Online Learning and its Users

Lessons for Higher Education

Claire McAvinia

• Publisher: Chandos Publishing
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780081006269
• eBook ISBN: 9780081006337
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Technology

Online Learning and Its Users: Lessons for Higher Education re-examines the impact of learning technologies in higher education. The book focuses particularly on the introduction and mainstreaming of one of the most widely used, the virtual learning environment (VLE) or learning management system (LMS). The book presents an activity theoretic analysis of the VLE's adoption, drawing on research into this process at a range of higher education institutions. Through analysis and discussion of the activities of managers, lecturers, and learners using the VLE, lessons are identified to inform future initiatives including the implementation of massive open online courses (MOOCs). A replicable research design is included and explained to support evaluation and analysis of the use of online learning in other settings. The book questions accepted views of the place of technologies in higher education, arguing that there has been a repeated cycle of hype and disappointment accompanying the development of online learning. While much research has documented this cycle, finding new strategies to break it has proved to be a more difficult challenge. Why has technology not made more impact? Are lecturers going to be left behind by their own students in the use of digital technologies? Why have we seen costly and time-consuming failures? This book argues that we can answer these questions by heeding the lessons from previous experiences with the VLE and early iterations of the MOOC. More importantly, we can begin to ask new and different questions for the future to ensure better outcomes for our institutions and ultimately our learners. - Presents institution-wide analysis of the adoption of a key educational technology for higher education, validated across multiple sites, to support deeper understanding of the use of learning technologies in context - Describes Activity Theory and presents a replicable model to operationalise it for investigations of the use of online learning in higher education and other settings - Provides a unique perspective on the historical experience of VLE adoption and mainstreaming to identify important insights and essential lessons for the future

Chapter 1

Enter the VLE

Abstract

In this chapter, a short history of the development of online learning in higher education will be presented as a backdrop to the introduction of the virtual learning environment in higher education institutions in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Computerisation and the arrival of the Internet have coincided with other changes in the organisation of higher education (for example, semesterisation and modularisation). Early experimentation with technology in the disciplines was succeeded by national and local strategies, digitisation projects, and piloting networked learning in institutions. This chapter describes the establishment of academic development units and e-learning support services as part of the wider changes taking place. The ways in which educational theory has informed the work of these central support services are reviewed, and the challenges facing supporters in their work are outlined.

Keywords

Academic development; Computerisation; Higher education; History of educational technology; VLEs

1.1. Introduction

My professional role for more than 15 years has been to work with academics to help develop and enhance their teaching in higher education, including the use of online learning. The reported issues of underuse (Kanuka & Kelland, 2008; Njenga & Fourie, 2010; Zemsky & Massy, 2004) and even ‘cyclical failure’ (Mayes, 1995, p. 1) of technologies in higher education are therefore of strong professional concern, and concern the many individuals and teams working in similar areas. The limited uptake of technologies is not only disheartening but implies a possible misalignment of our work with that of our academic colleagues and their students. If there is limited use of technologies, this also calls into question the investment made in them, and the return on this investment for institutions (Laurillard, 1993, 2001, 2008). These issues lie at the heart of this book: to address them it is important first to revisit how computerisation came to higher education institutions (HEIs), how and why institutions began to use the Internet as part of teaching and learning, and the eventual emergence and adoption of the virtual learning environment (VLE).

1.2. The Development of Online Learning in Higher Education

A series of fundamental changes have taken place in higher education since the 1980s, at the same time that computers, and later the Internet, became available and affordable. There are many comprehensive studies documenting and debating the changes to the management, structure and funding of higher education between 1985 and 2015 (Bell, Neary, & Stevenson, 2009; Christensen & Eyring, 2011; Henkel, 2000; Shattock, 2013; Taylor, 1999). The focus of this section will be to highlight significant changes paving the way for the introduction of online learning, and in particular the VLE.

1.2.1. Global and Local Changes

Policy change led to rapid expansion in higher education in the United Kingdom and Ireland from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s (Laurillard, 1993, 2001), alongside which modularisation and semesterisation processes led to the restructuring of programmes and the academic timetable overall (Henkel, 2000). Quality enhancement and assurance processes were introduced, with implications for teaching quality and feedback (Taylor, 1999). The Research Assessment Exercise in the United Kingdom became the most significant driver for academic activity in most institutions (Lucas, 2006). The role of the lecturer was altered to include wider administrative responsibilities, compliance with quality assurance processes, intense pressure to publish, competition for funding, and accommodating an ever more diverse student population (Holley & Oliver, 2000). The expansion of higher education to include larger numbers of students, changes such as modularisation and semesterisation, requirements to publish learning outcomes at the module and programme level, and the introduction of resource allocation models affected academic and administrative roles (Henkel, 2000; Taylor, 1999). Other functions were altered too: there was a significant evolution in the roles of administrators, technical staff, library staff and others supporting academic departments (Thorley, 1998). Academic development units had been evolving in the United States for some years but began to receive formal recognition and funding in the United Kingdom and Ireland (Fraser, Gosling, & Sorcinelli, 2010; Gosling, 2009), and HEIs in the United Kingdom were directed to provide professional development in teaching for academic staff from 1997 (NCIHE, 1997), articulated later through the Institute for Learning and Teaching (now the Higher Education Academy).

Meanwhile, from 1985 to 2015 computers have been introduced in almost every aspect of academic and administrative life in tertiary education (Conole, Oliver, Cook, Ravenscroft, & Currier, 2003). The use of computers at all levels of education in Western cultures has been an important focus of educational, political and economic discourse since desktop machines became available (and cost-effective) in the early years of the 1980s (Smith, 2005). Political, social and economic imperatives, as well as educational ones, have all been cited as drivers for the use of computers in education (Bates, 2001; Weller, 2007). The arrival of the Internet and the World Wide Web (web) catalysed this discourse in the 1990s to convert it to one of revolutionary change. Politicians began to reference the Internet and information superhighway as the means by which education, commerce and civic activities would be transformed (Blair, 1994; Clinton, 1997). Internationally, governments in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom committed significant funding to initiatives designed to introduce and grow the use of computers in education (Bates, 2001; Smith, 2005). The web led to many visions of technology transforming education, particularly beyond compulsory schooling (Garrett, 2004; Garrison & Vaughan, 2013). Brown (2010, p. 1) refers to ‘feverish optimism’ at this time. The scope for campus-based HEIs to move into distributed and flexible learning attracted renewed political and educational interest from the mid-1990s onwards (Clegg & Steel, 2002; Goodfellow, Lea, Gonzalez, & Mason, 2001; Jakupec & Garrick, 2000). National strategies were formulated to guide and promote development, and large-scale digitisation projects were funded to provide electronic materials and content for education (Conole, Smith, & White, 2007). Time, effort and resources were invested in online learning, and it continued to attract funding and attention at the government level in many Western countries as the new millennium advanced (Dillenbourg, 2008; Laurillard, 1993, 2001).

From the late 1990s to the mid-2000s, many universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland created managed learning environments (JISC, 2001; TLTG, 2001), whereby they joined administrative systems together and gradually made these available to users at the point of need, across the web. Timetables, registration and fee payments went online. Most HEIs adopted and implemented at least one VLE (Jenkins, Browne, Walker, & Hewitt, 2011; OECD, 2005; Weller, 2007). While institutional strategies tended to focus on the argument that new technologies would open access to education and enhance learning for all students (Gibbs, Habeshaw, & Yorke, 2000), there were also ambitions to attract international students to online national universities (Garrett, 2004; Jakupec & Garrick, 2000). Systems supporting online learning and course administration via the web were beginning to blur the boundaries around campus-based universities. Many writers in the 2000s challenged the campus-based HEI to fight for its existence in a new online world postglobalisation, where students could choose to attend any university and not just those in closest proximity to them (Jones & O’Shea, 2004). In the discourse of flexible learning, students were seen as lifelong learners, with mobility and the scope to learn throughout their careers (Clegg & Steel, 2002; Coates, James, & Baldwin, 2005; Hanson-Smith, 2001; Nunan, 2000).

1.2.2. The 1980s–1990s: Stand-Alone, to Network, to Internet

While computerisation began to change the administrative infrastructure of universities, the history of online learning in higher education begins in experimental projects, and in the disciplines, as opposed to centrally led and managed initiatives. Some histories align its development closely with that of correspondence courses and distance learning, or the early use of audiovisual materials in education ( Simsek, 2005; Various, 2006–2011). Other researchers date the origins of e-learning to the work of Skinner, particularly the development of teaching machines in the 1950s ( Jordan, Carlile, & Stack, 2008; Various, 2006–2011): these were early educational technologies, rather than innovations in information and communications technology applied to educational settings. The language laboratories of the 1960s and 1970s saw the development of audio technologies for language teaching, and the emergence of associated teaching methods. But before desktop personal computers were readily available, projects to examine the potential of computers in education were dependent on access to mainframe computers and on project funding. Levy (1997) reports on two large-scale publicly funded projects in the United States in the 1960s which have resonance with the VLE: PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operation) and TICCIT (Time-Shared Interactive Computer Controlled Information Television). PLATO and TICCIT predated networking and the Internet,...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Series Page
• Copyright
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• About the Author
• Foreword
• Acknowledgment
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Enter the VLE
• Chapter 2. Challenges and Disappointments
• Chapter 3. Activity Theory
• Chapter 4. Lessons for e-Learning Management and Support
• Chapter 5. Lessons for Teaching in Higher Education
• Chapter 6. Lessons From Our Learners
• Chapter 7. Learning to Break the Cycle
• Chapter 8. Lessons for the Future – The VLE and the MOOC
• Chapter 9. Conclusions
• Index