Author: Cristina Leston-Bandeira, c.c.leston-bandeira@hull.ac.uk

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

Higher Education Academy Subject Centre: Sociology, Anthropology and Politics

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, a positive effect on recruitment, use of resources

Background & Context

Why did you use this e-learning approach?

The MA in Legislative Studies Online (MALSO) is entirely taught online. It was created to respond to the needs of potential students: staff working in or with parliaments. Typically mature students located in dispersed places and with work and family commitments. Online teaching offered the flexibility of time and space for these students to undertake the course. MALSO stems from the MA in Legislative Studies which had proven to be difficult to access for many potential students.

Merlin, a virtual learning environment developed by the University of Hull, was chosen because it fosters the development of an online community thanks to its interactive and personalised features. Merlin was also very simple to use and did not require sophisticated technology or infrastructure. The simplicity of the system was an important factor to take into account, as some students would be doing the course from countries with poor infrastructures.

The development of MALSO is part of the department's strategy of fostering an e-learning option for all Master's level students.

What was the context in which you used this e-learning approach?

The Politics and International Studies department at the University of Hull provides a variety of courses aimed at students interested in the study and practice of politics. MALSO stems from the on campus MA in Legislative Studies, which has been delivered for more than a decade under the direction of Professor the Lord Norton of Louth. The teaching of the on campus programme is based around weekly two hours long seminars for each module. The change of the mode of delivery to online allows the department to offer this course to students from all over the world, particularly to those working with or in parliament. The online course is delivered part-time over two years. The MA in Legislative Studies was and still is taught like all other MAs within the department by seminar teaching at the Hull campus.

The group consists currently of six first year students and four second year students with one administrator and two academic staff members. Additional members of the group consist of other staff with an interest in legislative studies, as well as former students and some prospective students. All students work with or in parliaments.

Once the structure of the online MA modules were in place and the precise mode of teaching was prepared and outlined, the next challenge was to ensure that online students had access to the same university resources as on-campus students. Namely, the course tutors had to ensure that the library's electronic short loan service had relevant texts for each of their modules. This was both time consuming for the tutors and expensive for the department. In addition, the University's student registration procedure was not set up with off-campus students in mind and administrative staff involved therefore had a significant challenge in overcoming problems arising from this. Administrative staff also had to ensure that the information provided on the VLE was both up-to-date and relevant.

What was the design?

The main tools of the selected VLE were already set up as default, but the design had to incorporate several criteria. To facilitate the online discussion of individual seminar topics as well as providing important information on each seminar such as required background reading. To provide extensive resources, such as the University Library Service, important internet links, examples of past work, departmental policy etc. To provide an area for anonymous submission of assessed work. To provide an area of discussion outside the regular course framework, between students, tutors and administrators alike. To provide a section where individuals can supply an online profile. To provide an internal email service where administrators and tutors can send important messages with the function of seeing who has and who has not read messages. To enable administrative staff to add/remove and amend members details with ease. Teaching was designed as a combination of instructional tasks, reading and online discussion. Each module was organized around 10 seminar topics; each seminar lasting two weeks. Most of the teaching follows a work-based learning approach. The staff involved in developing this process were, the Programme Coordinator, Dr Cristina Leston-Bandeira, as well as Professor the Lord Norton of Louth.

How did you implement and embed this e-learning approach?

The programme coordinator undertook training in online teaching to prepare to deliver this programme (topical seminars and a 20 credits MA module taught within the University). Support was also given by the University's e-learning team. A contact at the library was essential to setting up an Electronic Short Loan Library with digitised texts.

As Merlin is very simple to use and a Hull based VLE it meant that 'rolling out' the MALSO information was straightforward from a technical point of view. The pedagogical elements required departmental and university approval and were then applied to Merlin according to the MA taught on campus, but adapted to the characteristics of the online students and mode of delivery.

The process that proved the most challenging was the adaptation of university and departmental regulations and processes to the online programme. Considerable work had to be done to ensure that the online programme rules and processes were in line with the on-campus ones, but that they also still fit with the specificity of the online students. This process was not always straightforward because the MALSO was only a minority cohort within the department, and indeed within the University.

The registration process is a good example of the difficulties in integrating this online programme with University procedures. University registration was set up with on-campus students in mind, expecting for instance the attendance of on-campus events for registration. This caused a huge amount of difficulty in obtaining finance from individuals and also the relevant registration paperwork to register the MALSO students and therefore ensuring they all received access to the full resources available.

Student feedback has been monitored very closely with regard to using Merlin and the programme in general. After the programme had been promoted and we started to obtain interest in the degree it was decided to provide applicants with a free two week trial in Merlin. This gave applicants an idea in advance of how the course was to be taught, get a feel for Merlin, as well as the opportunity of raising any queries academic or otherwise about the practicalities of the course.

At the beginning there were also difficulties associated with the amount of literature that could be digitised in view of the very restrictive and costly licences. However, this has improved dramatically from year to year as the terms of digitisation licences have been widened.