JISC

Start date: 1 March 2007

End date: 28 February 2009

Funding programme: e-Learning Pedagogy programme

Project website: http://kn.open.ac.uk/workspace.cfm?wpid=7174

JISC theme(s): e-Learning

Committees: JISC Learning and Teaching committee

Overview

This project focuses on students studying work-based courses where, of necessity, students experience and use technologies in different locations, including their work places. The courses are in the faculties of Health and Social Care, Mathematics, Computing and Technology, and Business. Our definition of work-based courses include those where the practice element is a professional requirement (such as nursing, social work, etc.) and those where the course is designed to meet the work requirements in relevant employment sectors and requires professional practice to be developed through completion of course work and assessment. We use the term ‘practice-based’ to cover both types of courses. The project will run over 2 years (3/07-2/09) and will provide a richer understanding of how students are learning with a range of technologies across different boundaries, the strategies they use to manage the process, barriers/enablers, key critical moments and the relationship between student practice and institutional practice/policy.The project builds on a phase one project, LXP, which carried out a series of in-depth studies across four broad subject disciplines working in close conjunction with the HE Academy.

Aims and objectives

The findings from our previous work cross a wide range of institutional contexts and discipline areas and provide persuasive evidence of the interaction of factors deriving both from students’ personal learning contexts and from the disciplinary practices of their institution.[1]  The LXP study in particular documents the opportunistic and imaginative use of technologies students use regularly in their personal lives, rather than anything their lecturers recommend. We take this forward into our current project, which will not be limited to technology usage recommended by the institution but will draw into the findings any technology that students use in support of their study.

The aims of the project are to document students’ use of ICT for study-related purposes, whether formal or informal, and to explore the relationships between ICT study practices, work contexts, institutional teaching contexts and personal lives. The objectives of the project are

• to create case studies documenting ICT practices associated with study of blended courses in practice-based learning contexts
• to contribute to the JISC eLearning programme through sharing research outcomes, contributing to the synthesis and support project and other JISC activities as appropriate
• to identify the policy and practice implications of project findings, in relation to teaching approaches, student support and the relationships supporting learning in work and personal environments

Most of the research questions listed by JISC as areas to be explored are being addressed in the study, however the particular focus and context of our project is on practice-based learning contexts and so this influences and steers our approach. The original questions proposed in the bid have been iterated and updated in light of discussions within the project team, but also as a result of the JISC-programme level support workshop on research question mapping.

In particular we plan to address the following questions:

• Choices: How are choices constrained or enabled by work practices and work roles? How do learners use technology to fit learning into work and study time? Is there a mismatch between course designed use of tools and students’ actual use?
• Critical moments: How do relationships with mentors, tutors, colleagues, etc. influence technology usage? Is there evidence of a learning trajectory in successful use of technology, over the period from entry to completion? Were there critical moments in their personal circumstances and/or environment (work, institution, personal/social) leading to changes in the use of technology?
• Institutional policies : Do institutional practices undercut or support technology use for practice-based learning? Are there ways in which positive workplace practices could be recognised and highlighted in course guides, with the possibility of increasing their adoption?
• Institutional systems: How do these support student use of technology across multiple settings?
• Highly skilled e-communicators: What are the strategies they use and how can these be used to develop both course design and practice-based learning?
• Personalising tools and environments: How are students appropriating tools across their different learning contexts (work, institution, personal/social)? How do they envisage future use of tools to support their professional practice and Continuing Professional Development?
• Learning outcomes: In what ways does ICT usage support effective achievement of specific learning outcomes by students? What pedagogies/learning designs do course teams use to deliver specific learning outcomes? Is there a mismatch between designs/pedagogies used by course teams and students use of ICT to achieve learning outcomes? 

Project methodology

The focus of this project is on students using practice-based OU courses which blend independent study using a range of technologies, with practice and application in the work context. In some cases attendance at face-to-face teaching sessions is required. This provides a rich intersection of contexts and settings within which to study both formal and informal uses of technology by students ranging from the inexperienced to computing specialists.

In-depth case studies will be used to capture practice in the use of technologies across the different aspects of students’ learning and different learning settings (home, work, institution, elsewhere). Data from 24/25 in-depth individual case studies will track students through their study of courses typically completed over one semester. These courses have been selected in relation to two criteria: their use of practice-based learning, in conjunction with their use of technology. We have also carefully chosen our sample to elicit innovative and unusual uses of technologies as a means of highlighting interesting stories which can be used to extrapolate implications for future practice and policy. Our experience on previous projects has highlighted the importance of early identification of appropriate students to study through consultation with relevant stakeholders, so that data collection can begin in earnest when the project starts. Identification of courses for inclusion was achieved by examination of an audit of technology use across OU courses[2] aided by discussion with specialists currently leading implementation of the Moodle VLE and individuals involved in developing and delivering the courses.  A minimum of three students willing to participate in the study will be selected from each of the course populations listed in the table below. These courses combine a range of pedagogies (working in teams, online communities, compulsory residentials and workshops, mentoring etc.) using a range of technologies (e-portfolios, e-assessment, wikis, blogs, e-content, conferencing tools, simulations, etc.). Two of the Health and Social Care courses require employer sponsorship (who provide appropriate practice contexts and allow 1-day a week for study purposes) and registration with the relevant Social Care Council. Our aim is to explore all the technologies used by students to support their studies. The courses chosen also include tools which are not extensively used yet. Student experience here gives insights into how these tools might be used more widely in future and our sampling strategy is in line with the recommendations arising from the LEX study.[3] Also our volunteers will represent a very wide range of ICT expertise, but all will be active users of technology for study and therefore in a position to give us data on detailed and varied experiences that point the way to improvements that will benefit others. A small recompense (£50/student) for their involvement is included.

Specialised use of particular technologies: 1. E-assessment, 2.E-Portfolios, 3. Conferencing, 4. Wikis or blogs

The main method will be qualitative case studies of 3/4 students from each of 7 courses (24/28 total), involving a series of in-depth interviews and audio logs (as used in the LXP project), supported by analysis of appropriate institutional documentation (course documents, policy documents) and ongoing consultation with those involved in the development and support of the courses. Some flexibility in terms of data collection will be needed to fit with the different schedules of each student, but an outline of the planned activities is given below.

• Baseline data : A sample of students from each course will be asked to complete an online survey about their experience of technology use, access and other contextual factors in their study and work environments. This survey will enable comparison of the qualitative data from the case studies with a wider cross-section of student experience
• Contextual data will also be gathered through analysis of course documentation and relevant institutional documents (policy documents, guidelines, etc.). Interviews have currently being conducted with each of the course chairs to gather data on their perceptions and design strategies
• Audio logs: Students will be asked to contribute audio logs (as in the LXP project) at critical moments documenting their experience during the moment of use of particular technologies
• Interviews: End of course interviews will be carried out with students and course chairs by phone or email, with prompts enabling the interviewer to pursue interesting lines of enquiry
• Issues log: An ongoing issues log will be kept noting issues arising from institutional events and policy directions of relevance to the findings of the study and noting emergent issues from the data which have policy implications
• Capture of opportunistic data: We will build on the work of the Mobilearn project (Brasher and Taylor, 2005)[4] by exploring ways of extending laboratory techniques into students’ environments, such as use of Mp3 or webcams to capture ‘think aloud’ data using particular technologies or to capture unplanned peer group discussions in practice/social settings, providing data on understanding through peer interaction, automated capture of students’ working environments via webcams triggering image capture at intervals (with student control of images selected for analysis) and exploration of the web tracking facilities of Moodle (using a methodology currently used by the OpenLearn initiative[5])
• OU and CETL workshops: A series of workshops will ensure validation and transferability of the findings. Our team includes the Director of the Practice-based Professional Learning CETL at the OU, who will identify interested staff from other CETLs, who will participate in the workshops, discuss findings and calibrate our students’ experience against their own on comparable courses. Partner institutions will be introduced to the project instruments at a meeting in October ‘07 to offer them the opportunity to undertake parallel studies. It is also planned to organise a face to face workshop towards the end of the project. We have experience in the OU of using vignettes to create narrative personas of potential student types to inform course/software designers. We plan to develop these using our data and to annotate and amend them at the workshops, in order to reflect the experience of participants from interested CETLs

Anticipated impact

The project aims to contribute to understanding of learners’ experiences with ICT and the design of learning environments that best support outcomes and achievement, in the context of

• practice-based learning on courses that draw upon or assessment workplace experience and performance
• institutional strategies for ICT development, with particular reference to practice-based courses
• sector understanding of the role of ICT in student learning, drawing on study, work and social contexts of technology usage

The outcomes of the research will be a series of in-depth case studies which will provide a rich description of learners’ experiences of practice-based blended learning, focusing in particular on:

• characteristics of the learner group (age, experience, level of study, work demands, etc.) and how these affect the use of technology and the role it plays in their learning
• stages and processes of technology use as these develop during study, and across courses and different sites of learning
• the interaction between work, institution and personal/social sites for learning and the impact this has on the quality of learner experience
• contrasting experiences of highly skilled and novice technology users and the impact of institutional practices and expectations

 Key recommendations will be disseminated using different formats relevant to particular audiences – whether academic, institutional or work-context related.

Lead institution

• The Open University

Project partners

We are partnering with the Practice-based Professional Learning CETL at the OU and with a range of CETLs such as SCEPTRE at Surrey, CEIMH at Birmingham and CLIP at ChelseaCollege of Art. However the relationship is not a direct collaboration so much as a peer group for dissemination, discussion and verification of our findings and approaches as they develop.