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.
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3 comments:
David,
That's really useful - could I have your permission to quote some of it in a presentation to the group?
Frank
Sorry, I was out all yesterday. yes, of course, feel free to use it any way you wish.
David
I have just been catching up by reading the last postings. It might be useful to try to consider what we could do this end prior to an on-site visit so that the best use of time could be made on-site. For example it might be worth having a session to follow Daves suggestions about possible uses of ICT that could be put forward. We could have, say, a brainstorming session to see what we could come up with. These suggestions could then provide a canvas for further discussion and investigation both on and off- site. Critical issues would also be worth investigating, for example previous comment noted that there is a culture of preserving the kit by not using it. It would be a priority to sort issues such as this first as such problems would negate most solutions offered.
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