Slides to explain recent interventions in L&T that I have taken part in

1. USING ONLINE DELIVERY CAN
ENHANCE THE CAMPUS STUDENT
LEARNING EXPERIENCE
SARAH HONEYCHURCH

2. ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT ONLINE LEARNING
• Using technology is bound to enhance the student learning
experience
• Students are all digital natives nowadays
• “I’ll just convert my F2F course …”
• “I need to free up some of my time …”
• “That’s an admin job, not an academic one …”

3. STRUCTURE OF TALK
• Examples of recent blended learning experiments
• Brief evaluation of each
• Some conclusions

4. BLENDED LEARNING: POS PSYCH & CERE
• 5 x 2 hour F2F “lectures”
• Twitter “back channel”
• PMWiki web pages
• Reading lists
• Lecture slides
• Moodle course
• Group wikis and forums
• Assessed by Group wiki pages and 2 hour exam
• Jigsaw Classroom: collaborative learning facilitated by lecturer and TA

5. AUDIOTAGGING: PHYS & ASTRO
• Lecture content is hard! Handouts provided, lecture provides
examples
• F2F lectures: audio recordings for 6 courses made available to
enrolled students
• Beta version of audiotagging tool with demo by lecturer
• Students encouraged (prizes in some cases) to tag lectures (all tags
were public)
• Students could “like” other tags
• Attempt to encourage Jigsaw-like interactions

6. VPAL: USING FACEBOOK GROUPS TO SUPPORT
STUDENT LEARNING
• Level 3 Maths and Comp Sci
• Level 2 Maths, Comp Sci and Physics
• Level 1 for all schools in Sci & Eng, plus general College group
• “Moderated” by LTC
• Students from higher years/graduates invited to join (dojo type model)
• Pre-registration: basic info about induction, advisers, skills test, reading lists,
accommodation …
• Students began organising own F2F (induction, study groups, pub after the
last exam)
• Ongoing: links to SLS drop ins and workshops, articles, cartoons, trivia
• Groups virtually self-supporting by this time of year

7. HOW DID THESE ENHANCE STUDENT LEARNING?
• Psych: students, not the lecturer, became the subject experts (with the help of Prof. Google)
• Wikis as a study resource for all students (students intended using other wikis as exam
preparation)
• Twitter: Storify and TAGS (containing links to extra resources)
• Phys & Astro:
• International students could process information at their own speed (focus group
comment)
• VPAL:
• home students were able to engage even when off campus
• Non-native speakers could take their time to respond
• Students could get quick answers to “how to” questions (usually from other students!)
• Inclusive environment for all students

8. CONCLUSIONS
• Online learning can enhance campus student learning experience but:
• Students are not digital natives (are visitors and residents better
metaphors? (White))
• Need for careful scaffolding to support student engagement (neo-
Vygotskian, Jigsaw)
• Design and delivery of (good) online learning is hard!
• Design before content: think about how to teach before asking what to
teach (Mazur)
• Use appropriate pedagogies to make informed choices about available
technologies