Nick Jackson

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E-tutoring
A reflective discussion on the design,
facilitation and evaluation of a small, online
teaching experience

DMZ3120
Nick Jackson

U0870621

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Design

Context
This small online teaching experience was carried out in my current place of
employment: an 11-18, high-achieving, non-selective comprehensive school with
specialist status in Maths and Computing. The students involved were from Key
Stage 3, Year 7 and given that this was implemented at the start of the school year,
they had joined the school within the last two months. The experience was used as
part of coverage of the National Curriculum syllabus for ICT on the topic of e-safety.

Choice of technology
Students in ICT at the school learn through blended methods with traditional lessons
supported by resources available on the school’s VLE both in and out of lessons.
Blended learning through use of VLEs is becoming increasingly common in
secondary schools following the Government’s Harnessing Technology Strategy
(DFES 2005) insisting all secondary schools integrate learning and management
systems into a complete learning platform by 2010 and money granted to local
authorities as part of Standard Funds Grant 121a.

The online teaching experience was incorporated as part of the school’s VLE Year 7
ICT course in the form of a discussion forum. This facility, available as part of the
Moodle VLE in use, was provided for students to contribute to a discussion on e-
safety, expressly concerning social networking and details users can post on such
sites. Although set as homework, the discussion forum was introduced in lesson and
students were briefed on how to use the technology as well as what was expected of
them to complete the work set.

Justification
The model followed by the ICT department for integrating students into ICT in the
school could be said to closely follow the e-learning ladder outlined by Moule (2005).
The approach had a high instructivist slant in the early stages, a few weeks prior to
the teaching experience being described here. There was a large amount of teacher
directives given out and the focus was three-fold: ensuring students could access

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and use the technology that housed the subject content- the school network and the
VLE (both with individual passwords); familiarising students with the structure of the
content on the VLE and of ICT lessons in general; commencement of the Key Stage
3 ICT syllabus. Students had moved away from those early stages prior to the
introduction of the online experience though, and for the most part all were quite well
practised at accessing and completing tasks in and out of the lesson through the
VLE.

Undoubtedly, the way of working in the department also had close links to elements
of Salmon’s five stage model most notably in the way students were, in the first
instance, acclimatised to teaching of ICT in the school and the scaffolding of
changes from an instructivist to a constructivist approach (Salmon, 2003) that was
planned into the course development. Yet, my view is that Moule’s e-learning ladder
more closely defines the learning model that was being shaped as there was less
reliance on an e-learning community being present or socialisation between learners
and above all else Salmon’s model “assumes and exclusive online environment”
(Moule 2005, p39) rather than the blended course being taught here.

Facilitation

Supporting learners
At the launch of this online teaching experience, there was little given in terms of
instruction and expectancies in using the discussion forum created. Students were
shown how to access and post on the forum, how to access messages and reply to
them. To initiate appropriate discussion, a mock social networking page was created,
screenshot and posted as an attachment with requests for feedback on students
opinions on its content (see appendix 1).

The reasoning behind keeping such early direction brief, centred on support for the
theory that such technologies are “mainstream” (Weller, Pegler, Mason 2004, p61)
i.e. the students involved would be rather familiar with the way these asynchronous
communication tools worked. This approach was amalgamated with the value of

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“’seeding’ the discussion with initial input” (Thomas 2002, p354) through initiating the
discussion with an initial post that had content to view and a question posed.

Encouragement and motivation

Despite the potential benefits of using discussion forums in education such as
flexibility and the notion that public display of thoughts leads to more careful
consideration of comments made (Williams 2002, p266), the tutor has a significant
role to play as regards encouraging debate and/or maintaining the motivation of
students to be involved in the discussion. In this online teaching experience,
subsequent to launching the forum, time in lessons was given over to the issue of
replying to posts as it was found that the majority of students posted new threads in
answer to the initial post rather than reply to the original. However, technical issues
were found to be preventing students replying. A number of students had attempted
to answer the initial question posed but could not even though they could create new
threads. A further complication to the technical issues, albeit more positive, was the
fact that students could reply to each other posts. Yet, even after the matter of not
being able to reply to the initial thread was solved relatively quickly and highlighted to
students in lesson, many continued to post new threads. All in all, very few replies to
posts were observed (see appendix 2).

Given all these barriers to student participating in the online discussion as they may
have wished, there was surprisingly little in the way of motivation needed to
encourage participation. Carswell et al (2000, p44) suggested that if technical issues
are resolved quickly then they do not deter student participation. From the two
groups taught here, as every student posted at least once to the forum one could
argue that a similar conclusion could be made. Yet, more significant is the initial
belief in the familiarity users would have with how such technology works (Weller et
al, 2004). Given how students used the forum and the lack of continuing existing
threads through use of the reply function, with a tendency towards creating new
threads on the same topic, some of the findings of Creanor (2002 p64) seem to be
very relevant. Creanor’s case study provided tutor reflections where the issue of not
replying but instead creating new threads was reported. This seems almost identical
to the findings of this study.

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Evaluation

As outlined under Justification in the Design section, Moule’s learning ladder (Moule
2005) provided a structure for the implementation of this online teaching experience.
Yet, despite being able to quite easily align the practices used here to the rungs of
that learning ladder, the ‘higher’ rungs which encompass constructivist learning
approaches (Moule 2005, p42) have not fully been reached. Perhaps this is due to
the issue of allowing the development of social interaction as described by Vygotsky
(1978) and or due to a need for more time and practice by students and teachers
alike in using the tools (Moule 2005).

Becta reported in 2008:

Despite most learners being confident or even prolific users of Web 2.0 sites,
use is not generally sophisticated
(Crook and Harrison 2008, p46)

Given that this online teaching experience centred on the use of a discussion forum,
a popular Web 2.0 tool, and student use of this facility being arguably somewhat
crude with the concept of using threads largely ignored, this view seems justifiable.
One may even go so far as to say that there are doubts cast over the views of Weller
et al (2004) regarding student familiarity with these online tools. Further, considering
the opinions of Boulos et al (2006), regarding students needing support with
communicating appropriately in online environments such as the discussion forum
used for this study, in hindsight it appears that students would have benefited in this
study from greater direction in how to use the forum at its launch and the nature of
threaded discussions.

However, the factor of the participants’ age, and the early technical issues
encountered with the VLE in use, cannot be ignored. These explicit barriers to
constructing threads in the nature of scaffolding typical forum debates are probably
as significant as any of those discussed in this discussion. A more thorough,
carefully managed and above all, lengthier study would be needed to completely
research the issues raised here.

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References

Boulus MN, Maramba I, Wheeler S (2006), Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new
generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and
education, Journal of BMC Medical Education [Online] Available at:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/6/41 [Accessed 21st November 2009]

Carswell L, Thomas P, Petre M, Price B, Richards M (2000), Distance Education via

the Internet: the student experience, British Journal of Educational Techology,
Vol.31 No.1 [Online] Available at:
http://spot.pcc.edu/~rsuarez/rbs/school/EPFA_511/articles/from
%20Dawn/3157735.pdf [Accessed 21st November 2009]

Creanor L (2002), A Tale of Two Courses: a comparative study of tutoring online,

Journal of Open Learning, Vol. 17, No1, 2002

Crook C and Harrison C (2008), Web 2.0 Technologies for Learning at Key Stages 3
and 4: Summary Report, BECTA [Online] Available at:
http://partners.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=rh&catcode=_re_rp_02&rid=15884
[Accessed 21st November 2009]

Department for Educational and Skills (2005), Harnessing Technology -

Transforming Learning and Children’s Services) [Online] Available at:
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/publications/e-strategy/docs/e-strategysummary.pdf
[Accessed 19th November 2009]

Moule P (2007), Challenging the five-stage model for e-learning: a new approach,
ALT-J 15(1), pp37-50

Salmon G (2003), all things in moderation - The 5 stage model [Online] Available at:
http://www.atimod.com/e-moderating/5stage.shtml [Accessed 19 th November 2009]

Thomas MJW (2002), Learning with incoherent structures: the space of online
discussion forums, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 2002, [Online]
Available at:
http://www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/resources/mjwt/papers/THOMASIncoherentStruc
tures.pdf [Accessed 21st November 2009]

Vygotsky L (1978) Mind in Society Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press

Weller M, Pegler C, Mason R (2004), Use of innovative technologies on an e-

learning course, Journal of The Internet and Higher Education, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1st
Quarter 2005, pp 61-71

Williams C (2002), Learning On-line: a review of recent literature in a rapidly

expanding field, Journal of Further and Higher Education, Vol, 26, No. 3, pp263-
272

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Appendix

appendix 1

appendix 2