Author: Sarah Nicholoson, s.nicholson@arts.gla.ac.uk

JISC e-Learning Activity Area: Technology-enhanced Learning Environments

Higher Education Academy Subject Centre: Philosophical and Religious Studies

This case study illustrates...an effect on learning, an effect on student personal development, student satisfaction with e-learning, innovation in learning and teaching, staff satisfaction with e-learning, staff personal development, a positive effect on recruitment, a positive effect on retention, an influence on policy, use of resources, modifications to learning spaces, management of learning assets, an effect on social equality

Tangible Benefits

What tangible benefits did this e-learning approach produce?

Benefits included:

Saving on photocopying, printing, postage. Printing alone was £6 per module; use of Moodle therefore saved the department £6 per head in printing, plus the cost of posting the module book, plus photocopying of class notices and other handouts, which were published on the Moodle instead.

Increased staff use of the VLE for distance-taught courses and for classroom-taught courses at all levels including Honours. Dr Hunter now has a Moodle for each of his courses and student feedback surveys indicate student support for this approach, with the overwhelming majority of students indicating that they find the Moodles helpful.

Increased staff confidence in the department with using technology in teaching. Since the development of e-learning materials for the distance degree the department has also invested in its own data projector and DVD player, which are regularly used by departmental staff. More use of e-learning is beginning to be seen as a necessary future development and was discussed at the department's teaching committee in June.

Distance students in the Bibs1A course were less isolated because of opportunities to communicate via the VLE; not just with each other but also with the lecturers. The use of the VLE for additional handouts and for course notices seemed to give more of a sense of community to this kind of contact than when those notices were sent by email. For example, comparing feedback sheets with other modules, distance students in the Bibs1A module made more contact with lecturers and had fewer complaints about their isolation than distance students in modules without VLE support. This contributes to the university's L&T aim of access and opportunity and also to the aim of creating a sense of community among students (L&T Strategy, May 2006).

Pass rates of 100% in the VLE-supported courses after the development of the VLE. Prior to the introduction of the VLE, the pass rate was still high: on average over 90% in the campus-based Bibs1A course, so perhaps the evidence for improved student performance is scanty. Indeed, the student numbers involved cannot really indicate any statistically significant results. Perhaps more important is the evidence of student satisfaction which is evident from the end-of-course feedback sheets. Again, student numbers are probably not high enough for statistical significance, but the evidence available seems to show that student satisfaction is higher since the introduction of the Moodle than before the Moodle.

Contribution to University's agenda of widening participation, at least until the distance degree was discontinued. All students in the distance programme were part-time mature students, and admissions form data indicates that many of them came from non-traditional backgrounds. For example, one student was a retired man who had failed his eleven plus and so had never had the opportunity to study at University level before but who excelled in his course. Data from the student disabilities service indicates that two of the students who used the online modules had severe mobility disabilities and would have been unable to study except at a distance (i.e. they had to study from home). One student had a heart-lung medical condition and similarly was unable to do campus-based study. At least three students had clinical depression and benefited from the flexibility that e-learning can offer (e.g. no missed lectures; no missed material). One student completed her degree through distance learning after she became pregnant. These experiences are clearly in line with the university's L&T equality and diversity objectives.

It almost goes without saying that the examples given above of students who have benefited from the widening participation agenda are also evidence of the social inclusion and social justice benefits of e-learning. For example, there is a great deal of belated justice in the case of the man who had failed his eleven plus more than forty years ago, who was thereby given to believe that he had no aptitude for academic work, and who is set to graduate next year with a very good degree.

It is possible that the use of e-learning materials has had a positive effect on retention, but we have no data on this because the situation is too complex and there are too many variables. Students withdrawing from study tend to cite personal reasons, if any; no one has even mentioned the mode of delivery in a letter of withdrawal.

Increased performance towards the university's aim of using 'new and developing technologies and associated methods of delivery to enhance students learning and promote flexibility' (L&T strategy, May 2006).

Did implementation of this e-learning approach have any disadvantages or drawbacks?

A very small number of our distance learning students had no computer access in their homes. It is clear that a programme delivered (even partially) through a VLE requires students to have regular and easy access to a computer and to the internet. This meant changing the admissions information, but existing students were not disadvantaged.

There are some disadvantages involved in using technology in teaching that are lessons learned alongside the implementation of our e-learning materials. One is the difficulty of adequate proof-reading for learning materials in languages with other alphabets (e.g. Hebrew) that require to be typed almost in 'code' on a regular keyboard. Mistakes in handouts were rare when handouts were hand-written. Handouts with typed Hebrew look much neater, but one small slip of the finger can produce a mistake that isn't immediately obvious to a non-native speaker!

Another disadvantage in my field is the difficulty of critiquing aspects of the use of technology in culture. We are restrained by regulations governing the use of university computers which prohibits accessing certain materials which require to be critiqued. For example, a course in feminist biblical hermeneutics might involve critique of biblical pornography in Hosea and comparison with ideologies of gender in other forms of ancient and modern pornography. However, using university computers to access relevant material would lead to Senate investigations. Obviously this problem generalises to other fields! Possibly the most serious drawback was the lack of resources. Perhaps we underestimated the resources necessary for this kind of development.

How did this e-learning approach accord with or differ from any relevant departmental and/or institutional strategies?

At the time, the University's strategy in distance education was to move towards e-learning. There was no explicit departmental strategy on methods of delivery, though there was enthusiasm for distance learning.

However, enthusiasm for e-learning was less forthcoming. Of our 15 distance-taught modules, only three made it into Moodle, and only one survives. The one that survives is the Bibs1A module, which prompted one lecturer to write Moodles for his other courses, but so far he is the only person who has done so. The university's latest e-learning strategy is to promote increased use of Moodle in all departments and our department has discussed it, but it is likely to be a slow process. Our department has not yet allocated any resources to the development of Moodles for our courses, and without resources it is unlikely that staff will take the initiative required to learn to use a whole new computer system.