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The University’s future Online Learning Environment Consultation on the ‘Learner
Journey’
The purpose of these slides is to provide a brief update on the future Online Learning Environment consultation and its next steps; update you on some of the key outcomes of the School level consultations; and seek your feedback on the ideas and potential implications for staff.
Background • The University is in the process of reviewing its Online
Learning Environment in order to make sure it meets the needs of staff and students for the next decade
• Several core principles inherent in StudyNet will remain. For example, the notion of a single portal which is a key channel of communication; facilities that encourage and support collaborative working; and rich tools to manage assessment and feedback
• But some changes are envisaged. For example, the greater use of 3rd party services; more timely and targeted messaging; and enhanced data analytics
• Also key to the future is the notion of a better supported Learner Journey
• There were a series of School-led consultations in January and February and they have informed this stage of the project
Following the School consultations, the Review Project Team met to consider the feedback and plan the next steps:
• This part of the consultation relates to key elements of module and programme websites in order to facilitate each Learner’s Journey through their studies
• Following consideration of your feedback, a prototype system will be developed to test the ideas on a zero rated module that is broadly relevant to a range of students (eg some aspect of study skills)
• There will be, in due course, a separate consultation relating to the challenges of enabling timely, personalised and effective communication between staff and students, and students and students
• In case of interest, the feedback from the School-led consultations has undergone further analysis and is available, along with a summary sheet, at:– http://www.studynet.herts.ac.uk/web/olefeedback/ElectronicFeedback.zip– http://www.studynet.herts.ac.uk/web/olefeedback/PaperFeedback.zip– http://www.studynet.herts.ac.uk/web/olefeedback/ConsultationFeedbackSummary.xlsx
The key messages from the School consultations, relating to the Learner Journey included a wish for:
• A more consistent use of module websites (this does not mean that everyone should teach in the same way!)
• A timeline view of resources and learning/assessment activities
• The ability for students to comment on, and supplement, resources and learning activities
• A more effective search function• Easier links to journal articles and other external
resources• The ability for students to customise/personalise their
view of their module websites
The next three slides are illustrations of the sort of views programme and module interfaces could include, with particular emphasis on the timeline. They are not ‘mock-ups’ but just try to illustrate the concepts.
Programme Overview – showing timelines for the three modules (in this case) a student is studying at that time (‘Accounting for Business’ plus two unnamed modules)
The next slide shows the view a student would see if they clicked on the ‘Accounting for Business’ timeline
Module Overview – the default view for a module, with a more detailed timeline that includes links to the various resources
and learning activities supporting the module, including when face-to-face sessions and assessments take place.
Students will be able to add their own comments, links and resources to develop their own personalised Learning Journey
Clicking on a podcast symbol, for example, would link directly to the relevant resource..
Personalised views…
• The homepage of a module website will facilitate the students’ engagement with the Learning Activities as prompted by the lecturer:– The timeline shows the learning/assessment activities the
student is expected to engage with week by week– It also has links to the resources etc
• Students might also be able to choose to view the contents of their websites by, for example:– Topics– The type of learning activity – The tutors who are responsible for particular resources and
learning activities– Other…
Making this happen…
• In order to be able to – Provide a timeline
– Enable students to personalise/reconfigure their module views
– Enable more effective searching
….every resource and activity will have to have relevant tags/metadata
• This doesn’t happen very much currently and would represent a change in practice for the majority of staff
How might it work? The starting point is the module plan - eg
How it might work for lecturers?
• The module leader/team would create a module plan, specifying for each Learning Activity (lectures, coursework, assessments etc) and their associated resources, the following: – A Date Tag for when the activity is– An Activity Tag, indicating the type of learning/assessment
activity– A Topic Tag, indicating the subjects covered, – A Tutor Tag, indicating who has primary responsibility for
that activity
• Optional tags for additional, module specific, categories could also be created
The student view…
• With these components the system will then be able to automatically render different views of the module eg:– The timeline view of all learning/assessment activities
for the course or module– The view by the type of learning/assessment activities – The view by topic – and if the topics are well chosen,
they could be aggregated into a curriculum map– The view by tutor – Views by other tagged categories (optional)
• With a bit of imaginative and clever programming this could look quite smart!
Anticipated benefits…
• For students – Cross-programme view of assessment , learning activities and learning
outcomes– Better guidance on expected learning activities– Different ways to visualise and access the module resources– More consistent and more intuitive experience – Better search facilities – Potential for better understanding of programme looking forwards and
looking back
• For staff– Automatically generates a programme view of assessment – Shows a programme view of other learning activities (bottlenecks,
resources issues) – Better sense of students (eg through level of student additions to
resources - enhanced data analytics will be part of the project)
We need your feedback…Please consider the following and email your comments to Greg Bowie, OLE Review Project Manager [email protected] by Thursday 17th April
• What advantages/disadvantages do you envisage for the use of timelines – would they work for the programme(s) you teach on?
• What advantages/disadvantages do you envisage if the students have the facility personalise and reconfigure their module websites?
• What benefits/challenges would the requirement for all resources to have certain essential tags bring? How could tagging be made easy for you?
• Please give any other feedback on the ideas included in this presentation
THANK YOU If you have any queries, please contact any of the following members of the Review Project Team:
• Jon Alltree [email protected]
• Karen Barton [email protected]
• Paul Hudson [email protected]
