One of the perennial problems for both academic colleagues and learning technologists is trying to judge the educational value of online courses. Especially in blended learning the online ‘course’ is often just a component of a broader learner experience, and its role really can only be understood in the context of how it supports or extends ‘live’ activities. Thus what looks to a learning technologist like an unsophisticated ‘list of links’ in Moodle may actually support a rich classroom-led enquiry-based learning activity. It is hard to tell without speaking to the lecturer (or students) involved.

Nevertheless for modules which are wholly online or have a high use of technology a consensus has emerged as to what components are necessary to enable a ‘good’ course. One very practical example of this is the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program Rubric, which has gradually developed as a kind of sector standard since it was established in 2000, back then under the WebCT flag. The eight page rubric actually supports Blackboard’s Catalyst course competition (only open to Blackboard users, of course!) but the document can also be read as a platform-neutral checklist of good design, as applicable to Moodle as it is to Blackboard. Using the rubric course designers can evaluate how well their own course conforms to ‘best practices’ in four areas; Course Design, Interaction and Collaboration, Assessment and Learner Support. Each area is broken down into separate areas, with a checklist of ‘incomplete’ to ‘exemplary’ examples.

• Course Design covers how clear the course goals and objectives are, the way the content is presented and any use of media, how learning design encourages students to be engaged in ‘higher order’ thinking and generally how the VLE is used to help student engagement.
• Interaction and Collaboration includes communication strategies (an aspect so important we are considering including in the UCL Moodle baseline), how a sense of learner community is developed and ‘logistics’ i.e. quality and expectations of interaction.
• Assessment is essentially about how assessment design aligns with the learning outcomes, the expectations on students and any opportunities for self assessment.
• Learner support highlights the importance of orientation to the course and the VLE, clarity around the instructor role, links to institutional policies, accessibility and the role of feedback.

In short this is really a very useful checklist for people already running or currently designing programmes with a high online component and well worth a look. Using a checklist does not guarantee an ‘exemplary’ student experience but is simply a way to ensure that what are nowadays commonly regarded as critical components of success are fully considered in the course design and planning. Some of the sections may need some ‘interpretation’ or localisation and that is hopefully where E-Learning Environments can help!

One of the most surprising (and pleasing) e-learning phenomena at UCL over the last year has been the rapid rise and adoption of the term ‘flipping‘.

Flipping involves an interesting redesign of ‘traditional’ teaching. Students are asked to view and sometimes comment on a short video online to prepare for a tutorial or seminar. The idea is they then come to the live event immediately ready to discuss in more depth the issues raised or apply those ideas in practical problem solving or group work supported by the academic. The videos can be all or part of a recorded lecture or be specially prepared using for example a narrated Powerpoint presentation. They can be supported by many kinds of online resources such as e-readings and quizzes.

Although the idea has been around since at least 2006, used by Eric Mazur at Harvard and others,  the US high school teachers Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams are often credited with starting the movement. In the UK the idea received a boost in a prophetic 2010 Daily Telegraph article by Daniel Pink on ‘flip thinking’, but it was Salman ‘Kahn Academy’ Khan mentioning “teachers flipping the classroom” in his 2011 TED Talk “Let’s Use Video to Reinvent Education that popularised the whole concept. The influential Wired magazine then accredited flipping as a key trend in an excellent 2012 article University just got flipped: how online video is opening up knowledge to the world which itself forecast the rapid rise of the MOOC.

The idea of getting students to prepare properly for tutorials is hardly new and as the e-learning blogger Steve Wheeler pointed out at the time (What the flip, 2012), there may be risks involved if incomplete flipping perpetuates old ‘instructional’ models. He presented an attractive notion though that “Flipping learning for me means teachers becoming learners and students becoming teachers” which seems the logical ‘next step’ for flipping, an idea I will return to in a later blog post.

One of UCL’s great advocates of flipping is of course Carl Gombrich, Programme Director, Arts and Sciences (BASc) who flipped extensively from the outset of his Approaches to Knowledge course to engage students in cross-disciplinary discussion. Carl explains his approach earlier this academic year in his blog post Flipping lectures – reflections on a term of learning.

Carl also featured in a recent Times Higher Education / Echo 360 webinar E-Learning to Active Learning: Transforming the Learning Environment along with ELE’s Steve Rowett and myself where we explained UCL’s innovative approach The recording can be accessed simply by registering on the site. Carl uses the UCL desktop recording (EchoCapture Personal) software, part of Lecturecast, to create his video segments.

In the presentation Carl highlights some of the ‘good things’ about flipping:

• Students can interact with lecturers on questions that interest them/problems they want to work through.
• Students/lecturers get better relationships in terms of mentoring/personal contact etc.
• Active learning: lecture times can be used for summative assessments: short tests, blog pieces, group work, debates.

As we speak to academic colleagues, E-Learning Champions and departmental committees across UCL we are beginning to realise just how many people are interested in flipping as a way to explore new forms of teaching and learning and the Times Higher Education / Echo 360 webinar is a great place to start.

I’ve just watched Professor Keith Devlin of Stanford and a colleague being interviewed about their first experiences of running a MOOC last September. The interview touched on some of the lessons they’d learned which they’re hoping to use to improve the second iteration of their popular MOOC on mathematical thinking. The second version kicked off a few days ago on the 4th March.
I enjoyed the interview and Professor Devlin’s obvious enthusiasm and humility regarding his role as teacher made it easy to warm to him as a person. Some interesting points are made regarding changes to the course after analysis of the demographic and feedback from students. Much of the discussion revolves around the importance that Professor Devlin places on trying to put a human face to a  ‘dry’ subject made potentially even dryer by it’s mode of delivery.

The interview suggests that the team have succeeded, at least to some extent, in creating a feeling of instructor presence resulting, they think, in students committing more to the course than they otherwise might have. Worth a look for anyone interested in the development of distance learning, but also interesting  perhaps for tutors involved in the teaching of large cohorts of students and also concerned about issues of de-personalisation.

The interview can be viewed at:       https://class.coursera.org/maththink-002/lecture/126

Unfortunately you have to create a Coursera account to view the interview which forms part of the introductory material to the new course – fortunately it’s free!

Professor Devlin is also maintaining  ‘A real-time chronicle of a seasoned professor who is about to give his second massively open online course.’   a (probably) unique opportunity to get behind the scenes and see some of the thinking behind the development of this MOOC as it unfolds. To read more got to: http://mooctalk.org/

Converting conventional face-to-face teaching to online distance learning formats has long been recognised as a dauntingly challenging task for academics and learning technologists alike.  The classroom and the computer environment are both complex, subtle and surprisingly hard to describe, so translating from one mode into the another very different one is fraught with pitfalls, especially for academics with little experience of online course formats.

As UCL moves inexorably towards more blended and distance forms of delivery, these hard issues are coming up for us, too. Colleagues in departments are keen to develop distance learning modules and programmes but need a lot of personal input from ELE and CALT to guide them. We recognise this is hardly scalable so ELE is piloting checklists to help UCL, timings, contingency, developers identify critical initial questions around market analysis, finances resourcing, staffing, learner profiles, assessment, editing, copyright and so on.

We are now thinking about tools to help learning design itself and the stereotype question is; “What would the Open University do?”. Although the OU is very different organisation to UCL addressing an hugely different clientele, they actually face similar issues. At an OU event last week I came across their current course planning tools, which are actually based on an open JISC project called OULDI (Open University Learning Design Initiative). The two tools I saw in action were the Activity Profile and the Module Map.

The Activity Profile is a spreadsheet designed to provide an insight of what kind of learning actually goes on inside a course, identified by different types of learning activities; Assimilative, Finding and handling information, Communication, Productive, Experiential, Interactive/ Adaptive, Assessment. Each activity is associated with familiar Bloom-style ‘process outcomes’ or action verbs i.e. learners will collaborate/engage/explore etc.  The developers are asked to allocate study hours in the face-to-face course against each activity against each activity type. The results often show a skew towards Assimilative activities (e.g. Read, Watch, Listen, Think about, Access, Observe, Review). This is designed to generate discussion about what type of balance developers want in the online course, bearing in mind the online format requires active and preferably visible engagement with the course.

The Course (or Module) Map gives another perspective, an ‘at a glance’ view of the course or module across four dimensions (see illustration), and is more analogous to some of the materials now being developed by ELE. It captures a brief textual overview of the course activities in terms of the types of learning experience the learner will have, how they will communicate and collaborate with tutor and peers, as well as the guidance and support provided and the nature of any assessment.

The point of these tools is not to be prescriptive but to stimulate discussion and accurate description of the module so leading ultimately to more ‘aspirational’ designs which make better use of the online environment. I hope we will be able to build some aspects of OULDI into our own learning design processes.

One final OULDI tool I thought intriguing was the set of printed Course Features Card Sort. This comprises around 45 printable cards to help module teams decide on and describe their course. I expressed some cynicism about giving academic colleagues such materials but was assured that once their own scepticism was overcome, lecturers found the prompts to be useful to capture the intangible ‘feel ‘of a course. If anyone out there wants to try these out, I would be very happy to facilitate!

The term Active Learning Classroom seems to be quite well established in the US and Canada but I have to say isn’t something I’ve consciously encountered at home. I attended a great workshop at the Educause conference on active learning classrooms – and specifically on the kinds of activities that can take place in them – led by the very energetic Adam Finkelstein of McGill University in Montreal.

What are they? 
Simply spaces designed for students to learn together in groups – with or without technology. Typically there are tables for 6-9 students, with one or two (or no) screens per table for them to use with their own devices,  writable surfaces around the room, acoustics that can cope with multiple conversations, and  space for the teacher to move freely amongst the students.  There is no front podium for the teachers – they are normally in the middle of the room. The idea is that they promote collaborative learning experiences and provide more interaction between students and staff. There are some terrific videos from McGill showing classes and academics’ perspectives on them.

Some examples:

• MIT technology enhanced active learning classrooms (TEAL) classrooms
• University of Queensland Axon learning lab
• University of Minnesota ALCs
• McGill ALCs –
• Berkeley  ALCs

Learning in an ALC
A strength of the session was that it employed active learning strategies in an ALC – the workshop was in a space with all of the main ingredients of an ALC, and Adam modelled an active learning approach in which we had no option but to collaborate and learn together.

We were given a brief presentation on active learning and classroom designs, and then set to work with a short paper to read individually and a warning that we’d be tested on it – this definitely focused the mind.  After the test (multiple choice & short answer) on paper which we had to hand in (quite unnerving) we had to discuss our answers with our table mates and come to an agreement. This activity was a ‘readiness assurance process’, so called because it checks that participants are ready to move on in their learning.

Apparently we passed as Adam then moved on.  He outlined a framework for an active learning class which has four elements:

1. You start by introducing the approach and orienting the learners
2. There will be some informing or instruction – whether through presentation, reading, watching a video – whatever is most appropriate
3. Next comes the active learning bit – time for learners to work
4. The closing part involves reflection on what was learned and next steps.

He then set us off on another activity – this time a ‘four corners’ activity – in which we were split into four groups and given a couple of minutes to fill each of four whiteboards in turn on each of the four elements we’d heard about; each group built on the ideas of the previous one.  At the end of this he closed this activity by visiting each board and summarising – and challenging where necessary – our work.

Adam circulated a comprehensive list of 26 active learning strategies from brainstorming and buzz groups to interviews, simulations and one minute papers.

The session was backed up by other good online resources which I’d recommend a close look at – start at the resources section for each of the following:

• Active learning classroom resources
• Active learning strategies resources

Lots of food for thought and ideas for supporting learning in different sorts of learning spaces. Now we just need those spaces…