Some thoughts on uses of ICT

While I agree with the points made by Frank on 11th January (Thoughts on a first visit), about not starting with a solution in mind, I think it would be useful to explore the sorts of things that ICT might be used for in this context.

I've been at the OU since 1986, so have watched - been part of - the integration of ICT into our teaching. Here are some quick personal observations which I hope might stimulate discussion.

(I'm assuming everyone is broadly familiar with what the OU does - at least that it is all distance education, students study at home and, though they have tutors and there are optional tutorials that they can attend, the main means of study is a printed text produced by us. For more info see http://www.open.ac.uk/)

Anyway, the sorts of things we use ICT for:

1) CBL: computer-based learning packages.
We've been doing this for a long time, producing packages delivered on floppy disks..., DVDs and now online for many years. We have in-house specialists in writing educational software but it is very expensive to produce good teaching material, only justified by our economies of scale (course with 1000s of student per year).

2) Delivering our teaching material to students.

2.1) All our printed texts are now also made available to students as PDF files on a course website. Students find this useful in addition to being sent the paper copies. If they are not sent paper copies they print it all out. Maybe this is changing, or will change, but generally few people like reading large amounts of text on screen.

2.2) Teaching material written to be studied at the computer. Overlaps with (1), but here I'm thinking of mainly text-based material that is formatted to be suitable for reading on a computer screen. Eg small 'chunks' of text that fit on one screen at a time. Unless there is 'added value' in putting it on the computer (eg, using lots of graphics, incorporating lots of activities, links to outside material), I don't think there is any advantage of this over printed text. Again, we find students often want to print it out, even if it doesn't come out very nicely in print.

3) Access to 'third-party' resources

The OU has negotiated very good access to online journals for our students. This is an excellent facility, but in practice is only useful to (undergraduate) students when they are given very detailed guidance on how to use it in OU courses.

Students also make extensive use of the web to find alternative explanations of topic taught in our courses.

4) Online conferences and email.

4.1) Tutors answering questions/teaching in (asynchronous) online conferences. Supplements the telephone access to tutors that they have always had.

4.2) 'Self help' (students answering each others questions) within online conferences. In my experience, this has worked very well, and I would argue might be the most useful application of ICT for OU students.

5) Multimedia.

TV broadcasts as direct teaching (as distinct from joint ventures with the BBC, such as 'Coast' and 'James May's Twentieth Century') have been replaced by video sent on DVDs. We now also make quite a lot of use of podcasts and other audio material, either delivered on DVDs or online on course websites. In my experience - and I think this differs quite a bit from one subject the next - this is a very useful 'added extra', but does not replace the core, still largely text-based, teaching material.

Docs from last meeting

Linda posted these minutes and a paper on the Story Bank project which was mentioned at that meeting.

Thoughts on a first visit

Following conversations between Andy, Peter and Frank some consensus emerged as to how a first visit might be managed:
- An open mind should be kept about what the requirements would be.
- As far as possible, initial requirements analysis should be informal.
- Work should concentrate on iterating requirements and solutions, with a view to returning with a workable set of proposals. We shouldn't start out with a 'solution' in mind.
- Time should be spent on maintaining / building social networks.
- Two weeks would be the appropriate time to spend if the above tasks are to be performed in any depth.

EDICT paper

This is the link to the EDICT paper I circulated.