Friday, September 03, 2004
Online Thesis - Australian Digital Theses Program
 | Australian Digital Theses Program
|
| Thesis Details | |
 Title | Students' experiences of e-learning at school |
| Author | Barty, Karen |
| Institution | Deakin University |
| Date | 2001 |
| Abstract | This folio presents research and a selection of my professional activities related to the development of an online course for students at secondary level of schooling which took place between 1998 and 2000. Online courses for school students appeared in North America with a sense of triumph in 19951 but by 1997 the feeling was that if 'netcourses' were to have credibility, efforts had to be made to improve the quality of such courses (Elbaum & Tinker, 1997). The contents of this folio show how I endeavoured to provide e-learning that met standards of best practice and how a research project, set up to monitor the effects and outcomes of teaching and learning in this mode, contributed to the process. Referred to throughout as LOTE Online, since the research and development took place in the Key Learning Area (KLA)2 of Languages Other Than English (LOTE), the study is not so much about teaching and learning languages as about the impact studying a subject online had on students at school. Since the research and development that is at the centre of this folio has occurred in my workplace and in a number of schools in Victoria, it is relevant to provide some notes about them. My current work has grown out of the Telematics Project, a Department of Education, Employment and Training (DEET)3 initiative of the 80s: In late 1986, the then Victorian Education Department entered into a Resource Agreement with the Commonwealth Government to use electronic delivery systems to improve participation in post compulsory schooling in isolated rural schools. (Foreword, I. Conboy, in Elliott, 1991), I became involved in the Telematics Project in 1989 while a teacher in a regional centre in Victoria, having been persuaded to take an English Literature class that involved students at my own school and two smaller schools within the region. Its success prompted me to join a curriculum project to promote language learning through telematics4. In the early 90's we used audioconferencing equipment in conjunction with Mac Plus and Mac Classic computers, linked by a program called the Electronic Classroom5, and we exchanged documents by fax. New hardware and software brought a series of developments to our simple beginnings and in 1995 the telematics project officer at the time offered me and my students Internet accounts as a way of further expanding the program. The developments I saw taking place at Deakin University, where I was, at the time, a Master of Distance Education student, enabled me to see the potential for using online learning in a sustained way in my own classes. I began a long process of working through the concept of reorienting coursework for VCE German Units 1&26 and by 1998 I had the course in 'stand-alone' online form. I worked on the task of creating Ge 1&27 in a manner that was highly autonomous. Other teachers in the state involved in the Telematics Project8 used an approach that had been modelled in professional development conferences over the years: that is, linking classrooms based on a traditionally structured learning program. At one time, in 1997/8, the Learning Technologies section of the then Curriculum and Learning Technologies Branch9 called for teachers to develop online courses but, although there was a two day meeting dedicated to the subject, no direct action followed at managerial level. I signalled my interest in proceeding with a project of my own and was given the freedom to experiment and a supportive climate in which to work. The details of the schools with which I worked are not revealed, to ensure the privacy of the participants10, but it is possible to indicate that, typically, the schools had an enrolment of 120 - 200 secondary students. In most cases there were one or two in the year 11 group who wanted to continue their LOTE study, although one school, located in a regional centre, had a much larger enrolment and a group of 6 students took Ge 1&2 at that site. As the number of students wanting to study German was so small at a number of locations, there was an ideal opportunity to form a larger class by creating a virtual class. The experiment we were involved in, using online learning, had the potential to change the way classes are conducted within the Telematics Project It is also relevant, as part of this introduction to the folio, to establish what category of online course Ge 1&2 belongs to: there are many different understandings of what an online course entails11. As McGreal points out, the majority of courses that present as online courses only have online components as part of a traditional class structure (McGreal, 1998, p. 3). Only 20% of so-called online courses qualify to appear on the TeleCampus online database because the criterion for inclusion is that they can be 'taken fully on line from anywhere in the world that has an Internet connexion' (ibid, p.2). This does not mean that a course cannot use print resources, CD-ROMs, video and audio tapes but it should have the capacity to be taken without attendance at a learning centre. German Units 1&2 can, theoretically, be undertaken in such a fashion, though, enhanced by videoconferencing12, it is a better course. The course I offer for German Units 3&4, which has similar features to Units 1&2, would not be included on the TeleCampus database because students need to attend videoconferencing classes at school to participate. Kearsley, in a later publication, acknowledges realtime conferencing with desktop video systems or audiographics as an element of online learning, describing it as an 'advanced' form of conferencing in comparison to text-based versions (Kearsley, 2000, p.7). Using either McGreal or Kearsley's guidelines, Ge 1&2 can be identified as a true online course. Although the term 'online' is widespreadly used13, a newer term, 'e-learning' has recently emerged. Following the trend established by the nomenclature 'e-commerce', 'e-learning' refers to any educational activity conducted by computer. In an article in The Australian, Castles refers to 'the fast-moving e-learaing sector', 'e-learning systems' and 'e-learning platforms' in the context of an 'e-learning market'14, giving the impression that it is a term adopted by companies focusing on education for business purposes. However, in a front page article of the Education Times the Minister for Education was quoted as saying, 'The landmark council will devise an e-learning strategy'15, and the term is not used in a business sense at all. On the assumption that this term will become more prevalent in the future, in a range of contexts, it is used in this folio as a variant of 'online learning'. It has even been used as a synonym for an online course: The Australian has referred to e-learning as 'online delivery of courses'16 While 'e-learning' and 'online learning' are familiar terms in use in public and school life, the term 'educational technology' is one used in academic communities. The term 'educational technology' alludes to more than just the objects which plug into electrical sockets and telephone lines. Evans and Nation, for example, say that 'pedagogy and technology are - and always have been - fundamental and inseparable elements of education' (Evans & Nation, 1993, p. 198) and that 'they are the knowledge, values and practices which constitute the development and use of these tools'. The folio contents highlight this overlap of, or interplay between, technology and pedagogy and show how, in fact, the quest for a quality online course involved careful balancing of both pedagogy and technology, so they could work together, in combination. The folio Having provided a general background to the reading of the folio and a brief review of key terms used throughout, it is appropriate to offer some comments about its individual parts. It has three main components. The first section is about the concepts incorporated in Ge 1&2 online and the production of a 'website as CD' to facilitate the course17 (the planning/preparation phase). The second section records student response to the course and analyses and interprets them (the implementation/evaluation phases). The third section illustrates how the work done in the classroom translated into professional activity (critical reflection phase). Folio item 1, entitled Designed for e-learning, depicts the various influences that shaped Ge 1&2: regulations set out by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA)18, learning theory, professional standards that might be described as 'best practice' and the opportunities and limitations created by the online environment. A 'guided tour' of the CDs brings attention to some of the course's features. Folio item 2, entitled Virtual class or virtual void?: a mix e-learning experiences, sets out the parameters of the research project that parallelled the implementation of Ge 1&2 online. It presents, largely through the voices of the students themselves, the difficulties they needed to overcome to participate effectively, if indeed there were difficulties, and what practices were preferred. From the information provided, some guidelines for the establishment of online courses for students at school are made. The third folio item, entitled Previews of virtual schooling, comprises three parts: a paper prepared for the 1999 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia (ODLAA) publication, Open, Flexible and Distance Learning: Challenges of the New Millennium, an article published in Babel, vol. 34, no. 3, Summer 1999-2000, produced by the Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations and a third paper prepared for the ODLAA Conference to take place in Sydney, September 2001. The first ODLAA paper reports on my research in progress and the second gives a full account of the findings of the research and its implications for online courses in the school context The Babel article argues that there is a place for courses, as modelled in LOTE Online, in mainstream education. I was conscious, in 1997, at the commencement of my doctoral studies, that the work I was embarking on would be 'old hat' by the time I finished. To an extent this has turned out to be true. Web sites for language learning in 2001 are sophisticated in their content compared with what I compiled in 1997/98. However, the information about teaching/learning experiences in an online course with students at school is not dated and is one of a few studies that addresses an expressed need to theorise practice in distance education (Garrison, 2000). MB The URLs in this folio were all active in May 2001 unless otherwise dated. 1 The source of this information is Cyberschool, Oregon (http://CybersdiooL4j.lane.edu), October 1998. 2 The 8 Key Learning Areas are: English, The Arts, Study of Society and the Environment, Health and Physical Education, Mathematics, Science, Technology and Languages Other than English. 3 Until November 1999 this government department was known as the Department of Education. The newer title is used throughout the folio to avoid confusion. 4 The name 'telematics' has been adopted in Victoria to describe educational programs involving communications technology. The practices were generally referred to as 'audiographics' in other places. 5 The computer conferencing program was created by Robert Crago (Revelation Computing) especially for the Telematics Project 6 VCE stands for the Victorian Certificate of Education, the formal qualification students gain on succeeding in the last two years of secondary schooling. A 'Unit' is a semester long study that complies with set standards to contribute a credit point for the VCE. 7 'Ge' is an abbreviated form of 'German'. 8 Information about the size and scope of the project are provided at www.sofweb.vic.edu.au/lt/telemat.htm. 9 The change of government in Victoria in October 1999 brought a restructuring of the former Department of Education. 10 To assure the anonymity of the participants, the names of the students and teachers in this folio are not their real names. 11 There are also different ways of spelling 'online'. Although the Macquarie dictionary shows the spelling to be 'on-line', very few papers or articles use that spelling. The unhyphenated form is used predominantly in the daily press and it is so widely used that to retain the 'correct' spelling seems antiquated 12 Videoconferencing can be carried out using the Internet, therefore it is arguably part of the online scenario, even though McGreal's classification ignores this factor. 13 Kearsley is careful to differentiate early forms on online learning, which were of the Computer Based Instruction type, from the later forms of online learning, which involve Computer Mediated Communication (Kearsley, 2000). Online courses are generally understood to be of the latter type. 14 The reference is to 'Confusion over e-learning' by Jane Castles, The Australian, 29th November, 2000. 15 This comes from 'Parents prize public education' by Sara McKinnon, Education Times vol. 8, No. 13, 10th August, 2000, p.l. 16 'Get the best out of online', The Australian, 25-26th November, 2000, p. 13). 17 Even though Unit 1 and Unit 2 are technically separate courses (each leads to a credit point for VCE), I mostly talk of it as one course because the vast majority of students take both Units 1 and 2 and we think of it as one year's study, not two half year studies. 18 Prior to 2001 this was known as The Board of Studies. |
| Thesis | 01front.pdf 4070.6 Kb
02ch1-2.pdf 2472.9 Kb 03ch3-4.pdf 5788.1 Kb 04ch5-6.pdf 4542.5 Kb 05ch7-8.pdf 4919.0 Kb 06ch9.pdf 2056.8 Kb 07ref.pdf 1491.2 Kb 08ending.pdf 10207.0 Kb |
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