Technology, Curriculum, Learning

Dr Richard Hawkins (University of Wolverhampton)Dr Jamie Wood (University of Manchester)

Introduction

Aims of the session To think about why this is an important issue

(more broadly and for History discipline) To give an overview of technologies that are

being used (technology) To provide some specific examples of how

they are being used in teaching (pedagogy) To encourage you to think about how they

relate to your practice (and how you might apply them)

Structure of the session

Your concerns and questions

Please spend 5 minutes discussing the theme of e-learning with the person sitting next to you

Think about the following questions: What are your prior experiences of using e-learning? What was good about it? What problems did you encounter? What more would you like to know?

Write down your thoughts on post-it notes (1 per post-it)

Be ready to feed back at least one point to the group

Questions to consider

When is e-Learning particularly appropriate and effective in HE History teaching?

What are the challenges of using e-learning? What are the benefits? Which technologies are most effective in

terms of students’ learning? Which pedagogies are best aligned with e-

learning? How do we assess engagement with e-

learning? What support is needed to further staff

engagement with e-learning?

Issues and challenges

Access to online resources (e.g. institutional issues)

Students’ skill levels Language skills Mathematical literacy Digital literacy: we shouldn’t expect

students to have same digital literacy skills either as we do or as our children do

Access to online resources E-books and e-journals from commercial

publishers are on a subscription basis Subscriptions can be cancelled and

unlike with traditional paper books and journals virtual bookshelves will then be left bare

So it is potentially bad teaching practice to base an entire reading list on subscription based e-books and e-journal articles

Issues and Challenges

Access to online resources Although most of the free online

resources are Microsoft compatible there are a few which require the download of non-Microsoft proprietary software which may require permission to breach your institution’s firewall

Issues and Challenges

Language Skills Non-contemporary English-language resources are

likely to make use of archaic words Original hand-written manuscripts may be difficult for

students who do not hand write on a regular basis to decipher

Some foreign language handwriting, e.g. pre-20th century German, present challenge because many of the characters are significantly different from those used in contemporary handwriting

Students do not necessarily possess language skills necessary to engage with primary sources (e.g. Latin for medieval history)

Students’ Skill Levels

Mathematical Literacy Some countries have placed significant

sets of historical statistical data online such as in the case of the United States

However, many students may lack the mathematical literacy to make even low level use of this data such as creating graphs

Students’ Skill Levels

Digital Literacy There is a false belief that our students are

digital natives and that they will probably be more skilled than we as teachers or researchers are in engaging with online historical resources

The skills needed to engage with these resources are different from those required to engage with Facebook or create a webpage

Some students lack basic skills such that of knowing how to do a keyword search

Many students are unable to differentiate online resources

Students’ Skill Levels

Opportunities and solutions: (1) Engaging with the discipline

Encourages deeper learning Primary research▪ Engaging with online archives: e.g. American Jewish

Committeehttp://www.ajcarchives.org/

Promotes learning outside the classroom Promotes collaboration Develops discipline-specific and transferrable skills▪ Research skills; writing (e.g. in different formats/ registers);

information literacy; collaboration; technical/ technological skills

Broadened horizons Enables students to see broader/ social relevance/

applicability of the discipline and of their learning

(2) Pedagogy, learning design and technology

Structured design and delivery Planning and up-front effort are needed Makes the learning and teaching process more visible Aids transferability

Flexible, asynchronous teaching/ learning Blended learning – complement rather than replace

face-to-face learning Can support a range of pedagogies

Podcasts and YouTube can be used for transmission modes

Possibly aligns better with certain pedagogies▪ Constructivist approaches – students make meaning/ learning▪ E.g. inquiry- and problem-based learning; group-work

(3) Transferability

Foregrounding of design: makes pedagogy explicit

Online: easier to share Freely- and widely-available – e.g. Web2.0;

virtual learning environments

Resource banks/ open educational resources: Facilitates sharing of resources/ activities▪ HEA website resources centre:

http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources ▪ JISC learning resources:

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/topics/learningresources.aspx

▪ HUMBOX: http://humbox.ac.uk/

Reflecting on your experience Based on the experiences of the

members of your group, think about the following questions: what factors inhibit student and staff

engagement with e-learning/ technology? what are the benefits of e-learning for staff

and students? You have ten minutes Be ready to feed back on the main

points of your discussion

Cost of commercially available online resources is potentially a significant issue

However, both public sector and non-governmental organisations are placing ever increasing amounts of historical material online

In the case of books and other printed material such as pamphlets there are now a number of websites that provide free resources

Survey of Contemporary Online Resources

Books, Government Documents and Serials There are several e-book collections available on

a subscription basis. But most of them are not history focussed.

Ebrary However, ProQuest’s Ebrary does include history

within its scope. It is very useful collection which is easy for staff

and students to use. It offers a good selection of history monographs

covering a wide range of geographical areas and periods

Survey of Contemporary Online Resources

Books, Government Documents and Serials JISC Historic Books

The following resources are available to UK HEIs on payment of an annual service fee.▪ Early English Books Online (EEBO)▪ The scanned images and (increasingly) full-text digital versions of

over 125,000 books published in English up to 1700.

▪ Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) ▪ A digital collection of all the books published in Great Britain and its

colonies during the eighteenth century, comprising some 33 million pages from more than 180,000 titles.

▪ Nineteenth Century Books from the British Library Collection▪ Digitised versions of more than 65,000 first editions from the 19th

century, covering philosophy, history, poetry and literature.

Survey of Contemporary Use of Online Resources

Books, Government Documents and Serials Internet Archive – www.archive.org

This is a website has been created by an American NGO On this site can be found a wide variety of out of

copyright books and pamphlets aggregated from a wide variety of sources including Google Books and Project Gutenberg

While there is material from the 17th century on this site the resources tend to from the collections of North American university and public libraries and so there is a much wider range of material for the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries

So the resources are particularly useful for the teaching of American history

Survey of Contemporary Use of Online Resources

Books, Government Documents and Serials Internet Archive – www.archive.org

In the 19th and 18th centuries copyright was much weaker and American publishers republished a wide variety of British books and pamphlets

So this website has a lot of useful material relevant to the teaching of 18th and 19th century British history

The downside of this website is that the search engine only does keyword searches of titles

It does not allow a keyword search of the texts

Survey of Contemporary Use of Online Resources

www.archive.org

An example of an 18th century publication available at www.archive.org

William Fox (1792)

Books, Government Documents and Serials Google Books - http://books.google.co.uk/

Although students do make use of this website very few of the history books indexed are full view.

Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/ Free ancient to modern history ebooks with a wide

geographical scope. The Core Historical Literature of Agriculture

http://chla.library.cornell.edu/ This is an excellent Cornell University website

devoted to the history of agriculture.

Survey of Contemporary Use of Online Resources

Books, Government Documents and Serials Hathi Trust Digital Library - http://

www.hathitrust.org/ About 30 per of the 10 million books, government reports

and serials available at this website are full view. The material is mostly North American in focus. Good source for American State government publications.

Making of America -http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moagrphttp://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/m/moa/ This project which is split between the Universities of

Michigan and Cornell is a digitised collection of books and serials published up to 1922 documenting the making of America.

Survey of Contemporary Use of Online Resources

Digitised Newspapers British Library Newspapers 1600-1900

This JISC funded resource provides a wide range of national, provincial and local newspapers covering the period 1600-1900.

It includes the 17th to 18th century Burney Collection newspapers.

This resource is available free of charge to UK HEIs but unlike most comparable resources in other countries is not free of charge to the public at large.

There is also a further collection of British Library newspapers that is being digitised in collaboration with a private company, brightsolid.

However, the British Newspaper Archive is not a free resource and is only available on a pay per view basis.

Survey of Contemporary Use of Online Resources

Using British Library Newspapers for Teaching

(5HS006) The Social History of Victorian Britain c1850-c1901

Component 2: A 2000 word essay on one of the following questions (50%). Answer must include material drawn from at least five Victorian newspapers.

1. How much evidence is there for a significant improvement in public health in the Victorian period?

2. Discuss the treatment of the mentally ill in Victorian Britain.

3. How far was the image of the Victorian woman as ‘angel in the house’ a reality?

4. Examine the role of the prostitute in Victorian society.

5. Critically examine newspaper coverage of one of the following: cholera, industrial protest, crime, political conflict, popular culture.

6. What does the Jack the Ripper case tell us about the East End of London in 1888?

Digitised Newspapers Library of Congress - Chronicling America -

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ This free resource will include newspapers from

every part of the United States covering the period 1837-1922.

National Library of Australia – Trove – http://trove.nla.gov.au/ This free resource will include newspapers from

across Australia published between 1803 and the mid-1950s.

Survey of Contemporary Use of Online Resources

Digitised Newspapers National Library of Singapore – NewspaperSG -

http://newspapers.nl.sg/ This is a free digitised collection of Singapore and Malayan

newspapers published between 1831 and 2009. There are also a growing number of digitised historic

newspaper resources available on a subscription basis. In the case of Britain these newspapers include The

Times, The Financial Times, The Daily Mirror, Daily Express and the Glasgow Herald.

There are also British sectarian newspapers that have been digitised such as the Jewish Chronicle and the Catholic Herald

Survey of Contemporary Use of Online Resources

Using Chronicling America for Teaching

(6HS001) America: The Rise of a Superpower, 1890-1945

Assessment Tasks:

Component 1 (50%):

Choose one of the following:

1. Use the Library of Congress Chronicling America website to compare and contrast the reaction of the American press to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. Your examples must include newspapers from New York, District of Columbia, Minnesota, San Francisco and Texas. What do the newspaper articles tell us about the American attitude toward imperialism?*

2. Upton Sinclair’s documentary novel The Jungle (1906) exposing the appalling standards of hygiene in the meat-packing industry played a major role in the successful enactment of a major example of Progressive Era regulatory federal legislation, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Use the Library of Congress Chronicling America website to compare and contrast the reaction of the American press to the publication of The Jungle and the enactment of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Your examples must include newspapers from New York, District of Columbia, Minnesota, San Francisco and Texas.*

* USE A MINIMUM OF TWO ARTICLES FROM EACH CITY, DISTRICT, OR STATE

Other Resources JISC was referred to earlier. This UK government body has also sought to

make available for teaching a wide range of historical resources including pictures and newsfilm at http://jiscmediahub.ac.uk/

Visual media relating to the history of United States and Australia are available respectively at the following two sites:http://www.loc.gov/library/libarch-digital.htmlhttp://trove.nla.gov.au/

Survey of Contemporary Use of Online Resources

Using JISC MediaHub for Teaching

(5GK014) Genocide and the Emergence of Modern Human Rights

Component 2 (50%):

Choose one of the following

1. Use the news films available on the JISC MediaHub website to identify news reports relating to one of the genocide case studies covered in the lectures. Use the news reports to assess the role played by the media in publicizing genocide. Did the publicity have a positive impact?

2. Critically analyse the operations of ONE of the major international war crimes tribunals (Yugoslavia and Rwanda). Have they been successful?

Some pre-1600 examples

Discussion boards and blogs: (group-work) Students discuss

and debate with one another (interacting with lecturer)

Students ask questions and offer feedback, especially useful for revision

(individually) Students reflect on their learning or complete specific tasks on a weekly basis

(collaboratively) Students pose questions on a weekly basis that are used to structure

Some more pre-1600 examples

Google Maps: (collaboratively) Students create maps of historical

events/ processes by adding ‘tags’ to Google Maps and annotating them: The Spread of Lutheranism (1 seminar)

Wikis, blogs and Google Sites: (individually or collaboratively) Students create a

website: Women in the Middle East (seminar series) Social bookmarking:

(collaboratively) Students create a resource list (online bibliography) for a module/ seminar (seminar series)

Questioning the Medieval using social bookmarking Seminars on a 1st year

lecture-based module in History at University of Sheffield

Social bookmarking: Internet users manage bookmarks of web pages using tags/ descriptions, not folders

Active engagement – the students have to do something

Online/ social element enables collaboration and sharing

Problem

My perception: Lack of student preparation Or maybe: lack of engagement with reading,

either at home or in class Result:

Difficult to plan seminars and to carry them out Over preparation; formulaic and rigid structure;

double preparation Solution:

Use active learning – i.e. require the students to do something outside class that I could see

Students provide me with the materials/ questions to plan seminars using social bookmarking

Diigo.com Students tag,

describe and share resources based on weekly reading

They then post questions based on reading to discussion forum

I use resources and questions to plan seminars

‘diigo for educators’ account – private, separate logins

Highlighting Sticky-noting Sharing

Varied online activitiesLocating and bookmarking source(s)• Find and bookmark primary/ secondary source• Add description and tags

Essay writing• Respond to feedback on essays by bookmarking a relevant site • Revise thesis statement from first essay and post to discussion forum

Non-written sources• Find and bookmark a non-written source (YouTube; Flickr)• In description, explain why this source is relevant to the seminar

Highlighting • Highlight and comment on relevant sections of a document which I had pre-selectedQuestioning (weekly)

• Post a question based on reading to the discussion forum

Student feedback

1. Practical use in preparing essays

2. Enjoyed the opportunity to find own sources

3. Freedom: ‘There is more freedom of choice about what to read’

4. Different way of learning: ‘it is much more interesting, and because you are not only reading, it is easier to absorb information’.

Learning from others

• ‘it has been good to see what other people have put and there was probably more variation in the questions than if the tutor was to set them.’

• ‘it allows you to see a wider range of issues that come up from sources - some that you may not even have thought about.’

+ 12 out of 15 students felt that their research skills had improved

Posing questions and sources

• ‘it forces you to think about the source material and be analytical in response to it’

• ‘it makes you think about what you're reading a lot more, and opens up the area of reading to different paths of thought.’

• Taking charge of learning: ‘I used to prefer having the questions set for me but I think it has been more useful setting them myself as it has made me think about the reading more.’

My reflections – learning

Develops range of ‘generic’ skills (technology; information literacy; research)

Models disciplinary processes and develops disciplinary skills (summarising; using sources) and knowledge – reading occurs

Generative learning objects (GLOs)

GLOs: digital learning objects that can be customised, adapted, edited or recombined (based on templates at http://glomaker.org/)

DIY: we developed 2 GLOs based on the Evaluating Multiple Interpretations (EMI) template Students presented with images and information about a

physical object Students complete various questions/ activities EMI revolves around audio footage of experts offering

their interpretations of various aspects of the physical object. Here are two examples

Shameless plug: Coming soon! Teaching Pre-Modern History: E-

Learning Challenges and Opportunities (HEA Insights Pamphlet): Antonella Luizzo-Scorpo and Jamie Wood

Coming slightly less soon: an overview of e-learning provision in UK HE History teaching, drawing on research with students and staff at 5-6 institutions

Activity: designing e-learning

Spend 15 minutes as a group designing an e-learning activity that meets a specific learning objective or solves a T&L problem

Your activity must 1. Involve students engaging with a historical source

online2. Incorporate technology to support the process of

learning Be ready to feedback (using technology,

maybe...) on the following: What objective/ problem are you addressing? What will the students do (i.e. how they will engage

with the technology)?

Plenary discussion

When is e-Learning particularly appropriate and effective in HE History teaching?

What are the challenges of using e-learning? What are the benefits? Which technologies are most effective in terms

of students’ learning? Which pedagogies are best aligned with e-

learning? How do we assess engagement with e-

learning? What support is needed to further staff

engagement with e-learning?