b) An understanding of my target learner

“It’s not like a factory anymore. One-size-fits-all schools don’t work. … Schools are being built with a variety of spaces that meet the needs of individual learners.”

J. Lackney

In the University context, my direct target learners are lecturers and professors; My indirect target learner are students, mostly PhD researchers. When I first started working at the University I had a very narrow attitude regarding the way I started approaching my role as a Learning Technologies Development Officer. I can hardly believe how short sighted I was!!! Having come from the teaching background and being a Webhead used to action, I soon forgot about my former workplace where teachers were not at all keen on using ICT as part of their practice… Having been able to interact with enthusiastic people from all over the world, I assumed that would be the kind of people I would be meeting at the new job. I thought the University staff would be really ahead of school staff in terms of using technology. I almost took for granted students would be appreciative of such cutting edge approaches. In a way, I think that when I arrived I was ready to ‘preach to’  a crowd that, as I came to realise, was not looking forward to being converted! In a way I think I can say I assumed too much, and was not ready to see the academic world through anyone’s world but mine. However, it didn’t take me long to realise I had to change the approach and look at my target audience with a more understanding eye. This has been quite a learning curve for me, but equally a challenge I have embraced with great pleasure. From that point on I learned not to take anything for granted or assume anything. Hence, during these 3 year journey, the greatest lesson I have been able to extract from all the experiences I have made is that what is really important is to be able to listen to people, and to find ways to let them know without really tell them that they can trust you and that it is OK not to know everything. They might not master the technology, but they sure master the content and in their particular way are able to establish a learning atmosphere with their students. What we then need to work together at is on how to transfer and augment that learning atmosphere to an online setting, while contributing to a friendly learning environment where students are compelled to take part in. Although the technology might scare some, my main message to the staff I work with focuses on the conversational tone and the learning dialectic we need to work on to achieve real and meaningful learning.
The idea is to create a more relaxed environment and also to focus on three main issues which have little to do with technology. Before I start looking at the technological possibilities we might use as part of their modules, we work on trying to understand the module spec. and also answer the following questions:

  1. Who the students are (are they mature students, full-time/part-time students, etc)
  2. What do we want the students to achieve (what are the goals, what should they learn)
  3. How do we want them to achieve those goals (is it through open collaboration, group work, peer support, access to a wider audience, etc)

Once we establish this, then we start looking at the web possibilities: which tools could be used, and especially which examples I have in store to show them. Examples of innovative practices  usually  motivates some. But more than motivating, what we really need is to lead to the change of the teaching and learning culture.

What is also amazing is that once we get to this phase, and especially after getting acquainted with some examples of someone else’s practices, they end up coming with some very interesting ideas of their own. That is what happened, for instance, in one of my very first projects in this new job. We were supposed to develop an online module on Research Methods. This module was being offered in a face to face format and each year it counted with less and less students. When we started looking at it, we realised the module was structured in a very dry lecture style, in which student participation was almost inexistent, except for the essay they had to hand in at the end of the course! [and that was most likely seen as assessment, not as participating as part of one’s learning process]. From the very beginning, it was obvious we needed to get the students on board and make them feel they were part of that course. They needed an active role. Thus, we started re-thinking the course. Still we needed a strong mentoring and guiding component as this course was also targeting at students who were starting doing research for the first time. It would also work as a motivation driver. In the end we decided to host weekly online talks with two experienced researchers, and invite students to collaboratively engage in a wiki without losing the focus of their own research. The structure was quite minimalist, but what we were aiming at was effective engagement by all parties involved, and not really at the use of a panoply of web tools, which could overwhelm even the more enthusiastic.
The talks were hosted in a virtual conference room and they always started in a very traditional way with the two speakers taking the floor with their own remarks, ideas and personal stories about their own research experiences. Students were regularly asked to pitch in with their thoughts and questions. As they grew more accustomed of this way of “learning through conversation”, the online talks became more interesting. After each session a new challenge was posed to each one of the students and it usually consisted of doing a small task related to the topic presented. The task should be submitted to the wiki and students should also help one another by leaving feedback (comments) on other students’ work (pages). As this course englobed students from different areas of the social sciences, the topics of research were different, but still people were able to provide constructive support to one another. This was a different type of collaboration as each student had his/her own specific goals; yet they would take time to understand what the others were doing and also provide support. Nevertheless, their feedback didn’t come spontaneously. Only after a brief exchange of emails with the students about their freedom to comment and provide constructive feedback to their peers’ work, and make the wiki their space without having to maintain a formal tone, did they start to be more active in one another’s pages.
The other interesting fact was that each challenge contributed to the final essay (the final assessment). Most students reported they found it useful to have done the weekly tasks as it made it easier to finish the final one.
Of course not everything in this experience was well succeeded. But we also learn with our mistakes.
Although the online conversations between 2 speakers went extremely well, the same didn’t happen in the few sessions in which we only had the module leader. Being used to lecturing, he sometimes forgot to invite people to convert his monologue into a dialogue. However, this was something we analysed after each session and something he got better at. Old habits are not easy to change and we need to take special attention of those.
Technology is also not easy, and although I was present at all online synchronous sessions  and available to provide support throughout the course, some students were put off by the fact that they had to deal with the technology when the rest of their degree was totally face to face. However, those who allowed themselves to engage in this experience provided extremely positive feedback at the end of the course. This experience was an eye-opener to know my target-audience better. I realised that:

  • Staff needs a lot of hand-holding and mentoring;
  • my main job is to listen to them, to make them know that I am there to help them achieve their goals (not mine);
  • Students are still not that techy-savvy when it comes to use technology in academic settings. They might use MSN, email and Facebook, but when they are not used to use it as part of their (more formalized) learning they also need a helping hand.

In this sense, I have been offering a series of blended workshops on how to use learning technologies to aid them in their research and academic work. Staff has also been offered mentoring sessions which occur in a blended format.
Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go. There is still a lot to do to get students and staff on board. I am particularly fond of working with people in context and it is always easier to get people on board in a more meaningful way when they have a specific goal to achieve. As part of a new project I hope to start this year, I would like to see the University include, as part of their strategy, an online induction module for students. It would also be useful if incentives were created for staff to take part in more mentoring sessions where they would learn about TEL issues, and especially start actively giving their practice a more 21st century touch. For that to happen, we also need to change the curricula, strategies and reinforce the type of support the university can provide.

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