500 Tips for Open and Online Learning

Phil Race

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781134292141
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

All types of organisations have recognised the growing demand for open and flexible learning programmes. With the increased emphasis on new ways of learning, and the rapid move towards open and online courses, this practical guide will help those involved overcome the challenges they face. This guide provides user friendly advice and support for those currently involved with open learning and those considering it for the first time.
500 Tips for Open and Online Learning aims not only to save you time but also to enhance the quality of the learning experience which learners will draw from open and online learning. The book is divided into six sections which cover:
* What is Open and Online Learning, why use it and how?
* How to set up Open and Online learning programmes
* Designing new resource materials
* Putting technology to work
* Supporting open learners
* Assessing open learning
This practical book will be an invaluable resource, providing immediate and accessible help to the increasing number of people now under pressure to design, support and deliver open learning programmes. This book will appeal to tutors, trainers, managers of learning resource centres and curriculum developers who are already involved in, or thinking about starting to use, aspects of open learning.

Chapter 1

What is Open Learning, Why Use it, Who Benefits, and How?

1 What sorts of learning?

2 How open learning works

3 What freedoms can learners enjoy?

4 Resource-based learning

5 Benefits for learners

6 Benefits for lecturers and trainers

7 Benefits for employers and managers

8 Benefits for colleges and training providers

9 Which parts of the curriculum lend themselves to open learning?

10 Linking open learning to large-group teaching

11 Which learners are particularly helped?

This chapter is about putting open learning into context. I start by looking at some of the overlapping terms that are in common use for learning formats and situations. These terms include distance learning, individualised learning and independent learning, as well as supported self-study. The term ‘resource-based learning’ is coming into its own now, and just about all varieties of open learning could be said to be resource-based (as indeed are many traditional college-based programmes, where the resources include textbooks, journals and handout materials). The abbreviation RBL is in common use for resource-based learning, and also represents responsibility-based learning, which applies strongly to any kind of open learning as well. This book could well have been called ‘500 Tips for Resource-Based Learning’, but that would have perhaps given the impression that most of the learning would happen only from resources, and a key message throughout this book is that human beings remain a very important dimension of most people’s learning environment – whether real or virtual.

The next section is about how open learning actually works, and this is followed by a short exploration of the various kinds of freedom that can be introduced into open learning provision.

After a short exploration of the range covered by the term ‘resource-based learning’, the next four sections look at some of the benefits that accrue from flexibility. Open learning brings different potential benefits to different target audiences, so I have treated separately the benefits for learners, lecturers, employers and institutions. When one is persuading people of the potential of open learning, it is often useful to convince them that whichever constituency they belong to, there may be good answers to the question ‘what’s in it for me?’ when considering open learning.

The next section addresses the question ‘Which parts of the curriculum lend themselves to open learning?’ In practice, just about any element of the curriculum can be delivered through open learning, but it is important to have good reasons for choosing those elements that are best delivered flexibly.

The next section is about linking open learning to large-group teaching. In many parts of further and higher education provision, open and flexible approaches are being used to replace some face-to-face time with learners, because of growing student numbers, widening participation, diminishing budgets and overworked staff. It is important to make sure that the open learning elements are not seen as something different from, or less important than, the class-based parts of a course. Linking open learning to lectures is often a good way to show learners that the open learning counts too.

I end this chapter by looking at the particular categories of learners who can derive benefits from open learning. The list in fact embraces most learners, provided that open learning is used in fit-for-purpose ways to address their respective needs and attitudes.

1

What Sorts of Learning?

A simplistic approach could define ‘traditional learning’ as learning from people (teachers, tutors, trainers, instructors, supervisors, and so on) and ‘open learning’ as ‘learning from things’ (books, handouts, journal articles, computers, practical equipment, libraries, and so on). However, the two are never completely separate; people are always involved in one way or another in open learning, and things are always needed in traditional learning too.

Open learning, like most aspects of education and training, has its own set of terms and phrases with particular meanings in given contexts. The following descriptions of no fewer than 14 ‘kinds of learning’ should help you clarify the meanings of some of the terminology used about the sorts of learning that are addressed in this book. Even better, you may become convinced that the labels are not nearly as important as the underpinning processes upon which many of the varieties of open learning depend in practice. And better still, you may ask, ‘Why bother with all of these terms? Why not just stick to a few of them, perhaps just open learning or e-learning?’

The umbrella term ‘open learning’ tends to be the term that embraces or includes all the rest, though ‘flexible learning’ may well be the most appropriate general term, not least as most attempts to define what ‘open’ actually means boil down to flexibility: creating degrees of freedom around when to learn, where to learn, how to learn, how fast to learn, and with what to learn.

It is therefore important not to be limited by any of the definitions or terminologies shown below, and to remember that they all address, in slightly different contexts, a common set of principles, including:

• putting the learner in the driving seat;
• giving learners control and ownership of key aspects of their learning;
• tailoring study programmes to meet learners’ individual requirements;
• designing learning resource materials in fit-for-purpose ways, to aid learning;
• making appropriate usage of available technologies, but not letting technology take over from learning;
• a philosophy of teaching and learning, not just a particular technology;
• changed roles of learners and tutors, towards active participation of both in the processes of learning.

The 14 terms unpacked below overlap enormously nowadays in practice, but perhaps the most important common factor shared by all of them is that the word ‘learning’ (or ‘study’) is central to each of them, and the words ‘teaching’ or ‘training’ are pushed more towards the background.

1. Open learning. This is normally taken to mean provision for learners under circumstances that give them some control regarding how they learn, where they learn, when they learn and the pace at which they learn. Open learning sometimes also involves learners having some control of what they learn, and how (or whether) their learning will be assessed.
2. Online learning. Probably now one of the most abundant varieties of open learning, one in which learners spend at least some of their time online, working either directly over the Internet or on computers linked into local intranet. Such learners have elements of control regarding when they learn, the pace at which they learn and how they learn, but with rather less control over where they learn for those parts of their learning that need them to be connected online. Online learning is increasingly linked to online assessment.
3. E-learning. This is largely synonymous with online learning, and is necessarily computer-based learning, at least for most of the time, with email communication between learners themselves, and between learners and tutors, and learners and assessors. One of the problems with too much of the present-day e-learning provision is that it’s not really e-learning, but rather e-information; information flows electronically to learners’ screens and disks very efficiently, but does not necessarily get processed equally efficiently into knowledge inside their brains!
4. Virtual learning environments. These are systems for interfacing online learners (or e-learners) with learning materials stored electronically, but also for facilitating email and computer conference interactions between learners, and between them and those supporting or assessing their learning. In universities, for example, virtual learning environments could be described as just another way in which learners at networked terminals or Internetenabled computers interact with teaching staff and the learning resource materials (or information) in libraries and resource collections.
5. Distance learning. This is the term usually applied to open learning that takes place at a distance from the provider of the learning materials. Examples include courses provided by the Open University in the UK, and correspondence courses throughout the world. These providers often combine paper-based learning (learning packages) with online learning and online support for learners, and, increasingly, online assessment.
6. Flexible learning. This term includes the sorts of learning involved in open and distance learning provision (in print-based or e-learning mixtures), but additionally relates to learning pathways in traditional schools, colleges and universities that give learners some control over the time, place, pace and processes of their study of particular parts of their curriculum. However, just about all learning has necessarily become more flexible. Part of the reason is that practices in further and higher education have had to change as student numbers increase as a result of widening participation policies. The great increase in the number of people learning part-time (including most ‘full-time’ students who need to work to support themselves) has meant that ‘traditional’ teaching and learning processes have become stretched or even inappropriate.
7. Individualised learning. This refers to any kind of learning in which it is envisaged that learners work largely on their own. It includes many open, flexible or distance learning programmes, and most manifestations of e-learning and online learning.
8. Resource-based learning. This normally refers to learning pathways whereby learners are supported mainly by learning resource materials, which can range from textbooks to electronic databases, open learning packages, virtual learning environments, and so on. Resource-based learning is perhaps everything that isn’t done in lecture theatres and teaching classrooms – though more and more the tools of resource-based learning pervade traditional teaching formats. Most lecture theatres nowadays can display live information from the Internet directly on-screen at a few mouse clicks by the lecturer. Resource-based learning includes just about all learning situations that go under the names of open or flexible learning, particularly where the ‘resources’ are non-human.
9. Supported self-study. This term is usually used to describe open, distance or flexible learning programmes in which learners work with the aid of learning resource materials of one kind or another, and are supported in their learning by printed or computer-based briefing and guidance materials, and/or by tutorial provision. In sixth-form school contexts the role of the tutor in the process is given much more prominence. However, online learning or e-learning is nowadays just as likely to be used for supported self-study, with the support and communication being achieved electronically.
10. Independent learning. This term is usually employed to emphasise the freedom of learners studying by open, distance or flexible learning processes, using either print-based or computer-based learning resources, often online, and supported by printed briefings or human tutors. Further interpretations of the term ‘independent learning’ extend to the use of learning contracts or negotiated learning agreements, with negotiated self-assessment of learners’ achievement of their agreed outcomes.
11. Student-centred learning. Ideally, all learning should be student centred! (I sometimes muse that all learning is student centred and always has been, but not all teaching is student centred!) However, this term is often used to describe any or all of the learning formats mentioned above, where the learning processes and learning resource materials can be claimed to have been designed to be as relevant and supportive as possible to the learners using them. Perhaps it is easier to pinpoint the opposite of student-centred learning – possibly where students sit silently in rows in crowded lecture rooms and are ‘lectured at’ by the sage on the stage (who is increasingly seen as needing to move towards being ‘the guide on the side’!)
12. Computer-assisted learning. This is one of a range of related terms, also including computer-based training, computer-managed learning, computermediated learning, and so on. All such learning or training can be considered to have features common to other open learning formats, but in addition includes the use of computers or multimedia hardware. Most of these terms have now been swept aside by the more general ‘e-learning’ or ‘online learning’ terminology. Computer-based learning can, however, take place perfectly well at a stand-alone computer without any online connections.
13. Interactive learning. A key feature of well-designed online learning, e-learning, open learning or flexible learning materials is that learners interact with them. In short, learners are given things to do as a primary means helping them learn, and are then provided with feedback to help them see how they have done (or what they may have done incorrectly). Many sections in this book address how best to bring about learning by doing, and look at ways of ensuring that feedback is appropriate and effective.
14. Work-based learning. This includes ‘placement’ elements in vocational programmes, where learners spend some time in a commercial, industrial or public-sector setting learning by doing, and developing skills and knowledge through experience. Such learning, however, is often supported by learning resource materials, with online communication between learners and supervisors, online information searching and retrieval, and online assessment now and again.

2

How Open Learning works

In this section I offer ten suggestions regarding the key features of effective open learning provision, most of which apply whether the open learning is print based, e-learning or any other kind. Matters arising from these suggestions are further developed extensively throughout this book, so the factors described below should only be taken as a starting point.

1. Open learning needs to be learning by doing. Almost all learning happens best when coupled with having a go, experience, practice, trial and error, and hands-on activity. Even the learning of theories and concepts needs practice in applying them and trying them out.
2. Open learning depends crucially on feedback to learners. All kinds of learners need to find out how their learning is going. The levels of appropriateness and quality of the feedback that open learners receive as they learn by doing are the hallmarks of the most effective open learning materials, whether print based or online. The feedback needs to be as accessible and immediate as possible, so that it reaches learners while they still have what they have just done clearly in mind. Online learning can allow feedback to some tasks to be just about instant.
3. Open learning needs to capture learners’ ‘want’ to learn. Effective open learning materials work by enhancing learners’ motivation, such as by being user-friendly, easy to follow, interesting and supportive – even when the subject matter is difficult and complex.
4. Open learning needs to address well-articulated needs. Learners need to be able to see what an open learning pathway can achieve for them, and this should link to ambitions or intentions that learners relate to strongly. They need to be able to keep in mind good answers to the questions ‘What’s in this for me?’ and ‘Why should I work at this?’
5. Open learning needs to give learners every opportunity to make sense of what they’re learning. Open learners need to get their heads around what they’re learning. Rote learning is of limited value, and it is important to help learners to make sense of new concepts and ideas. The quality of the feedback provided by open learning materials, and by tutors or trainers supporting open learning, is crucia...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface to the second edition
• Acknowledgements
• Opening up learning
• Chapter 1: What is open learning, why use it, who benefits, and how?
• Chapter 2: Adopt, adapt or start from scratch?
• Chapter 3: Designing new resource materials
• Chapter 4: Putting technology to work
• Chapter 5: Supporting open learners
• Chapter 6: Assessing open learning
• Appendix 1: Interrogating learning materials: a checklist
• Appendix 2: E-learning: when it does – and doesn’t – work
• Some further reading
• Index