Teaching with e-learning in the Lifelong Learning Sector

Chris Hill

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780857252548
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Adult Education

This new edition (previously entitled "Teaching Using Information and Learning Technology in Further Education") is an up to date resource for trainee and qualified teachers within the Lifelong Learning Sector. Focusing on information and learning technology as a toolkit for resourceful teachers, it includes reflective activities, teaching strategies and teaching tips throughout, along with ideas for applying these to the reader?s own context. In this new edition, all material has been fully updated to reflect the latest changes in technology and its applications, and each chapter in the book is referenced to the new LLUK Standards.

1

Introduction

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This chapter will help you to:

• preview the content and format of this book;
• use the book productively;
• identify and explain key ideas behind the book.

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Learning has always been part of the human experience and where there is learning, more often than not there is teaching. Some of our ideas about teaching go back a long way, yet are still valid. In Greece in the fifth century BC, Socrates was teaching very effectively by the extensive use of questions and telling his learners very little at all. Yet our understanding of teaching and learning is still imperfect and the results unpredictable. What works well with one group of learners may not work with another group. Indeed, a teaching strategy that works well with a group one day may not work at all with the same learners the next day. Every learning occasion is unique.

All this means that anyone engaged in the art of teaching needs all the help they can possibly have. The information technology explosion since the second half of the twentieth century has provided many more tools to help the learning process. This book endeavours to enable teachers of adults to explore how they can exploit the potential of the new tools.

However, this is not a book about information technology. It is a book about teaching and learning. Information technology is presented not as an end in itself, but as a tool in the toolkit that resourceful teachers can draw on. As a reader of this book, whether or not you are a practising teacher or trainer, you are already an expert at learning. Just look at some of the things that you have learned – to communicate, to build relationships, to find your way around. You may be more or less aware of that learning process. This book is about adding the potential of information technology to what you know and can do already. The use of information technology for the purpose of teaching and learning is called information and learning technology (ILT) and E-learning is the key element of ILT.

Who is this book for?

This book is written for those working in, or intending to work in, the Learning and Skills sector. In England and Wales, further education was initially defined in the 1944 Education Act. In the 1988 Education Act it was defined as:

• (a) full and part time education and training for persons over compulsory school age (including vocational, social, physical and recreational training); and
• (b) organised leisure-time occupation provided in connection with the provision of such education.

All this really tells you is that further education is to do with adults learning. Adults undertake organised learning in many different settings and the ideas in this book are relevant to them all, although I will focus on the formal Learning and Skills sector. This sector is named after the organisation responsible for funding it in England – the Learning and Skills Council. It includes not only the 400 or so FE and Sixth Form colleges, but also specialist colleges, adult and community learning (ACL), work-based learning (WBL) and offender learning. Although the names and funding set-ups may be different, there are equivalents in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Confusingly, I have noticed that politicians are increasingly using the term ‘further education’ to cover the whole Learning and Skills sector and the 2006 White Paper, Further Education Reform: Raising Skills, Improving Life Chances, refers to ‘colleges and training providers’.

This broad coverage is why I refer to learners more often than students. A nurse teaching colleagues in order to update skills has learners, not students. It is also why I refer to learning providers rather than colleges, Adult Education Centres, Training Centres and so on. I know that ‘learning provider’ is not a term that comes up in everyday conversation, but it does cover everyone. And whilst we are setting out some basics, I usually refer to teachers or tutors, but include in the term trainers, lecturers, facilitators, mentors, instructors and any other title you care to think of.

The book is written both for existing teachers seeking to broaden their range of teaching strategies and for teachers in training who want to develop understanding and skills as the basis of a successful and effective career. ILT is so new that all of us are learning about it.

Because the main focus of the book is learning and not technology, there is no need to be too frustrated by the fact that you do not have access to every bit of kit mentioned. However, there is no harm in dreaming what you could do with powerful, portable multimedia computers with all the peripherals you can imagine – scanner, colour laser printer, digital camcorder, digital camera, plotter, internet-enabled mobile phone with built-in camera, video-conference suite, etc. In reality, most of us have a limited range of facilities although over time you would expect better technology to become more accessible. You should find out what is available and use it effectively. You are limited more by your imagination than the lack of kit.

I want to tell you a little about myself in order to set what I write in context. I am manager of the East Midlands Regional Support Centre (RSC), based at Loughborough College. This is one of thirteen RSCs funded mainly by the LSC and the funding councils of Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. It’s the job of each RSC to support and stimulate innovation in learning in its region. Note that it says innovation in learning, not innovation in e-learning. That is significant and a theme that recurs throughout this book. Find out where your local RSC is and make contact. Ask to join its mailing lists.

Before that, I worked as a teacher in a medium-sized Further Education college in the English West Country with a specific responsibility for developing the use of ILT. I have been involved with the educational use of IT since the late 1970s when my colleague chose to spend several days typing all the questions from our stock of past A level economics exam papers into a word processor which then lost them. I set up geography fieldwork exercises on Commodore PET machines with 8k of memory (less than half the size of an empty Word document) and experienced the excitement of a room of twelve BBC computers all linked together. At each stage we used the computer equipment as a more or less effective tool to enable learners to learn. By the time I left, in 2003, the college had an excellent computer network and a good range of IT kit. Most significantly, the emphasis had noticeably shifted from the technology to learning, but there was still a long way to go.

Unfamiliar language, initialisms and acronyms

In any new area of study you have to learn a new language. Until you are familiar with it, the new language can make you feel excluded, although it does give greater precision once you develop your understanding. I have tried to avoid too many assumptions with regard to the terms I use, but some are bound to have crept through. If that happens, you should seek to clarify the meaning, either by asking colleagues or by using reference sources such as Whatis or Webopedia on the internet, and then learn to use them appropriately. To help with acronyms and initialisms (my wife, who teaches English language, tells me that there is difference), I have provided a list of the most common at the end of the book.

Features of the book and how to use them

Chapter 3 sets out some principles of learning and I have applied them while writing this book.

• It is a principle of learning that people learn best when they do things.
• Many models of learning emphasise the importance of reflecting on and applying ideas as part of the learning process.

Throughout the book there are reflective activities for you to complete. These often ask you to look at the ideas in the sections you have just read or to review your previous experience. They then ask you to apply them to your own context. You may choose to do these or not, but be aware that reading on its own is not an effective way of learning. Your brain needs to do things with new information, not simply acquire it. A parallel type of practice is asking students in a lecture to talk to their neighbours for two or three minutes about what they have just heard. The process is repeated three or four times during a one-hour lecture. This similarly increases retention and understanding.

You may find it helpful to keep a diary as you work through sections of the book. Keeping a diary is a good way of reflecting and planning. Some of the activities, especially at the end of chapters, suggest that you make some notes in your diary. Make your diary entries analytical rather than descriptive. Your diary would be particularly valuable if you were to maintain it when you put ideas into practice in your teaching.

You could keep your diary electronically in the form of a blog, a kind of electronic notepad for jotting down thoughts and ideas. If you wish, you can publish it on the internet for others to see and learn from your experiences and add comments. See Chapter 6 for some more detail on blogs.

• Throughout the chapters I include teaching tips – more or less straightforward things for you to use in your teaching. You are investing some of your valuable time in reading this book. For that to be worthwhile, there ought to be some changes from which your learners benefit.
• Since one in three adults has a visual preference for information handling, I have included visual maps at the end of each chapter. I use a piece of software called MindManager to produce these maps. The map at the end of this chapter shows the main contents of the book.

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PRACTICAL TASK

Consider which is more helpful as an overview of what is in this book – the visual map at the end of this chapter or the table of contents at the start. Decide how you could use visual maps in your own teaching.

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• The Lifelong Learning UK (LLUK) Standards are a map of the areas of teaching within which all Learning and Skills teachers work and are the basis for the compulsory Qualified Teacher Status Learning and Skills qualifications from September 2007. They refer on seven occasions to the use of new technology, but it is implicit throughout. For more detail, see Chapter 6.
• At the start of each chapter after this one is a reference to the LLUK Standards referencing new technology which are relevant to that chapter’s content. They are also summarised in Table 1.1. Actually, if you look hard enough, you can probably find most of the Standards in most of the chapters – as you reflect on what you read in this book, see if you can find an e-learning way of carrying out each item of professional practice. You can download your own copy of the Standards from the LLUK website.
• At the end of each chapter you will find lists of further reading and websites to refer to if you want to follow up ideas rai...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Why e-learning? Why now?
• 3 Effective learning
• 4 The role of e-learning
• 5 The tools and how to use them
• 6 Current priorities
• 7 The skills you need
• 8 e-learning resources
• 9 Introducing e-learning
• Glossary of acronyms
• Index