“Sharing expertise in the use of information and communication technology to enhance teaching and learning in the humanities”

Frances Condron Humanities Computing Unit University of Oxford Helen Beetham Faculty of Education and Language Studies The Open University Catherine Bennett Dept of Psychology University of York Peter Twining Faculty of Education and Language Studies The Open University

The ASTER project (Assisting Small-group Teaching through Electronic Resources) is a collaboration between the universities of Oxford, Surrey and York (lead site), and University College Northampton. It is funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, through the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme phase 3. Since autumn 1998, ASTER has been exploring how new technologies can support staff and students to make better use of small-group teaching, be it as tutorials, seminars, workshops, laboratories or other practical classes. This demonstration will introduce two aspects of ASTER's work:

1. Findings from the survey of the use of information and communication technologies to support small group teaching in a range of humanities and other disciplines.
2. ASTER's collaboration with other projects in the UK to create a prototype digital library of case studies.

1. The ASTER survey (http://cti-psy.york.ac.uk/aster/)

In 1999, ASTER undertook a series of surveys in UK higher education institutions to identify good practice in the use of new technologies for small-group teaching. We were interested in the tools and resources being used, and the contextual factors which determine the success or otherwise of implementing new technologies in teaching and learning. Another key issue was to identify disciplinary differences, and to explore why these came about. A questionnaire was sent out by email to thousands of academics in Britain and beyond; 40 academics were interviewed by telephone; 30 case studies were carried out in 1999 and 2000. The case studies cover a range of subjects: archaeology, art, chemistry, classics, engineering, english, mathematics, physics, psychology, theology. The case studies and reports from the surveys are available from the ASTER Web site (http://cti-psy.york.ac.uk/aster/). Findings show that a range of C&IT tools is being used before, within, and after classes, to support and enhance dialogue between students and tutors. Moreover, there are disciplinary differences in the choice of tools used to support teaching and learning. While some digital resources act as a medium through which dialogue occurs (communication tools such as email, chat and discussion lists), the majority of the ASTER case studies document indirect support. Computer-mediated communication, and the communications features of virtual learning environments, directly support dialogue, and are popular in the arts, humanities, and psychology, though ASTER found minimal use by physicists and chemists. Multimedia tutorials (often providing introductions to subjects) and simulations, where available, can ensure that students have sufficient skills to continue with the course - thus they are popular in physics and engineering, covering mathematics; language drillers are used to support vocabulary acquisition and grammar, but not widely used in English literature or fine art, for example. The ASTER survey found that students were directed to multimedia tutorials for independent study, freeing up face-to-face meetings for more advanced discussion. Finally, preparatory readings may be accessed via the Web, through a Virtual Learning Environment, or on CD-ROM. Such resources offer limited support for dialogue, though they are popular in the arts, humanities and psychology (and presumably the social sciences); limited use was made of such resources to support undergraduate teaching in the physical sciences. These differences in the use of new technologies to support small-group teaching are a result of several interconnecting factors. An obvious reason is that the subject content of any resource needs to fit the course being taught, and digital resources are not currently available to cover all university courses! However, we found that other factors are at play. Discussion classes are vital to support students' acquisition of subject expertise and jargon, and to engage in academic discourse, both verbal and written. However, opportunities for discussion between students and tutors are reliant on the balance of teaching methods used (lectures, practicals, seminars etc.), and class size, both of which vary between disciplines and institutions. Electronic tools can support discussion, mediating between individuals, though previous experience in using tools either for research or teaching by students and tutors influences their perception of the value of these tools. The ASTER project attempts to pull together these areas of research in teaching practice and the use of new technologies. While the ASTER survey has not been able to gather information on teaching practices across entire institutions, or nationally for all departments in a given subject area, it has nevertheless revealed differences in teaching practices between disciplines. These differences are not clear cut, the number of ASTER case studies is relatively small, and our findings cannot be taken as representative of UK higher education as a whole. However, they raise issues that deserve further attention (ASTER 2000 and Condron 2001 discuss the findings in more detail).

2. Sharing expertise: the prototype digital library of case studies (http://mathetics.open.ac.uk/)

One of the many problems facing those involved in making effective use of new technologies in education is locating relevant information that can support and enhance their endeavours and avoid duplication of effort. This is particularly problematic in the area of new technology for a number of reasons, including: the rapid rate of change of technology; the vast amount of work taking place in the area; and the lack of adequate co-ordination of information between the different organisations, institutions and individuals involved. The higher education funding councils of the UK have spent millions of pounds on supporting staff development, through special units within institutions, and research and dissemination projects such as the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme (TLTP), the Forum for the Development of Teaching and Learning (FDTL), and the Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN). These programmes all support fixed-term projects. Such projects aim to disseminate their findings and resources, and have an impact on higher education practice within the limits of their funding, at least in part because these are often measures against which their success is judged. In many ways, projects are competing with each other to raise their individual profiles, so that they are seen to be successful and are thus more likely to attract further funding. For the user community, keeping informed of current developments is challenging - there is currently no central service coordinating the sharing of information between projects and the academic community. In order to start to support the user community more effectively, four TLTP projects (all UK-based) came together in spring 2000 to develop a model for supporting access to our case studies of teaching practice (the projects are ASTER, EFFECTS, SoURCE, and TALENT). We ended up with a model of a central service for staff development. This model was based on the results of a national survey of staff developers, and a prototype digital library of case studies on the use of information and communication technologies in teaching and learning. As TLTP projects, we share a common focus on learning technologies, though our model of a central service covers higher education in general. Our projects are due for completion in autumn 2001, and no service is yet in place to archive and disseminate our tools and resources after closure. The prototype digital library that we have established consists of a central database containing only descriptions of the case studies, and a user-friendly interface. The case studies themselves remain on the server of the project that created them. This simple description glosses over the effort that went into creating the database - we saw the need to follow international standards from the start, to support sharing of information and use of common terminology. Case studies were described using metadata (inspired by the Gateway to Educational Materials - GEM - in the USA) populated with vocabularies drawn from the Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors (educational terms). Further work is taking place to map terms across various current national and international educational thesauri. The original database is driven by Apple's Global Object Economy, but in extending the metadata and technical interoperability standards we are porting it to an SQL database. The design of the user interface was the result of lengthy research. We ran a national survey which helped us to identify four key groups of potential users of a central library. This resulted in the design of four access routes, aimed at academics (focussed on their subject), staff developers (focussed on pedagogy), educational developers (concerned with technology) and senior managers (with interests in strategy). Controlled vocabularies were developed for each of these categories, and used to catalogue case studies. An individual case study could contain information relevant to one or more of the categories. The process of designing a digital library of case studies highlighted the need for projects to retain ownership of their work, both so that a user of the database can recognise that the case studies it holds are the result of diverse working practices, and for the projects to retain their visibility and independent profile. This need for projects to have a high profile is one of the greatest barriers to collaborations of this sort. It was overcome by enabling each project to maintain its own customised Web interface to the one shared database. In addition, the process of vocabulary development has highlighted important areas of debate in understanding features of the learning environment and learning interactions. Further research in this area is clearly essential.

References:

ASTER. Investigating the Use of Electronic Resources in Small-Group Learning and Teaching. York: ASTER, 2000.

F. Condron. “Using electronic resources to support dialogue in undergraduate small-group teaching: the ASTER project.” ALT-J - Association for Learning Technology Journal. 2001. 9: 39-46.

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