CENTRE FOR EDUCATIONAL GUIDANCE AND STUDENT SUPPORT
ALL TOGETHER! ON LINE
Helping Students develop ‘Integrated Learning Skills’ through
Computer conferencing activities - a Guide & Resource Pack
Vicki Goodwin Ormond Simpson
ALL TOGETHER! ON LINE
A guide to promoting ‘integrated learning' through computer conferencing
CONTENTS
A AIMS OF THIS BOOKLET
1. Computer conferencing for learning
2. Integrated or synergistic learning
3. Integrated learning activities in the tutorial
4. Integrated learning activities during the year
5. How to use this booklet.
B INTRODUCTION TO INTEGRATED LEARNING
1. Integrated learning
2. The Tutor’s role – Facilitating
3. Facilitating in Computer conferencing
Time – how much?
Time – when?
C DEVELOPING INTEGRATED LEARNING THROUGH COMPUTER CONFERENCING
1. Plenary conference vs sub-conference
2. Synchronous conferencing
D INTEGRATED ACTIVITIES DURING THE YEAR
1. Pre Study
2. Course start
3. Before the first assignment
4. After the first assignment
5. Midcourse
6. Revision and exams
7. Post exam
E DESIGNING YOUR OWN PROGRAMME
F DEALING WITH PROBLEMS IN GROUPS
A. AIMS OF THIS BOOKLET
1. Computer conferencing for learning
An increasing number of courses are now presented on the Internet or CD Rom and allow their students access to computer conferencing facilities such as FirstClass. With the exception of the OU’s course ‘T171 – You, your computer and the net’ there has not been much guidance to tutors on how they might exploit the opportunities offered by confencing.
Clearly left to themselves students will use conferencing in various ways: for example to overcome isolation by making contact with other students, and – to a lesser extent – to work on course material together. However a brief survey of course conferences suggests that much conferencing is relatively unfocused – ‘just chatting’ and does not have any substantial academic direction.
The aim of ‘All Together On line’ is to help tutors help their students make the most of computer conferencing by focusing on specific integrated learning issues.
2. ‘Integrated’ or ‘Synergistic’* learning
In order to thrive in the distance learning environment students need to develop skills in at least three areas:
· cognitive – numeracy, literacy, analytic and other ‘academic’ skills
· emotional – ability to deal with the various stresses of being a student
· organisational – being able to organise study in both space and time.
This booklet is designed to give tutors some easy-to-use ‘integrated learning’ computer conferencing activities to help students develop skills particularly in the emotional and organisational areas at appropriate stages in their course.
3. Integrated learning Activities in computer conferencing
The activities suggested here are all short and designed to be used in a conference to offer a change of activity, and improve the quality of cognitive teaching.
A typical example before the first assignment might be to run two conferences, one on the assignment specifically and the others on topics taken from Section 3 ‘Before the first assignment’ on p.?
*Synergy – the combined action of two or more activities which have a greater total effect than the sum of their individual effects.
4. Integrated learning Activities during the year
The activities reflect student concerns as they arise during the year.
Stage / Possible student concerns / ActivityPre-study period
p.12 / Returning to study, finding the time, support from family - possible conflicts / Motives
Feelings
Hopes & fears
Time management/slots
Course Start
p.17 / Study skills, contact with other students / Tackling course materials
Skimming & summarising
Planning & organising
Experience
Self-help group
Notetaking
Before First assignment
p.21 / Assessment anxiety approaching the assignment / Tackling the assignment
What do they want?
What do grades mean?
Stress management
Developing self confidence
After First assignment
p.24 / Learning from assessment - dealing with criticism / Using feedback
Exchanging TMA comments
The Tutor’s shoes
Assertiveness
Mid-course
p.29 / Going on or dropping out - motivational failure / How do you feel so far?
Stress Management
Future Planning
Soapboxing
Revision and the exams
p.33 / Structuring revision - early exam stress / Revision
Be your own teacher
Tackling the exam – techniques
Tackling the exam – simulation
Exam traps
Exam stress
‘On the day’ strategies
Result
p.37 / Failure or poor result / Tackling a poor result
5. How to use this booklet
If you’d like a brief introduction to the ideas about integrated learning – read Section B, p.6.
If you’d like a short survey of techniques on computer conferencing – read Section C, p.10.
If you’d just like a suggestion for an appropriate activity to use in your conference right now then go straight to Section D, p.11 and look at the activities recommended for the stage of the year. Just choose one of the activities for the particular stage your course has reached.
B. INTRODUCTION
1. Integrated or 'Synergistic' Learning
Learning is a complex business: a student needs many skills and qualities to be an effective learner. This is particularly true of students in Open or Distant Learning schemes who may suffer considerable isolation in their studies but it's also true of any students anywhere.
It's not difficult to put together a list of the skills and qualities needed: over many years we have asked many students and teachers what they think this list should contain. The lists are long but can usually be reduced to a dozen or so main headings:
Intellectual ability / ConfidenceStudy skills / Complaining when necessary
Persistent / Can find time
Highly determined / Can deal with work pressures
Sense of humour / Can take family pressure
Not panicked by exams / Able to handle paperwork
Can ask for help when needed / Can organise study space
It's possible to group these skills together - for example a sense of humour and not panicking in exams seem to us to be aspects of successful stress management, that asking for appropriate help and complaining when necessary are related through assertiveness and that finding the time and dealing with family and job pressures are all aspects of time management.
So our list then looks like this (we've changed the vocabulary a little):
Intellectual ability / Self esteemStudy skills / Time management
Motivation / Space management
Stress management / Organisational skills
Assertiveness / Persistence
- and these can be grouped into three main areas:
Intellectual ability Time management
Study skills Space management
COGNITIVE SKILLS Organisational skills
ORGANISATIONAL
SKILLS
Motivation
Stress management
Assertiveness
Self-esteem
EMOTIONAL SKILLS
Fig. 1 Skills needed by students in Open and Distance Learning
This has led one of us [Simpson] to promulgate what is light-heartedly called the 'Phrenological Theory of Open and Distance Learning’
Cognitive skills Organisational skills Affective skills
Fig 2 The ‘Phrenological Theory of Open and Distance learning
This is not a serious theory of course, but perhaps this picture is a useful reminder that to survive the Open and Distance Learning Experience students must be more than intellectually capable - they must be able to organise themselves and they must be able to deal with the emotions raised by that experience. A student who can do all three is 'learning synergistically'.
2. The Tutor’s Role - 'Facilitating'
How far can a tutor help students develop organisational and emotional skills and qualities? We believe that tutors can be more effective than they sometimes allow themselves to be and that the main barrier preventing tutors being more helpful is self-confidence in the use of the appropriate skills.
It might be helpful to see these skills as a separate but overlapping role - the 'facilitator'.
We use this slightly uncomfortable term to indicate that you cannot teach the organisational and emotional sides of learning: what you can do is facilitate a student's progress towards these skills and qualities and towards becoming an integrated learner.
Thus the distinction between Tutoring and Facilitating is that Tutoring deals mainly with cognitive issues; facilitating deals mainly with organisational and emotional issues.
It's at once obvious that there's very substantial overlap - developing appropriate learning skills for example may be an academic and cognitive issue such as learning essay writing through instruction and feedback. Or it may be an emotional issue - overcoming anxieties or lack of self-esteem arising from previous study experiences at school or elsewhere.
So if you, as a Tutor-facilitator, are helping someone develop learning skills you may be Tutoring, Facilitating, or both simultaneously, not even needing to be aware of which you are actually doing at any moment.
3. Facilitating in Computer conferencing
Much facilitating is done on a one-to-one basis either face-to-face, by telephone or in writing by letter and e-mail. However, there are some topics which can be very usefully dealt within computer conferences.
'Facilitating' is particularly helpful where students can share their feeling, experience and knowledge towards solving common problems. Topics such as time organisation and exam anxiety may be good examples and study skills development is a particularly important area where Group Facilitating Activities have a role to play.
Working together in groups can also help develop mutual student support and that group 'esprit de corps' that can make teaching adults so satisfying. Some work in groups can provide a change of pace and activity that will help to reinvigorate the teaching and refresh concentration. Under the influence of NVQ’s an increasing number of courses encompass group working. Gaining awareness that your study anxieties are echoed by other students in the group can be very reassuring. (And of course exploring concerns in groups is very economical….)
4. Tutor facilitating time - how much?
So how much time should you allow for facilitating activities to address the organisational and affective aspects of learning? It's important to deal immediately with the idea that there's no time to address these issues. Our experience (and much research) suggests that more student drop-out is caused by emotional and organisational problems than by the intellectual demands of a course. So we ignore such issues at our peril.
But equally we're not suggesting a complete switch to such activities. We see the activities as short and 'scattered' in and around other course work in such a way as to break up slabs of work, to introduce changes in activity and refresh the cognitive processes.
C. DEVELOPING INTEGRATED LEARNING THROUGH COMPUTER CONFERENCING
In what follows we’ll assume you have an initial computer conferencing group of up to 20 students. Your group may well be fewer or may be less active for whatever reason. You’ll need to decide what size groups will be best for your purposes.
1. Plenary conference vs sub-conference
Your plenary conference will comprise all your students: you can set up sub-conferences of smaller size that report back to your main conference in some way. Your conferencing structure then might be:
Plenary conference > < sub conferences on different topics
Plenary conference > < sub conferences with different students
Plenary conference on its own.
The size of your subconferences is important. Obviously the minimum size is two pople but this may well be too small – sub-conferences seem to need at least 4 to 5 people to work well.
Whatever structure you choose the method is the same:
(i) set the students a task of some kind. If you use a sub-conference structure you will need to assign the students to a sub-conference and may need to ask someone to act as ‘sub-moderator’ for the conference;
(ii) allow sufficient time for 2 – 3 contributions from each student – this may take a week or so. Some students many not contribute – see Section F Dealing with problems in conferences;
(iii) if you’re using sub-conferences you can ask the sub-moderator to report back to the plenary conference or allow individual students to do so.
To make this work well the tutor should be able to
· choose suitable topics and ensure that students have a clear idea of what they're trying to do;
· be sensitive to the level of activity so that they know when to move on to the next level of discussion
· be able to use the plenary conference to bring out general lessons, focus discussion on relevant topics, give appropriate information and advice, explore further - and know when to stop!
2. Synchronous conferencing
It may be worth experimenting with synchronous conferencing. Find a time when most of your students can be on-line simultaneously and set up a ‘chat session’. Such sessions have an immediacy that can suit certain topics. See for example Activity 4 in Section 1 Pre Study or Course Start period.
D. INTEGRATED LEARNING ACTIVITIES DURING THE YEAR
There are a number of points during the student's year at which decisions are needed, new challenges faced, or fresh experiences assimilated.
The following section makes some suggestions for activities at these points. Do feel free to select whichever feel appropriate to you and adapt them in any way you like. Do experiment to find the activities that suit you and your students best. Not surprisingly the activities are skewed towards the first half of the year as that is where the students are likely to most appreciate help of this kind.
1. Prestudy Period or Course start – p.12
2. Course start – p.17
3. Before the first assignment – p.21
4. After the first assignment – p.24
5. Midcourse – p.29
6. Revision and the exams – p.33
7. Post exam - p.37
1. PRE-STUDY PERIOD OR COURSE START
Student concerns
Some new students may be feeling a little shy and some a little anxious about what they have taken on - will they have the time, will it be too difficult, are the other students cleverer than them and so on. Some students will have specific questions to ask, [some of which may be personal] and, of course, all will be interested in the course and how to prepare for it.
Aims of activity
The activity aims to reassure the students by encouraging them to conference together about the issues on their minds and to discover that, by and large, they mostly feel the same. It give them a chance to ask questions individually and in the group and to introduce them to the idea that working with fellow students is an important part of learning. It should help them relax and start developing the mutual support that's so helpful to the group's progress as well as to begin some introductory Time Management. From the tutor’s point of view it helps overcome the problem of multiple starts to the conference as people join late.