Chapter 6: The Environment for eLearning in DCU
Introduction
You have reached the webpage for discussion of Chapter 6 of the DCU eLearning Strategy Staff Consultation Document. Below is a summary of Chapter 6 and a link to complete chapter (in pdf format). You are invited to make any comment you have on this chapter below by clicking on post a comment below.
Summary
Chapter 6 reviews the environment for eLearning in DCU in terms of its strategic plans, especially in relation to enrolment levels and potential programmes. DCU’s strengths in eLearning are outlined, as well as the role of other Higher Education institutions as competitors as well as potential partners in eLearning developments.
Chapter 6 (in pdf format)
You have reached the webpage for discussion of Chapter 6 of the DCU eLearning Strategy Staff Consultation Document. Below is a summary of Chapter 6 and a link to complete chapter (in pdf format). You are invited to make any comment you have on this chapter below by clicking on post a comment below.
Summary
Chapter 6 reviews the environment for eLearning in DCU in terms of its strategic plans, especially in relation to enrolment levels and potential programmes. DCU’s strengths in eLearning are outlined, as well as the role of other Higher Education institutions as competitors as well as potential partners in eLearning developments.
- eLearning can facilitate a number of strategic initiatives in DCU which call for flexibility, widening access, increasing retention, and increasing quality. It is envisaged that the next strategic planning exercise (currently in train) will take account of the range of objectives whose attainment can be assisted through eLearning.
- It is recognised that DCU is a small player in Irish higher education and therefore at risk from competitor institutions. The current strategic planning process will need to consider an enrolment growth strategy aimed at securing DCU’s independent position in the Irish higher education system
- The changing balance of enrolments within DCU has led to a situation where some programmes are oversubscribed and others undersubscribed. This provides cause for concern in terms of the viability of some programmes. eLearning can mediate some of the short-term difficulties caused by enrolment fluctuations.
- There are a number of institutions which could present formidable competitors to DCU in terms of eLearning in the immediate future. This indicates that DCU needs to adopt a proactive stance if it wishes to retain its position as leading innovator in Irish higher education and safeguard areas of expertise. Some of these competitors are also potential collaborators.
- There is considerable eLearning expertise in DCU. Oscail has extensive experience of developing and delivering fully online eLearning programmes. Other schools with substantial expertise include the Schools of Electronic Engineering; Physics; Education Studies; Nursing and SALIS.
- A reorganisation of Oscail could involve embedding programmes within the faculties, schools and linked colleges and thus disseminate the eLearning expertise of Oscail staff to support eLearning and enhance staff capabilities.
- While a number of schools have adopted eLearning initiatives, the extent of programmes available to off-campus students is limited. It is envisaged that the full implementation of AFI, when combined with eLearning will, in the longer term, result in greater flexibilities in this regard.
- In particular, there appears to be potential in converting existing high demand postgraduate programmes to online learning, as well as some new undergraduate programmes. However, before proceeding, detailed costing and market research would be required.
Chapter 6 (in pdf format)
posted by Seamus Fox at
3:24 PM
5 Comments:
Any comments, views, suggestions on Chapter 6. All feedback welcome.
Kay
While I strongly welcome the report and have found it an interesting read, I'm going to put on my electronic engineering hat! With this hat on, I found the representation of the online postgraduate programme model used by the School of Electronic Engineering to be somewhat lacking.
The model of distance education used is thoroughly different from the "traditional" concept of e-learning. Aside from a brief mention that there was some experience in our school, there was no discussion of the model.
We already have a e-learning hybrid strategy operating within the University, which has demonstrated a proven track record - it would have been nice to see more discussion relating to it in the eLearning strategy.
It is somewhat disheartening to work in an online programme which has increased postgraduate module participation from 180 modules in 1999 to almost 1300 in 2008 and to find coverage of two lines in a report on e-Learning strategy within DCU.
On a more specific note, I would be cautious with conclusions such as:
"Because of the declining demand for undergraduate programmes, just over half (53.2%) of students in Engineering & Computing are undergraduates, compared with over two thirds of Science & Health students (68.3%) and DCUBS (66.2%), and under two thirds (61.1%) of Humanities and Social Science Students."
While this aspect is certainly a factor, I would have considered the 400% growth in taught ee postgraduate numbers in recent years to be a considerable factor in adjusting undergraduate numbers downwards. The conclusion "Because of declining demand" suggests that we are passive victims of our environment, rather than active individuals shifting emphasis towards postgraduate and international recruitment in a proactive manner.
I have gone into specifics here, although I expect that is probably what the comments are for. I do recognise that one of the aims of the document was likely to avoid focusing too strongly on individual implementations of e-learning. However, I believe that some more discussion of what works (and what doesn't) might be suitable.
Kind regards,
David Molloy
David,
As I mentioned in my comment to the general post, I think that the model of online delivery developed by the School of Electronic Engineering has a lot to say to the rest of the university - especially given that the online programmes developed from a school that was used to presenting more traditional face-to-face programmes (in contrast to the situation in Oscail where we moved to develop online programmes from traditional distance education programmes).
Could you tell us a bit more about how your model evolved? Also, could you say something about how you and your colleagues develop your elearning materials and support your students online? Finally, could you say something about assessment on the RACEE/IPME programme and if it has changed as you have moved modules online?
Thanks in advance
Seamus
Many thanks for the response Seamus. I’ll try to provide a few details in relation to your questions.
Firstly, your use of the word “evolved” is entirely accurate. The model used today has been a continuous evolutionary process, attempting to follow and adapt to the needs of our students. While the model is far from perfect and much remains to be done, it has improved in quality on a year-on-year basis.
In 1997, when the e-learning aspect was first tackled, the generation of remote materials was seen as a means of recruiting pure e-learning students. It was considered that we could recruit students who would take one or two modules and undertake to complete them entirely remotely. These modules would run in parallel with the on-campus modules being taught to full time students. In years following and as the number of remote-enabled modules grew, the potential became available for students to utilise these modules towards completing a Masters programme (combined with a project).
Naturally enough, it began to make sense to provide the remote access materials to the on-campus students. Likewise, it began to make sense to allow remote access students to attend lectures in DCU, if they so wished. The categories became blurred and we began to think of all students as hybrid students. By definition of “hybrid students”, we mean students with high flexibility relating to mechanism of study and module participation rate.
One student might participate entirely on campus in a traditional classroom setting. Another might participate entirely remotely. Or a student may attend lectures one week, participate online the following week due to work restraints and then return to attendance for a few more weeks. The choice is entirely up to the student.
Likewise students may adapt their participation rate to their own needs. A student who is due to have a baby in the second semester may decide to do three modules in the first semester, but only one in the second. Another student may prefer a more relaxed approach of simply taking one module per semester.
On a final note, while we offer five primary Masters qualifications, these qualifications feed off the same set of postgraduate modules. The programmes offer considerable flexibility to students to “tailor” their own qualification. As an example, the Masters in Electronic Systems (the most general programme) allows students to take *any* eight of twenty four different modules, generating literally hundreds of thousands of alternative options. From a staff resourcing perspective, this model proves highly efficient.
One of the criticisms that could be leveled against the programme is perhaps in relation to our unrestrictive approach to the deployment of learning materials. A number of different material formats have been used and deployed via a range of mechanisms. These include (in order of popularity):
- HTML
- Wiki Server
- DocBook
- Moodle
However, resources are managed centrally and authentication takes place against the central DCU usernames/passwords. As a result, this unrestrictive approach is managed and it works well for students.
The hybrid model of postgraduate education makes no assumptions relating to the attendance capability or availability of students at particular times. While scheduled online chat sessions might appear to provide more immediate support, it is unlikely that a time can be facilitated to suit the majority of students. It has been found that a well-supported mailing list makes no assumptions in this regard and while support is not always immediate it can be guaranteed regardless of personal student timetables. In addition, mailing lists provide peer support, resulting in some reduction in teaching overhead.
In relation to the final question on assessment, I would say that our assessment approach has had to be modified in only a small number of modules. Assessment aspects requiring essay type answers or software implementations were not affected in the process and his covers the majority of modules. It has been necessary in some situations to request students to download and install particular software packages, which have already been installed on campus machines. However, this provides a learning aspect in itself and students are not unwilling in this regard. The approach of staff in using open source or freeware applications has been strongly beneficial in this regard.
Again, many thanks for getting back to me and I hope that this addresses some of your questions. While the model is working well on behalf of the school, it does not come without its own challenges and limitations – these we will continue to try and address as best as we can.
Kind regards,
David
This is a follow-up to my reply to Alan Smeaton's comment to the main posting on the use of elearning in the School of Computing. Below is a first draft on the extensive use of elearning in the school - more will be added later. It would be appreciated if people from the School of Computing or from other schools would add information on uses of elearning in the university not covered to date.
School of Computing
The School of Computing was a pioneer in the use of eLearning in DCU. An early application was the virtual delivery of lectures i.e. audio and synchronised video (Smeaton and Keogh 1999). This form of delivery would currently be called screen-casting – see Section 3.3.1. Interestingly, these authors pinpointed one of the key facets of screen-casting software which was to make it a popular way of creating rapid eLearning content. After describing a number of other eLearning approaches current at the time, they said “All of these approaches have had limited impact on mainstream teaching in our universities and colleges and we believe one of the reasons for this is that these attempts all represent a significant shift in the normal student–lecturer relationship and an enormous amount of effort on the part of the lecturer. In our work we have addressed this by using technology to replicate the traditional mode of delivery of lectures to a class.” (Smeaton and Keogh, 1999, p. 83).
Another early application was the development of an automated system called RoboProf for tutoring an introductory computer programming course. “The idea behind RoboProf is to increase motivation by borrowing ideas from certain games. These ideas include providing a challenge, giving quick feedback, making progress visible and encouraging experimentation.” (Daly, 1999, pg.155). RoboProf, which is still in use, was further developed to provide ongoing assistance and feedback to students without placing extra demands on lecturer and tutors' time. A further development of the system was the incorporation of a technique for detecting plagiarism. (Daly and Horgan, 2004). Other work carried out in the School of Computing was the provision of searchable online videos of lectures (see http://polya.computing.dcu.ie/teaching/emedia/ for some advice on the use of videod lectures on the web). More recently, there has been considerable work on the provision of TutorBoard, a system designed to improve the feedback that students receive on electronically submitted assignments (see Heany and Daly, 2004 for background)
Work has also been carried out in the School of Computing on the use of technology to enhance conceptual learning (Brophy, 2007) and on the development of use of reusable learning objects (Brophy et al, 2007).
In addition, Dr Claus Pahl has carried out work on intelligent and active tutoring systems [to be added]
References
Brophy Nora; Munro, Morag and Kenny, C, (2007) Desgning Reusable Learning Objects- Pedagogical Challenges and Opportunities, UCFV ed.ICICTE-2007 International Conference on Information Communication Technologies in Education, July 2007, Heraklion,Crete, Greece, pp.184 - 192
Brophy,Nora (2005) Using Technology to aid the development of Conceptual Understanding, MICTE-2005 3rd International Conference on Multimedia and Information and Communications Technologies in Education, June 2005, Caceres, Spain, pp. 601 – 605
Daly, Charlie (1999) RoboProf and an introductory computer programming course ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 31, Issue 3, pp. 155 - 158
Daly, Charlie and Horgan, Jane (2004) An automated learning system for Java programming IEEE Transactions on Education Vol 47, Issue 1, pp. 10-17
Heany, David and Daly, Charlie (200) Mass production of individual feedback ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 36, Issue 3, pp. 117 - 121
Smeaton, Alan and Keogh, Gary (1999) An analysis of the use of virtual delivery of undergraduate lectures Computers and Education, Vol 32, pp. 83-94
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