eLearning & Pedagogy

The use of e-Learning needs to be based on sound pedagogical practices. If we are to effectively prepare our students for their future lives in the workplace, e-learning needs to support a move to student centred learning.

Learning is more effective if the student plays an authentic role in carrying out complex tasks.

One example of the melding of eLearning and pedagogy can be seen in the Interactive Lecture on Demand (LoD). We started with the pedagogy (active lecture) and built the e-Learning solution to support it. The Interactive LoD is an online, activity based, video lecture on demand. It has been designed to be integrated with a wide range of activities including online and face to face tutorials and multimedia applications.

Traditional Lectures

“Research has found that adult learners can keep tuned in to a lecture for no more than 15 to 20 minutes at a time, and this is at the beginning of the class.”

Levels of attention of students in a traditional lecture tend to decline rapidly after about 20 minutes and as the lecture proceeds attention spans become progressively shorter and can fall to three or four minutes towards the end of a standard lecture. (Middendorf, J. & Kalish, A. 1996)

One explanation for the lapses in students’ attention is that the “information transfer” model of the traditional lecture does not match what current cognitive science research tells us of how humans learn.

Most LoDs currently available are simply recordings of a traditional lecture dumped onto a server for students to access when it’s time for revision or a ‘talking head‘ with timed powerpoint slides. Research tells us that the brain does not record information like a videocassette recorder. Instead, information and experience processed in our working memory is stored in our long-term memory in the form of schemas.

Combining what we know about attention span and how the mind works, it suggests that lectures should be punctuated with periodic activities which support the construction of schemas. (Sweller, Van Merrienboer, & Paas,1998), (Cooper, G. 1998).

Active lecture

Learning is a cumulative experience. The learning process is enhanced where past learning is relevant to progressive experience. Through the use of appropriate examples and activities, students are given the opportunity to practice thinking in terms of the new concepts presented thus supporting the construction of new schema and enabling the students to map new knowledge onto old.

“Many of our colleagues report that when they intersperse mini-lectures with active engagement for students for as brief a time as two to five minutes, students seem re-energized for the next 15 to 20 minute mini-lecture.”

(Middendorf, J. & Kalish, A. 1996).

“The lecturer using a combination of video and integrated CMC (computer mediated conferencing) helps the students make the connections necessary for effective learning to take place by guiding them through the content and activities.”

Interactive Lecture on Demand

The Interactive LoD has been designed to support active learning. The content of the lecture is broken down into meaningful chunks with the activities interspersed where students work with and reflect on the information presented. Using a combination of video and integrated CMC, the lecturer helps the students to make the connections necessary for effective learning to take place by guiding them through the content and activities.

The Interactive LoD can also be integrated with additional video and other rich media content. The use of video taped scenarios that demonstrate procedures and principles in addition to video interviews with experts in the discipline being studied bring a range of alternative perspectives to the learning.

With a well designed, integrated workflow and interface, students can focus all their attention on the learning itself.

Lecturer’s Perspective

The rapid move to eLearning has put the onus on lecturers to re-visit their teaching strategies.

Some of the issues to consider when planning and developing an Interactive LoD are:

• In a traditional lecture setting, the lecturer has a captive audience. In the LoD context, the demand on the lecturer is to achieve a lecture-design that ensures that the students are adequately motivated to use the LoD as a learning platform. More importantly, the design must ensure that the learning process is enriching enough for ‘deep learning’ to occur.
• In a live lecture, a lecturer has an immediate sense of how a lecture is progressing, and is able to make subtle changes in pace, tone and emphases to suit the mood of the audience. This is not possible in a LoD. In planning a LoD, the lecturer must visualize and/or anticipate audience reaction to segments of his LoD and carefully plan the tone, pace and interactive activities to sustain interest.
• The challenge in designing a LoD is in the effective use of the array of modes and media offered by ICT. Selecting the right media and mode can be challenge to any lecturer who is just discovering the opportunities spawned by fast evolving technologies. The use of a ‘storyboard’ can help facilitate this selection.
• The advantages of online collaborative learning can be fully exploited in a LoD. However, this may requiresome orientation and training on the part of the Lecturer in understanding the virtues of online collaborative tools and their appropriate use in a learning environment for an enriching learning outcome.
• In a LoD setting, lectures can be redesigned into suitable segments that can ‘stand-alone’, with each segment infused with appropriate learning activities that promote active learning. Students should have a choice to engage in a LoD by selecting any lecture segment and yet learn; and not be restricted to having to work through a lecture from first segment to last in a serial order. This student-centric design can help to sustain the interest of students of differing abilities and interests.
• Owing to the comprehensive technology support required to design, develop and implement LoDs or any form of eLearning, a lecturer becomes part of a team comprising of instructional designer, graphic designer, multimedia designer, video production crew, programmer and network specialist.
• The development of the LoD can be a challenge to any lecturer who is new to the idea of being videotaped in a TV studio environment. The bright lights that impact on one’s visual senses, the heat and the usual necessity for several retakes can be psychologically grueling. Patience and a sense of humour are essential.

ICT Design Considerations

Contextualisation

The video is integrated with other media components such as text, images, multimedia and referenced web pages, these are placed in what we have called a ‘context’. Each context is linked to synchronous and asynchronous discussion, FAQs, task, and student’s notes.

All content related to a lecture is tagged to a particular context. A collection of contexts builds a context map which resembles a concept map of a lecture. In the implementation XML was used to build this context map and utilise the context information. Every piece of information or interaction of the user is saved to a database.

Separation of Presentation Media and Interaction Logic

Current streaming technologies like Windows Media, QuickTime and Real Streaming embed the synchronised event inside the media. In this way the movie controls the presentation flow. In our model the logic of the presentation has been placed outside the media. To achieve this we built our own set of presentation commands (a set of Javascript commands) to control the presentation.

Conclusion

The rush to embrace eLearning needs to be guided by sound teaching practices. If we continue to work towards an informed melding of ICT and pedagogy, eLearning may fulfill its considerable promise. However, much research and reflection are still ahead of us.

First published February 2001.