After a very hectic first semester it is now time to turn our attention again to developing our learning objects using the GLO Maker Tool. All the objects that we have populated our learning design with have been very well received by the students. Evaluations continue but more on the progression of our students rather than on how they are using the Learning Objects. We are confident that our scaffolding is working well and learning is taking place. There are still gaps in the learning objects in terms of certain conceptual underpinnings for successful engagement with the curriculum but there is a balance between developing materials and delivering them. This last semester has certainly been about delivery! The Learning Objects are now supporting nearly 800 students in a scaffolded learning design context and many more in a more serendipitous fashion (see project outputs section, Report for the RLO-CETL -‘Reuse, Impact and sustainability of Learning Objects At Thames Valley University’)

Current work with the librarians should tackle some of the gaps we have identified and we should be able to pilot these new materials later in the year.

 

September 2009

As the summer progressed and we became more familiar with the GLO Maker (The website is: http://www.glomaker.org <http://www.glomaker.org/> This replaces the original website. If you have problems accessing it try “reload” or access via www.glomaker.com <http://www.glomaker.com/>) colleagues from across the institution asked for demonstrations on how to create their own materials. We found that folks were as interested in how to use the Learning Design Tool as they were to use the GLO Maker. Reasons for this were that thinking about how to repurpose exisitng materials was made easier with the LDT. A learning object wasn’t always teh best solution for underpinning a particular concept. We have delivered five workshops to date demonstrating our redesigned module and are looking forward to the RLO CETL team visiting us in October as part of our Faculty project on using the GLO Maker to repurpose our paper based materials.  Two curriculum teams from the Business School had signed up for the project before the end of July and are very enthusiastic about teh project and the learning gains for their students.

We were excited to be present at the eagerly anticipated launch of GLOMaker 2 today, at the Wolfson Reward Programme at Cambridge University. After the morning demonstration by Professor Tom Boyle, we spent the afternoon sharing our experiences of GLOMaker 1 with colleagues from a wide range of backgrounds in HE, and collaboratively beginning the task of transferring our materials from version 1 to version 2. Everyone was impressed with the improved ease of use and customisability of text and layout, within the same sound pedagogic framework. GLOMaker 2 more than met our expectations and we are really looking forward to bringing it back into our institution. Tomorrow we are looking forward to Nicola Siminson (support@jorum.ac.uk) demonstrating the Jorum OER Deposit Tool.

We encountered some problems when uploading the learning objects that we created using the GLOMaker tool to Blackboard, our VLE. The reusable learning objects already in Blackboard have a different structure to our LOs, and launch from an index.html file, like most websites, which our LOs do not have. After much experimentation, we have found the best way to load our LOs into Blackboard is to ‘zip’ them first. Loading them in to a course is fairly straightforward; the zipped file is uploaded just like any other document or item, and ‘unpackaged’ under the Special Action option. Blackboard then allows you to specify the ‘Entry Point’, in this case the GLOPlayer.swf file, to launch the LO. Uploading to the Content Collection (Blackboard’s content management system, where materials can be shared across courses) is slightly more complicated. The zipped LO has to be uploaded to the Content Collection but unpackaged at the course level. We have now produced detailed step-by-step instructions for our colleagues at TVU who we hope will soon be producing their own LOs using the GLOMaker tool. We are very happy to share these here with anyone else who may be struggling to load their LOs into their VLE, but please note that some instructions are specific to our Blackboard set-up at TVU.

Samples of the Reuseable Learning Objects we used

To read about the full repurpose journey please visit our Project Outputs page.

 

What’s been happening in April and May 2009?

Using the GLO Maker Tool

Having submitted out final report to JISC we continue to work on regardless. The work of repurpose continues. As we had not completed copyright clearance with Manchester University we were slightly delayed. This was for no other reason than contracts take time to draw up (an important point when considering repurposing someone else’s materials!). This gave us a chance to undertake our learning design modifications and identify how we wished to reprupose the academicphrasebank materials in terms of the concepts being developed. We have become much more familiar with the GLO Maker tool and all that it is able to achieve. If you would like to find out more about our experiences please visit our Project Outputs section and see case-study three. We have evolved the quality of our Learning Objects and the story of our journey might be a quick way to save some trouble on your own journey of discovery. Needless to say it wasn’t without it trials. We are currently trying to find the best technical way to upload our Learning Objects onto our blog as well as our VLE!

Sample pages from our GLOs

What’s been happening in February and March 2009?

Evaluating our students’ experiences

After returning from the Christmas break all three cohorts of students worked quietly towards the final submission of their portfolios, due in at the end of January. BlackBoard version 8 was up and running smoothly. Our extenal project evaluator regularly consulted with us to have the team’s in-put into  how we wanted to evaluate the studnet experience. Our key aims in the evaluation were to focus on the enhanced capacity, knowledge and skills in the use of the LOs to support learning and teaching, on the positive and sustainable change in the use and re-use of external learning materials and whether or not the outputs were fit for educational purpose.

If you would like to find out more about our student’s very positive experiences please visit our Project Outputs section and see case-study four.

The evaluation conducted studied the use of RLOs in two modules

1. Critical Approaches to Research and Study in HE for Business students

2. Critical Enquiry Skills for Science

The first module ‘Critical approaches to research and study in HE’ successfully integrated 4 RLO-CETL RLOs in the previous year, and the same approach has been applied to the ‘Critical Enquiry Skills for Science’ this year. The Science module has two cohorts of students: 50+ students on Pre-medical, Human and Forensic Science programmes at the Ealing Campus and 12 students taking Forensic Science only at the Reading Campus.

The context for the study is that the original module was designed to support skills and competence development in an ill-defined discipline (for business students). It has been redesigned as a blend by the module leaders to transfer across subject domains to a well defined discipline (science-based). In the process, a number of new RLO’s and materials have been repurposed.

The evaluation study looks at the different experiences and the impact that the RLOs and materials have had between the two modules, from the point of view of both students and module tutors.

What’s been happening in October and November 2008?

The students arrive and we set off on the module journey together -

During August in readiness for the arrival of the students we had meetings with registry, Information systems support and various others. The intention was to ensure that students were able to enrol quickly and easily onto the VLE. We had hick-ups in the previous academic year and wanted to try and make sure things ran smoothly this year. My own modules are now fully blended and rely on Blackboard for classroom activities as well as independent learning. In broad terms this is how things are progressing this academic year from a tutor’s perspective.

 

29^th Sept-2^nd Oct - Students have first to be enrolled to be able to access their Virtual Learning Environment. Some students had problems in terms of accessing their learning materials on BB as registrations were not yet complete. Additionally Blackboard was running very slowly all week which meant classroom activities were a challenge.

 

6^th Oct - To circumvent the administrative delays we temporarily introduced self-enrolment for students after making modules open access. This worked very successfully and additionally enabled the students to gain confidence in their VLE area.

 

7^th October – Blackboard was running intermittently and was extremely slow when it was running.

 

The impact this week has been:

 

Initially students were frustrated as they were unable to log on and participate, however this was quickly resolved through self enrolment and we learnt how to problem-solve effectively around tricky issues of student access.

 

The return to OHPs and an inability to use prepared learning materials as Blackboard was too slow or not running was frustrating but we are confident that the learning from this year will enable us to navigate different solutions for next year.

 

Although we had difficulties with the VLE we  were able to allow the students access to the materials through other links. The studnets were very impressed with the RLOs as a support for their independent learning.

BL4ACE has acted as a catalyst within the institution in terms of opening up dialogues around e-approaches. As each stage of the project progresses we are engaged with different units of the university. The project workshops  for the London Pedagogic Planner and the Generative Learning Object were attended by all the Blended Learning teams from across faculties. Sharing of challenges across faculty projects and finding solutions institutionally has been a hallmark of our recent experiences. Discussions around curriculum design tools and have been shared. Copyright, legal and technical issues have been at the forefront of discussions with Library and Information staff. Ensuring no delays to student access to the VLE have brought us into conversation with faculty registrar staff.

 

We have completed our re-design of the module, embedded e-activities into the support for independent learning, loaded the modules into the VLE, tested the materials and have taken the module through University Quality processes. The revised module, its teaching strategy, tutor materials and student activities have been  adapted for use in the Faculty of Health and Human Sciences and this module has also  loaded the modules into the VLE, tested the materials and have taken the module through University Quality processes.

 

WORKPACKAGE 1.1: Module redesign using LPP

 

Objective: To reorient students’ learning activities

1.       Redesign student activities using LPP for both:

2.       Tutor supported f2f

3.       Independent learning activities

 

Our first priority was to gain experience of the London Pedagogic Planner (http://www.wle.org.uk/d4l) After careful planning of the Internet requirements, booking of staff training rooms and coffee and biscuits, Dianna Laurillard and her team visited TVU. We had a really interesting session learning how the Pedagogic Planner worked and could support curriculum design.

 

The LPP encouraged a thinking process about the activities that you require your learners to undertake. Essentially how is the activity (reading a chapter, working through an exercise, writing a precis and so forth) helping the learner understand the concept they are being introduced to. What are you the tutor doing and what is the student doing in supporting the learning process. It was a very informative session and we all took away much to think about. The importance of thinking about the ‘real’ amount of time a student had each week was a very high learning curve for me.

 

The LPP was not yet developed sufficiently for us to make full use of it for redesigning our module. However we did use the principles identified and drew up our own rudimentary hard-copy version. We knew that the teaching and learning approaches used on the ‘Critical Research Skills for Higher Education’ were effective in terms of developing academic competences with our learners. We looked very carefully at each competence and how an e-activity could be used to consolidate the students understanding and application of the skill development we were scaffolding. We considered the the implications of the different curriculum. The approach had always been used within a Business curriculum and so it was important to attempt to identify possible different student learning needs within a scientific curriculum. One discussion focused on the importance of understanding how to scope a scientific project, this was an area that had not been covered previously by the structured approach to developing academic competences but was considered important for both sets of student groups so this was incorporated into the new module design.

 

WORKPACKAGE 1.2: Identification of RLOs

 

Objective:

1.    To identify pedagogically appropriate  RLOs to support independent learning activities

2.    Make pedagogic decisions about which RLO’s are best to support each activity

 

3.    Identify storage, customisation, copyright and legal issues for use

 

Once we had clearly identified the critical academic competences we set about identifying e-activities that could support each individual competence. These activities had to be focused in order to scaffold the competence.

 

Multimedia learning objects embedded within a VLE created for the module were chosen to provide this support. Blackboard is used in the University for its e-learning platform ‘TVU Online’,  supported by a central department, and was considered to be an ideal platform to integrate the online components within the module framework. Four multimedia learning objects developed by the RLO-CETL at London Metropolitan University (London Met) were selected to be reused within the module. The objects had been developed within an initiative funded by the Higher Education Funding Council in the UK, and were thus freely available for the academic community to use. The four learning objects selected were on Referencing Books, Referencing Journals, Referencing Websites and Reflective Writing.

 

For example on week three learners are introduced to the concept of Harvard Referencing. They are asked to make use of Harvard referencing in their precis homework activity. This homework artefact is used as a vehicle for further discussions around use of resources, reading for academic purposes and plagiarism. The learning objects from London Metropolitan (http://www.rlo-cetl.ac.uk/joomla/index.php) worked exceptionally well for a number of the competences but there were areas where it was clear we needed other materials.

 

After careful investigation we had identified the activities we wished to use,  however each  were part of much larger e-activity packages, and in some cases aimed at final year students.  The resources are excellent in their entirety but would not meet our particular curriculum scaffolding needs unless we were able to disaggregate them in to specific e-activities that could support our competencies.

For colleagues who would like to look at the sites identified they are as follows:

 

http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/

 

www.vts.intute.ac.uk/detective/

 

http://www.uefap.com/

 

www.engageinresearch.ac.uk/

 

Meanwhile, as all plot narrators say, we were working very closely with Library and Information Support staff (LISS) and our Faculty Quality team. The issues identified and raised are currently ongoing so we will simply signpost them at this stage.

 

LISS issues:

 

Our discussion with Liam from the JISC team was very helpful. We were able to issues as follows:

 

1.    who has the right institutionally to sign copyright for the materials that we wished to use?

2.    Who has copyright of the materials created using the Generative Learning Object (more of that later!)

3.    Even if we are able to sort all of this out for use in HE institutions in Great Britain, who has the copyright once we start using the materials for commercial gain in our overseas arenas?

4.    We are substantially changing the learner experience through the introduction of e-materials and how is this monitored through our quality processes?

 

Lots of other questions came up but these seemed to be the most critical. I went straight from the meeting with Liam to a meeting with the Head of Learning Resources and our e-copyright librarian amongst others. I left that meeting and went straight into a meeting with our Quality team leader. I left that meeting and went straight into a meeting with students who were reviewing the new materials. Lots of meetings and lots of subsequent institutional and faculty activity that will be reported on after our monitoring group meeting in September.

 

WORKPACKAGE 1.3 GLO use as appropriate

 

Objective:: Use GLO to adapt learning design of module

Create learning object template for generic Academic Competence module

Use learning object template to adapt module for use with Pre-Med Students

 

Professor Tom Boyle came to TVU and helped us understand the Generative Learning Object (GLO Tool, http://www.glomaker.org). What a powerful tool for e-materials development. Simple, easy to use and able to adapt all sorts of materials. We had invited all the e-learning co-coordinators and various Heads of various departments to maximise institutional learning and every single one of us was really, really impressed.

 

A simple example of how it can work. Teresa, our blended learning developer for faculty and BL4ACE project team member was supporting colleagues in a faculty initiative to use the VLE Blackboard. Following Tom’s session Teresa took her workshop materials and transformed them into a short interactive Re-usable Learning Object with an interactive multi-choice test on the functions of Blackboard. 

 

Having identified our materials for re-purpose with the GLO the next step was to contact the various owners of the e-materials and seek the necessary permissions.

 

WORKPACKAGE 1.4 Response to technical, legal and copyright issues

 

Objective: Identification of barriers in repurpose of materials

 

Identify issues (Internal and external) of adoption/customisation/use of RLO’s

 

The permissions we were seeking were to:

 

load the materials onto the TVU server;

re-purpose the materials so that we could make use of a particular e-activity (in much the same way you might use only a chapter of a text book we wished to disaggregate the materials so we might use only certain aspects) to support a specific concept development

 

Some of the sites were clear in who owned the copyright and the uses that could be made whilst for some of the sites it was less clear. The rlo-cetl, vts.intute and Phrasebank at Manchester agreed to the materials being loaded onto the TVU server and being re-purposed as the curriculum development required. uefap and engageinresearch both agreed for a link to redirect students but did not wish for the materials to be loaded onto our server or re-purposed in a disaggregated manner.

 

Copyright was taken forward by our e-copyright librarian assisted by JISC and the re-purpose proceeded.

 

Identify solutions for issues (Internal and external) of adoption/customisation/use of RLOs

 

Once we had decided to bring in the e-materials we had to decide where they should reside in terms of servers and who should deal with copyright. This is quite a complicated question as there are copyright issues to be considered. When using a text book this is dealt with through the       policies that are in place, however with e-materials the systems and policies were less straightforward.  An academic could link materials to courses without clearing any copyright and as we identified on some of our chosen sites copyright ownership was not clear.

 

Of equal importance is ensuring that institutionally we don’t duplicate licenses and loading of materials onto our servers as our community  re-purpose e-activities and materials across courses. The library system ensures a cataloging of titles and requests are made through the library staff. E-materials and activities need to be made accessible to all through a similar system. Once an e-activity has been customised as a new reusable learning object it should then also be logged onto the system for other colleagues internally to re-purpose if appropriate.

 

WORKPACKAGE 2.1: Testing of materials and activities

Objective: To ensure Module and learning activities are embedded into VLE and admin systems

 

Up-Load materials onto VLE and test

 

The Reusable Learning Objects that were brought in from the RLO-CETL and Intute were loaded onto the institutional content area of our VLE Blackboard. This was a straightforward exercise and simply meant that the links were loaded into the module materials for the students to connect to as directed by the tutor directions in module material. The Faculty was running a training programme for Programme leaders and the links were used by the team to demonstrate how to up-load materials. This was an excellent opportunity of sharing the very good skills RLO’s that we were using with wider faculty. All colleagues were impressed and deemed them very useful indeed for their first year students.

 

Learning how to up-load materials and work effectively with the VLE was challenging. Things kept on ending up in the wrong place or the links wouldn’t open but eventually we completed the on-line version of the module with most of the materials that we wished to use. The re-purposing of the materials from Academicphrasebank swith the GLO so that we could make use of a particular e-activity to support a specific concept development has been delayed until September when the learning technologist returns from annual leave. The process and outcomes will be reported on this Blog site as soon as we have completed it.

 

WORKPACKAGE 2.2 Validate and test new module descriptions within TVU QA systems

Objective: To ensure quality and standards are monitored and maintained

 

Arrange module validation with Faculty, Externals and Quality Audit Office

 

Both the Faculties put the redesigned modules through the required quality processes. This was interesting in terms of the original module as it was not required by quality processes to be reviewed. We had not changed the learning outcomes, the module content remained the same, as did the assessment. We had however substantially changed the learning experience through the introduction of e-activities and had brought in materials that could have copyright implications. We raised this with the Faculty Quality team and they proposed that we took the module through quality processes under the change of more than 25% of the module content. 

 

The Health and Human Sciences module went through full validation processes as they had changed the assessment and content. Both the modules were well received by the externals approved and are now ready to run this October when the students arrive.

 

References

 

Biggs, J. (2003). Teaching for Quality Learning at University. Berkshire: Open University Press 2nd Ed.

 

Cole, M. (2005). Putting Culture in the middle. In Daniels, H. ed. An Introduction to Vygotsky. 2nd Ed., Routledge, London.

 

Greaves, L. (2007). Developing Student Academic Competence: the successes. Faculty of Professional Studies Learning and Teaching Journal, 4, Thames Valley University.

 

Harvey, L & Knight, P. (1996). Transforming Higher Education. SRHE/Open University Press, Buckingham.

 

Laurillard, D. (1993). Rethinking University Teaching. London: Routledge.

 

Section Three: Institutional & Project Partner Issues

Report on any changes or issues in your institutional context and/or any progress or issues with your project partners (where applicable).

The changes institutionally are on-going and will be reported on the Blog following the Project Monitoring Group meeting in September.

 

London Metropolitan University have supported the work through visits and workshops. LMU colleagues have also been supporting the project team through telephone and email.

 

Section Four: Outputs and Deliverables

Module Validation Documents for the two modules are attached.

 

Section Five: Outcomes and Lessons Learned

Outcomes:

·       The project has inspired fellow practitioners and is serving as a hub for cross-programme integration of our findings and resources, and for sharing practical experiences in reuse and re-purposing through maximising existing mechanisms.

 ·       Embedding of practical knowledge of the London Pedagogic Planner across  the university with colleagues responsible for supporting such activities will ensure the continuation of the learning cycle.

Lessons Learned:

·       It takes much more time than you realise to track down copyright ownership

·       Colleagues prefer you to take the whole URL and use it in its entirety. The challenge here is using e-activities strategically in the learning experience.

·       Barriers institutionally are often not really barriers, simply areas of unexplored terrain where folks  don’t always realise the inter-dependency of other departments.

·       Simple solutions are often simple because you haven’t seen the inter-dependency of other departments/units! 

 Section Six: Evaluation