The 24 hour University:

http://oubs.open.ac.uk/gilly

This paper focuses on three main arenas:

• The first is the changing role of the lecturer and teacher as a result of online teaching and learning opportunities. Success does not come with lecturers doing what they have always done. How can VLEs support and develop this role, with the minimum pain?

• The second is the needs of all online participants. They require PARTICIPATION with their colleagues, the EMOTIONAL impact of learning accounted for (yes! Emotions!), and a way of managing swirling TIME (PET).

• Finally we take a peak at the future. Which Planet does your VLE belong on? Are we all on the same one? Can we influence the future through VLEs?

VLEs need to be understood in terms of ‘affordances’. Affordance means the properties of a system which allow certain actions to be performed and which encourage specific types of behaviour . A key affordance of networked learning, or remote asynchronous group working, is promotion of interaction between groups of people online around a purpose. Indeed, the use of networked for teaching and learning has grown in the past few years, fuelled by the belief that it promotes student to student and student to tutor communication and also that all contributions are recorded and explored in a way that rarely happens face to face. Learners and teachers can work together without being physically co-located. Many theories of learning stress the importance of co-operation, collaboration and working together. An affordance of the "not all at the same time" nature of text based online discussion groups or forums is that periods of time passing between log-ons mean that reflection on the messages may occur . We know that this can happen either through reflection on the learning experience, or during the experience of undertaking the learning tasks with others .

VLEs are NOT neutral. Like any technology they embed underlying values about teaching and learning, promote certain affordances and reduce other choices. They are of course a considerable investment and therefore hard to change. Talking money, over time training and support requirements are likely to cost much more than the systems and platforms themselves, therefore cultural match is important from the start!

What a pity, then, that the majority of VLEs appear to be based on an instructional model of teaching and an affordance of publishing. How did this happen?

p. 173)

Successful and productive online teaching is a key feature of positive, scalable and affordable e-learning projects and processes. Regardless of the sophistication of the technology, online learners do not wish to do without their human supporters. How many people, for example, have been heard to say, "I’m great at art because of my inspirational computer?" Not any that I’ve met, on or off line! Instead learners talk of challenge and support by their lecturers, or of contact with the thoughts and the work of others. Most people also mention the fun and companionship of working and learning together. Such benefits do not have to be abandoned. The requirements for the technology though are demanding.

Supporting learning online through synchronous and asynchronous conferencing (bulletin boards, forums) requires online teachers and supporters to have a wider range of expertise compared to working with face to face learning groups. Hence the role of the lecturer or teacher in Higher and Further Education needs to change to match the development and potential of new online environments. By the way, I choose to call all online learners ‘participants’ and their trainers, facilitators or teachers, ‘e-moderators’. These words illustrate the different roles that each adopt online compared to face to face teaching and learning situations.

Most institutions face reskilling experienced staff or adding e-moderation to training programmes for new teaching staff. Currently, in the UK it is most unusual for lecturers or tutors to be recruited for e-moderating skills per se or for their previous experience in teaching online.

Even if teachers have an excellent record in conventional settings it is difficult to predict who will do well as e-moderators. Currently, few universities and colleges offer much in the way of training for e-moderating skills and the best methods are yet to be identified . However, we do know the acquisition of e-moderating skills cannot be achieved vicariously by lecturers observing other online teachers or by looking at exemplary Web sites

Clearly, for staff development to be successful, training needs to be rooted in the peculiarities and requirements of the online environment itself. It needs to engage staff in the experience of working with others online and to be focused on the usefulness and relevance of online learning.

Therefore the first role for the VLE is that it easy and successful to build a staff development programme in it, which engages and supports lecturers on their journey to becoming e-moderators.

If your staff cannot easily navigate, interact, find what they need and fully participate, feel friendly and enthused by your VLE…why would they expect the students to feel differently?

Individuals very rarely make choices of VLEs. Usually complex highly politicised processes are involved and all stakeholders may not be engaged in exploration and decision-making processes . Typically, at some point the technology is explained and demonstrated by the professional technical people to the teaching or academic staff. The demonstration is usually be carried out by the IT professionals and then, quite naturally, the technical features of the platform are emphasised. Often this is followed up by some attempt (because "resistance" has been noticed) to get the teaching staff involved by offering "hands on" sessions, again run by capable technical staff. Regrettably, this well intentioned process has resulted in many thousands of teachers in many contexts believing that teaching and learning online is computing, and that it's difficult to grasp. Then a vicious circle results: they think, ‘If I cannot easily see the benefits of online, what chance do my participants stand?’

In my view, by far the best way of introducing new technology in teaching and learning contexts is through the teachers themselves and through their first experiencing the platform as a learner and within their own communities of practice. Ask of your VLE provider....can you help train our e-moderators?

There are some other key functions that are important for successful e-moderating. For example are the discussions between participants and e-moderators automatically (or easily) recorded. (If the answer is no to this question, it will be hard for the e-moderator to explore the success of his or her e-tivities, and continuously improve). In what form will the records be available to the e-moderators and how can they make sure that inappropriate others do not have access to it? Is it easy to capture a variety of views of these interactions, e.g. what the group did on a particular day, what an individual has achieved over one month, what the pattern of communication between the e-moderator and the group is?

Learners need to be led through a structured developmental cycle for online learning to be successful and happy. I use a model of teaching and learning online, researched and developed as a grounded model with Open University Business School students over several years, but since applied to corporate training and across many learning disciplines and contexts .

The 5-step model enables purposeful e learning and the gradual building of action and interaction online. It provides a framework on how to set up an online conferencing environment to maximise the experience to gradually build on participants’ experience, maximise individual contribution and interaction and active learning and minimise barriers. In short to build a ‘scaffold’ to successful participation.

Look at http://oubs.open.ac.uk/e-moderating

The VLE needs to make scaffold building easy. –Therefore the process of making links between online activities (rather than resources) should be obvious. It is also critically important that stimulating trigger content and discussion occur on the same web page. Can you VLE offer this?

‘Rampant featurism’ in computer programmes means that simple and powerful technological ideas are becoming more and more complex and require faster and hungrier hardware . However, recent research has shown that promoting robust and usable knowledge is directly associated with engaging learners in authentic tasks and situations. In other words, it is how we feel about working online and our integration with our learning groups that are more important than the technology itself .

There are many factors involved in personal abilities that contribute to learning and achieving. One major important aspect is known as Emotional Quotient EQ) . E-learners need to understand how to develop and use their emotional quotient. They need a great deal of help built into e learning to achieve this. Working online creates a wide range of feelings in participants, and in e-moderators. Frustration with the technology is common but this can be overcome with sensible support. The experience of not physically being with others in the same space is probably the main emotions trigger. The VLE needs to take account of this by making communication between the group the focus of the learning process.

Most surveys show that workload and the use of time worries lecturers most about teaching online . You will find the concept of time is emotive and value-laden for both e-moderators and participants. The key issue is that the advantages of ‘any time/any place’ learning and teaching mean that time is not bounded and contained as it is when attending a lecture or a face-to-face training session. Although a face-to-face meeting may last two hours, it has a clear start and finish time and is rarely interrupted by anything else. The participants are either there or they are not, and if they are, they cannot be doing much else. Online teaching is not like that. It has a reputation for ‘eating time’. Genuine fears and concerns do exist, and must be addressed.

The VLE can help by offering facilities that enable e-moderators to do what they need to do most of, more efficiently and effectively. These special features should include very easy summarising of participant messages, archiving and deleting. It will include very easy ways of synchronous chat and 1:1 chat messages built into the asynchronous bulletin board. It will be fast, whether through client or Web based software, and accessible from low –specification machines both at work and at home.

There is an interesting paradox emerging in understanding the need for educational experiences. Previously we had a sense of audience, perhaps more recently of market segments. However one impact of the Internet is that neatly packaged target markets do not present themselves. However, passions for and uses of technologies grow in a way that has little to do with demographics . The new meaning of access to educational products and services may be quite individual (i.e. do I want this? Do I need this?). My approach here has been to offer some likely pathways (intentionally extreme) through scenarios.

A scenario is a descriptive forecast of a future landscape in which an institution might find itself in the future. Scenarios are not about forecasting the future but about looking at the creative possibilities. Here I offer four scenarios for you to consider the implications for your VLEs! The names of the four scenarios are my own.

Contenteous uses technology as a delivery system. Applications and systems include Content Management Systems, multi media, industry standards, DVDs, digital and cable TV. The associated pedagogy is that of the transmission model of teaching, where information is transferred from experts to novices. Content is king.

Economies of scale in this model are reached only through reduced interaction between e-moderators and learners compared to lecture and question mode of teaching. Assessment of students’ learning is based on reproduction and critique. Customers make choices on where to study from media profiles, online resource availability and league tables of various kinds.

The VLE will need very good navigation and multi media capacity to support this one! It will provide an ‘eye into reality’, simulations, virtuality, asynchronicity & synchronicity. It will require automatic testing & tracking. The VLE will require mass viewing capacity but individual assessment. Assessment must be submittable in different media. It will have excellent scheduling capacity and be extremely robust.

The need to be a continuous and applied learner is especially apparent in domains influenced by scientific and technological advance . Instantia meets these requirements through sophisticated learning object approaches with information technology seen as the basic tools. The pedagogy for this scenario is usually called e-learning. Computer based courses are offered from desks at work or in learning centres. Learners work and learn almost simultaneously. Flexibility and instantaneousness are the keywords. Individuals learners assess the value of the learning experience, asking: Is this learning just for me, just in time, just for now and just enough?

This VLE will need to be available 24/7/52. Its underlying engine will be a sophisticated metatagged database, easily manipulated! It will be highly reliable, scalable as courses increase. It will provide easy and quick individualisation and customisation.

Nomadict learning provides mobilised learning for the mobilised society. Learning the Nomadict way is mobile, time independent and individual. The learners are seen as electronic explorers and adventurers. There is little need for or identification with a physical campus. The ‘university’ becomes a server farm. The old halls of residents turn into satellite stations.

Nomadict learning is called m-learning (for mobile-learning) instead of e-learning. Learning takes place any time and any place. Learners no longer sit in front of computers. Learning devices are carried or worn. Pedagogy is various so individuals choose based on their cognitive preferences and styles. New e-universities and e-colleges assume greater importance. Assessment of learning is in small bites, based largely on projects and outcomes. Portfolio learners expect to transfer their learning credits easily from one institution to another.

Technologies are highly portable, individual, adaptable and intuitive to use . Main technologies in use are Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) and Palm Tops, 3^rd generation mobile phones (UMTS), GPS, wireless and personal networks, low orbit satellites, national and international communications network networks, high bandwidth, infra-red connections and e-books. All students have laptops, palm tops and text mobiles. Styli are commoner than pens. Mobile technologies are seen as essential communication and learning tools (rather than as disruptive, as at the turn of the Century).

There’s little tolerance of old style VLEs. All VLEs need to provide streamed learning to highly mobile users. VLEs are accessible anywhere without client software. They support modularity and choice. They have reactive ambient intelligence. They are low cost and hence overcome ‘Gap’ problems

Learning is built around learning communities and interaction, extending access beyond the bounds of time and space, but offering the promise of efficiency and widening access. The key technology is the developed, entertaining, effective Internet (beyond the browser!) to allow immediate and satisfying interaction between students and students, and between e-moderators and students. Asynchronous and synchronous group systems support a wide variety of environments for working and learning together. Both co- and remotely-located learning communities (clicks and mortar) are of key importance. Learners connect through both low and high bandwidth devices and systems. The VLEs act as mediating devices, promoting creativity and collaboration.

A key activity for learners in online communities is finding like-minded individuals anywhere (e.g. by gender, by interest group, by profession,) and by being intellectually extended by dialogue and challenge from others. Learners express themselves freely through speech and text. The VLE must support this. The roles of reflection (an essential tool of expert learners), professional development and the sharing of tacit knowledge are of critical importance. The VLE should have built-in reflection tools. Electronic and structured information support and stimulate the learning group rather than replace the active, participative learning experience. Cafélattia approaches are very popular in professional and Higher. Assessment is based on complex problem solving and knowledge construction skills; therefore the VLE will need sophisticated document sharing devices rather than assessment tools as such.

The VLE on Cafélattia must provide an interactive and participative environment rather than tools. The VLE must support many standards or

compatibility resolved. It has built-in knowledge management tools

and much-improved group working tools. We have finally achieved

sophistication in collaborative environments!

Individuals very rarely make choices of VLEs. Usually complex highly politicised processes are involved and all stakeholders may or may not be engaged in exploration and decision-making processes . You might like to work out which of these Planets your current VLE is on. (Clue: VLEs are often on Contenteous and the academic staff are residing on Cafélattia whilst the technologists are keen on Nomadict…).