Developing Innovation in Online Learning

An Action Research Framework

Maggie McPherson, Miguel Baptista Nunes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780415335140
• eBook ISBN: 9781134310975
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Action research has become a valued research and educational development technique -an innovative approach through which a group of participants engage in self-reflection to improve practice. Developing Innovation in Online Learning introduces action research as a method of developing e-learning modules and courses.
The book covers both the theory and practice of applying action research principles to develop online learning. The material is grounded in the experiences of practitioners and features practical advice, case studies, models for implementation, a design framework and e-tutoring strategies.
The four 'building blocks' of e-learning covered are:
* The organisational context
* The pedagogic model
* The educational setting
* The evaluation process
This book will be an essential resource for education managers, course developers, and educational researchers.

Chapter 1
Action research in online learning

This book explores action research as an approach to support innovative thinking and investigation into online learning and to propose a specific educational infor-matics framework for this type of inquiry. The framework proposed is grounded on the practitioner and is based on four basic building blocks: the organisational context, the pedagogic model, the educational setting and the evaluation process. In this context, action research is proposed as a pluralist research approach for educationalists, grounded on practitioner reflection as the guide for innovation in everyday professional life.

In this book, we aim to address the lack of action research frameworks or models that can be specifically applied to online learning. We will present, discuss and explore each of the four building blocks mentioned above and will propose methods and tools to support practitioners and researchers in the development of online learning.

To this end, we intend to take the reader on a journey through both theory and practice. Thus, each chapter will begin with an academic discussion, which is intended to explain relevant theoretical thinking and to help the reader to develop an understanding of the underlying concepts. Subsequently, to provide evidence of good practice and to illustrate the theoretical discussion, we will go on to include references to a longitudinal case study at the end of each chapter. Thus, we hope this book will appeal to all those – both scholars and practitioners alike – wishing to develop an understanding of action research in educational contexts.

Background

Changing circumstances within the world at large and the increasing accessibility of technological solutions are driving those of us who work in further education (FE) and higher education (HE) institutions to develop innovative learning strategies and solutions. This is necessary in order to respond to escalating demands from both society and industry (Nunes et al., 2000a). Through the adoption of flexible online learning environments, educationalists are now able to reach increasing numbers of students in traditional HE, FE, distance education (DE) and continuing professional development (CPD) (Berge and Collins, 1995a; SKIP, 1998).

Both internal and external pressures are driving this change process and some studies (Nabi and Bagley, 1999; Lange et al. 2000) have confirmed that current graduates of our education systems are not necessarily meeting employers’ expectations. In fact, many graduates are not being equipped with all the skills that they require to be competitive in their professional careers. Increasingly, industrial and commercial employers are requesting more flexible and self-confident professionals with skills such as communication, problem analysis, problem solving, planning and networking (Kakabadse and Korac- Kakabadse, 2000). The need to meet this call for higher levels of innovation in skills and knowledge is continuously raising the demand for new methods and forms of learning and delivery of educational content, especially for permanent professional re-qualification. Thus, the necessity for life-long learning (LLL) is becoming apparent at all levels of society (McPherson, 2003b).

Although almost a decade has passed since the ‘Year of Life-long Learning’was declared in Europe in 1995, educational institutions and individual academics and teachers are only now beginning to recognise the urgent need to address this problem. Consequently, the role of HE is becoming much wider and more complex. Educationalists need not only to disseminate subject-specific knowledge, but also to develop students’ capabilities to apply their skills in the context of the chosen field or industry sector (Nunes and McPherson, 2002a). This has necessitated the rethinking and redefining of academic learning, which is not a trivial matter (Hall and Nunes, 2002).

Understanding academic learning

In general terms, academic learning can be seen as a series of activities that promote acquisition of high-level knowledge (Nunes and Fowell, 1996a). However, and as firmly pointed out by the industrial world, the acquisition of inert and abstract concepts is futile if the learner lacks the understanding needed to apply them in appropriate settings. For example, students are too often required to assimilate definitions, algorithms and routines devoid of context. This view is supported by Laurillard (1993), who suggests that academic learning must:

• be situated in the domain of the objective – the activities must match that domain;
• contain both direct experience of the world and the reflection on that experience that will produce the intended way of representing it.

This view of learning implies that we should be rejecting the classical tradition of transferring a fixed body of knowledge to the learner, in the form of unchangeable and authoritarian concepts or definitions. This approach is still common in some sectors of HE, and in these settings, many educationalists assume that these concepts are external to the learner and can be transmitted to and received by him or her through a process of communication. This type of teaching and learning has been translated by HE institutions into what we term ‘lectures’.This classic configuration, which still prevails today, consists of an academic addressing a passive classroom of learners following the well-known ‘sage on the stage’ paradigm.

Such a process focuses on learner behaviour and its modifications, rather than on cognitive or mental processes that facilitate learning (e.g. constructing, reflecting or planning). It is known as an objectivist theory of learning and represents a strongly individualistic concept of learning, in the sense that individual behaviour is modified due to presentation of stimuli from the learning environment. Jones and Mercer (1993) argue that objectivism embodies a model of the learner as a solitary striver for understanding, and Laurillard (1993) describes the acquisition of knowledge as an abstract Platonic form.

Nevertheless, educationalists have long since recognised that academic learning should be much more than the passive reception and acquisition of knowledge. The way learners handle knowledge is what really concerns academics (Laurillard, 1993). Knowledge has a contextualised character, which means that it cannot be separated from the situations in which it is used. When learning occurs in isolation it remains inert, that is, the learner has the information available in memory, but never recognises when it is relevant (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt University, 1991).Acquisition of concepts is of no use if the learner cannot apply those concepts and transfer his or her knowledge across different settings. Thus, academic learning involves the attainment of high-level skills of critical thinking and problem solving in addition to the gathering of facts and concepts. This broader view is not a new concept and implies that learning should be a continuous process of reflective experience in which a person actively constructs a view of the world.

Nevertheless, HE lecturers and academics are constrained by a number of practical limitations that are intrinsic to the educational system we have inherited. Academic life is divided into academic years and semesters; courses are divided into modules, modules into units, and units into learning activities. Modern education still aims at uniformity of standards and curricula. Educationalists have to operate within these constraints, while coping with increasing numbers of students in classes and administrative processes of assessment and student progress monitoring and complying with institutional and national policies. What is more, academics need to foster their professional careers in institutions that increasingly devote a disproportionate weight to research in comparison to teaching.

Finally, in the UK to date – and in great contrast with what happens in secondary education – it has not been unusual for lecturers within FE and HE to have no formal training in teaching and learning, although steps are being taken to address this situation. Therefore, it is not surprising that teaching and learning methods at universities are still predominantly based on a lecturing approach However, significant change has taken place under the combined pressure from the industrial and commercial environments and the advent of information and communication technology (ICT), resulting in what is generally referred to as online learning. It is apparent from the pace of change now occurring within both FE and HE that we will be seeing an exponential acceleration in adoption of online learning (Hall and Nunes, 2002).

Without a doubt, one of the most common ICT tools being adopted is the World Wide Web (WWW, and from here referred to as the ‘web’). In fact, Ausserhofer (1999) described this technology as the most recent educational panacea being used to try and provide students with transferable skills, namely online communication, online discussion and negotiation of meanings (Bowskill, 1998). However, merely introducing a new technological solution will not guarantee that educationalists can foster and promote transferable skills or that students will acquire the expertise required by society. Moreover, it certainly cannot be regarded as a guarantee for ensuring the use of the emergent educational approaches and epistemologies referred to earlier.

Technology in itself does not change or improve teaching and learning. Attention to management processes, strategy, structure, and most importantly roles and skills, are the key to successfully introducing technology in university teaching and learning.

(Wills and Alexander, 2000)

Therefore, according to Fox and Herrman (2000), we cannot hope to apply a simple template or checklist to predict and resolve the complex interactive processes involved in this type of change process. Consequently, it could be argued that a new research discipline is required, based on practical, empirical and research evidence. This new discipline aims ‘to provide opportunities to investigate perspectives and rehearse and test responses to them, thus reducing misunderstandings, friction and conflict within team environments’ (Fox and Herrman, 2000).

Educational informatics

Informatics is a term used to represent a field of research focusing on the relationship between information and communication technologies applied to a specific context. Thus, this term has been commonly associated with the convergence of ICT and a number of other fields and disciplines.

However, the term also has associations within an already established field of research. In fact, and as discussed by Levy et al. (2003), within computer science it is commonly used to refer to topics related to the representation, processing and communication of information within computational systems. The concerns of computer science include non-semantic aspects of information, for example, the material characteristics and behaviour of bit streams. Conversely, according to Kling and Allen (1996) organisational informatics encompasses the application of information, information systems and ICT with organisations. On the other hand, within information science, informatics is always concerned with the semantics of digital information use and communication (that is, with information content and context) and with digital interactions between multiple information sources, whether these be human or in recorded form (Levy et al. 2003). Domain-specific areas include health informatics, chemo- informatics, business informatics and social informatics. In confirmation of this Beynon- Davies (2002) defines infor-matics as follows:

Informatics is the study of information, information systems and information technology applied to various phenomena. […] The term has also been extremely popular within the health and biological sciences fields, as is evident in the common use of such terms as health informatics , medical informatics and bio- informatics .

Beynon- Davies (2002:3)

Kling and Hara (2002) support this conceptualisation of informatics and state that research in these areas tends to be defined as the study of the application of ICTs and information management (IM) techniques to the domain in question. Nevertheless, these authors suggest that definitions of informatics research that are solely ‘applications focused’ fail to draw sufficient attention to the need to understand human activity systems and the complexities of the social systems they form. Therefore, it is the design of the ICT environments and the consequence of its application that constitutes the real focus of informatics research in an appropriate and specific context.

Research into the educational possibilities and impact of ICTs is by no means a new phenomenon and has been at the forefront of educationalists’ concerns since the early 1980s. However, educational informatics as a research field is still an emergent domain, although given a recent impetus by developments in the use of the web as both an information environment and an environment for learning. Levy et al. (2003) defined educational informatics as:

The study of the application of digital technologies and techniques to the use and communication of information in learning and education. The overarching purpose is to develop and evaluate concepts, models, theories, techniques and methodologies – including research techniques and methodologies – that are of relevance to the use of ICTs for the purposes of learning, teaching and supporting learning in diverse settings. The main concerns of this area of inquiry are essentially twofold, and relate closely to each other.

Levy et al. (2003)

This represents a broader view of educational informatics than the one proposed by Berge and Collins (1995a), Santoro (1995) and Salmon (2000). Educational infor-matics is much more than the study of ‘repositories and maintenance of organised information’ and also includes the design, development and implementation of educational systems as well as the provision and use of the conferencing facilities offered by those online learning environments. As proposed by Levy et al. (2003), research in educational informatics seeks to understand the effects on people of using digital information resources, services, systems, environments and communication facilities for learning and education, by examining the issues and problems that arise from their practice and how these relate to factors such as educational and professional context, communication and information practices, pedagogical theories, psychological and cognitive variables, and ICT design and use.

Consequently, educational informatics is located at the intersection of three broad disciplines: information science, education and computer science. Each of these encompasses a range of sub-disciplines and domains, including information systems, information management, information literacy, educational psychology, learning technology, computer supported collaborative learning and instructional design. Research in educational informatics may draw on all of these disciplines and areas, and also on theory and empirical research from other informatics domains such as social and organisational informatics (Sawyer and Eschenfelder, 2002) and, in common with other informatics research, it is unequivocally concerned with ICT. Studies that investigate infor...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of illustrations
• Series editor’s foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary of acronyms
• Chapter 1: Action research in online learning
• Chapter 2: An action research framework for online learning
• Chapter 3: Pedagogical models
• Chapter 4: Design and development of online learning environments
• Chapter 5: Tutoring and delivering online learning
• Chapter 6: Evaluation
• Chapter 7: Action research and future practice
• Bibliography
• Appendix