of great cases where courses and programmes have embedded these skills. Maybe some of those practices will work for your course/programme or have an impact on your student satisfaction?

3. Technology is not a scorched earth approach to teaching
No institution wants to replace you with robots after recording your lectures. There is no replacement for the interaction and engagement face to face contact supports (either live or facilitated). However, you can add aspects of innovation to your teaching that build on and magnify that impact. Encouraging students to interact and engage through collaborative assessment, support each other and provide peer feedback, comment and discuss your lectures and tutorials or annotate and debate your PowerPoint slides. Technology does what it says on the box. It enhances, it adds, it disrupts and it transforms. Whether this is technology students use outside the classroom, or the innovative, flexible spaces were are looking to create within; Technology does not teach. Technology does not make people learn. You do. Students do. We want to work with you to enrich the student experience through innovative approaches to pedagogy, to the embedded use of technology such as Moodle, lecture capture and social media and through encouraging your students to use their own technologies to enhance their own learning.

4. Technology can make things possible that you previously thought impossible
One of the great potentials of technology is change. Technology for education represents a wonderful catalyst for change. One department commented to us recently that they have been waiting for the technology to catch up with their thinking. Maybe thinking about technology will change the way you think about assessment, challenge some of your assumptions about feedback, maybe it will open a door or close another. Maybe technology will shift the lecture from being bounded by transmission pedagogies to being discursive and interactive. We advocate for technologies to be more than an economic replacement of one practice with another. They are a chance for a rethink, a chance inspiration or a series of experiments that allow you to embed some play and fun into your teaching and learning. One of the most important roles here at LTI is innovation, thinking about and making available cutting edge ideas, practices and platforms in order to provide all staff with opportunities to rethink and experiment with their teaching.

5. Technology does enhance learning
Give it a go. The gap between what our learners see and understand as their online learning experience and the face to face experience is narrowing. It is all just learning. The capabilities required to search quickly, determine the veracity of information and do this whilst doing three other things are developing rapidly. These skills are by no means universal or natural, but they are developing and they are shaping how people learn. From students being able to re-watch lectures 8 or 9 times to make sure they understood concepts to being able to access a support network at 4am through twitter (or just to know when the Library lift is out of order @LSELibraryLift) technology is enhancing learning right now. LTI are here to help you, offer ideas and a critical (but friendly) perspective. We can offer you money, technology and expertise. We are happy to share with you all our experiences, knowledge and coffee. But most of all we share our confidence that we can help you make your teaching and learning better.

Want to get in touch? Drop us an email lti.support@lse.ac.uk

Text Message (SMS) Pilots

Volunteers needed!

The CLT is looking for LSE teaching staff to pilot the use of text messages (SMS) in teaching.   If you would like to participate in the pilots let us know by email to clt-support@lse.ac.uk

Some ideas of how text messages (SMS) could be used for out-of-class and in-class activities include:

  • Polling students before, after or during a class
  • Reminding students of a deadline
  • Prompting students to complete an (online) activity between classes
  • Collecting short answers/questions from students

The SMS pilots will use txttools integrated into Moodle.  If you have any queries or you would like to discuss this further please contact Athina or Matt via clt-support@lse.ac.uk

Image: SMS by pixel_addict

July 20th, 2010|Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies|Comments Off on Text Message (SMS) Pilots|

Designing for Learning conference @ Greenwich

It’s taken a while but I’ve finally written up some notes from the “Designing for Learning” conference held at Greenwich University last Wednesday (July 4 2007). First up with the opening keynote was Gilly Salmon who talked about her visions of the new teacher moving away from traditional lecturing to being a facilitator of learning available 24 hours via wireless Internet access. I can’t say I can see this happening soon at the LSE. She then went on to talk about various projects running at the University of Leicester brought together under Gilly’s “media zoo” brand. Of course, each of the projects have animal acronyms such as “SEAL”, “ELKS” and “IMPALA”. These research projects are looking at the use of technologies such as iPods and podcasting, second life (of course).

The first of the parallel sessions that I attended looked at Canterbury Christ Church’s solution to organising and cataloguing their various study skills learning objects to make them easily findable. The end product is a website with a number of nice Web 2.0 style features including an efficient and clean looking search engine and a tag cloud. The solution was developed partly out of frustration with other learning object repositories such as JORUM.

My second parallel session looked at the use of Turnitin as a formative learning tool for students on “English for academic purposes” programmes. The rationale for their work was that there is a level of plagiarism that is a result of a misunderstanding of conventions and by using Turnitin on first draft essays the results can be discussed by the students and their teachers. It is made clear to the students that by submitting their first draft there will be no consequences if there is significant plagiarism found in the first draft. This approach has resulted in students using a greater number of sources, use of citation and appropriate paraphrasing.

After lunch the University of Leicester discussed the Adelie project, which has been looking at ways of planning learning redesign. The Adelie team works closely with department teaching staff where the main planning activity is a two-day workshop. One interesting component of this is having a “reality checker”; in other words a teaching colleague who hasn’t been involved in the initial planning who comes in to look at the outcomes at the end of the session.

The focus of the final session of the day was very much on the learner and how today’s students approach technology – “how well do we know our learners?” Linda Creanor from the JISC project “LEX: learner experiences of e-learning” talked a lot about Generation Y and MySpace and how these learners see elearning (VLE) as just another channel and in fact the term elearning could be viewed as a little anachronistic.

July 11th, 2007|Conferences|Comments Off on Designing for Learning conference @ Greenwich|

Integrating Drupal, Moodle and Elgg

Stumbled across this interesting, but old, article that focuses on an example integration of Drupal, Moodle and Elgg, relating to Matt’s earlier post about collaboration with Columbia and Brown. Some interesting ideas here – enabling connections between VLE, portfolio and content management systems, including public facing web sites. I would expect some political implications regarding who runs (owns) what though! If you have time it’s worth reading the discussion/comments too.

Kris.

January 18th, 2007|Tools & Technologies|Comments Off on Integrating Drupal, Moodle and Elgg|

Learning Design

For those with an interest in Learning Design:

Discussion of JIME special issue “Advances in Learning Design”

There will be an online chat this Wednesday afternoon (15h GMT) featuring authors of the JIME special issue on Learning Design .Articles in the JIME special issue relate to the chapters in the book and report on ways in which Learning Design has been applied and the tools and techniques that have been developed to support this approach to design for learning

How to participate
The discussion will be on Wednesday September the 28th at 16:00 CET (15:00 GMT), and it is open to everyone who is interested in the topic. The sessions typically run for 60-75 mins and participants will be able to pose questions about the articles and have the authors respond. The posing of questions and responses all happens via the UNFOLD chat interface, with replies being typed in ‘live’, under the moderation of one of the UNFOLD project team. The resulting transcript is then made available via the UNFOLD website.

A link and instructions for logging

September 26th, 2005|Teaching & Learning|Comments Off on Learning Design|