JISC

Effective practice in e-learning logo fades in with musical soundtrack and video title: ‘Fermanagh College: Any time, any place learning’.

Series of exterior shots of Fermanagh college, practitioners sitting around a table in a meeting and practitioners with learners using computers.

Includes background musical soundtrack.

Voiceover: Fermanagh college in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland has a large rural catchment area. Several lecturers wanted to develop course materials that could be accessed outside of class time. Their first experiments were not well received by students, and so they had to think again.

Series of shots of two practitioners, one filming the other, who is explaining the anatomy of a DIN socket, and screen shots of the footage being edited on a computer. Includes dialog between them:

Practitioner 1: OK Freddie, when you’re ready . . Action.

Frederick Steele (FS): The DIN socket is circular in shape and it has a little key on the top of it here, and we have 5 pins which are in a circular shape.

Close-up of Hector McLennan sitting in front of a classroom notice board, followed by shots of him filming another practitioner, Frederick Steele.

Hector McLennan (HMcL): We thought that we had found the missing ingredient – the teacher. So we have put the teacher into the PowerPoint^® presentation.

Close-up of Peter Stevenson sitting in front of a classroom notice board with his name and job title (‘Peter Stevenson, Lecturer Business Studies’) briefly displayed. Includes a screen shot of a PowerPoint presentation. Followed by a shot of Peter with a learner using a computer. Includes dialog between them:

Practitioner: Fixed cost is £500 per unit, so they’re £10 each and the variable cost . . . .

Returning to a close-up of Peter sitting in front of the classroom notice board and a series of close-up shots of him with the learner at the computer.

Peter Stevenson (PS): If you have a look at say, a VLE, when you put PowerPoint presentations on it, they’re just drab PowerPoint presentations. They’re non-talking silent movies. So what I realised was, that I needed . . . I needed information, I needed . . . I needed the teacher in there as well as the materials. The materials is one part of the equation, but we needed the teacher as well.

Before, when that technology wasn’t there, we weren’t able to do that, or if we did we were drawing graph after graph after graph of formula after formula after formula. Now the students can actually see what’s going on. So it takes a very difficult, very complex concept and topic, and it allows you to use new technology to deliver differently - or slightly differently, and to deliver in a better way, that the students can self-learn a hell of a lot themselves, and that, I think, is very very important.

Screen shot of a Business Studies PowerPoint presentation, including audio soundtrack:

The next thing we’ll draw in will be the variable cost line. So what you’ve got here is a line that says if you purchase 50 units, and the cost per unit is £5 . . .

Followed by a shot of a practitioner filming another practitioner, then returning to a close-up of Peter sitting in front of the classroom notice board.

PS: And the whole idea of a Microsoft^® Producer is that you can add an audio or a video to the PowerPoint presentation. And that’s exactly what I want!

Screen shot of some video content from a PowerPoint presentation, showing a Computing Studies practitioner with a partially assembled computer, including audio soundtrack:

Always make sure you’re carrying it properly, always be aware of your surroundings . . .

Followed by a close-up of Frederick Steele, sitting in front of a bank of computers with his name and job title (‘Frederick Steele, Lecturer Computing Studies’) briefly displayed, and the video clip superimposed in the corner of the screen.

FS: I could show this (presentation) to them in the lesson as a support . . . a piece of support material. I could actually have the props which I’ve used during the actual presentation itself, or they could revisit it later, on our intranet. If there’s a point, basically, because most of these tasks will actually cop an assignment. So they can go back, they can re-visit it, they can re-run it as many times as they wish.

Close-up of Hector McLennan sitting in front of a classroom notice board with his name and job title (‘Hector McLennan, Lecturer Computing Studies’) briefly displayed. Includes a shot of a landmark monument in Enniskillen with traffic driving by, at a close-up of a practitioner with a student using a computer.

HMcL: We have a very rural community in Fermanagh, and we draw from a wide catchment area, and in particular, to bring some students to the college two nights a week for part-time courses, when maybe one night, and one night via blended delivery . . we feel that that’s something we should be moving towards.

Close-up of Sean Henry sitting in front of a classroom notice board with his name and job title (‘Sean Henry, Vice Principal’) briefly displayed. Includes a screen shot of a PowerPoint presentation being used.

Sean Henry: It can be difficult to learn from a lecturer’s notes, which is what it could become if it becomes purely a very simple learning object. So really it’s a balance of that: efficiency in one hand, which is yes, it can allow us to do things with a bigger mass, a more critical mass, but on the other side, is really making sure that its effective, ie improving the performance and the learning experience.

Close-up of an adult learner, Seamus Gillespie, sitting in front of a classroom notice board with his name and status (‘Seamus Gillespie, Student Business Studies’) briefly displayed. Includes screen shots of a Business Studies PowerPoint presentation being used.

Seamus Gillespie: Sometimes, when you’re sitting in class, and you get something explained, and you nod your head up and down, that you understand. But 15 minutes outside the class, maybe that’s just because I’m at that age, but you don’t have a grasp of the concept anymore. Even though you know that there was something about that, and there was something about this. But if you logged into something that was relevant to the class that you were in, and I think that was the important thing about Peter’s website – that it was relevant to the actual course that you were doing. That you could go in and you were covering the stuff that they were covering in class.

Close-up of Hector McLennan sitting in front of a classroom notice board. Includes a screen shot of a PowerPoint presentation with video clip being used.

Includes background musical soundtrack.

HMcL: Your PowerPoint presentation is your story-board. Whenever you’re planning out your presentation, you’re actually doing your story-boarding. In your own head, you have the commentary, so you just get up and its filmed in real-time. I knew we were getting somewhere whenever a head of school actually asked me to come and talk to her staff at one of her school meetings about it. So we just felt this wave going through the college, oh listen, this is what you now can do with PowerPoint.

Shot of Peter Stevenson sitting in front of a classroom notice board. Followed by a shot of one practitioner filming another practitioner and the footage being captured.

Includes background musical soundtrack.

PS: I’m just a guy that has attached audio and video to PowerPoint and created some learning propositions and maybe some online units. I’m still . . . I’m still a Business Studies teacher. 

Close-up of Hector McLennan sitting in front of a classroom notice board. Includes two close-up shots of practitioners in a meeting discussing the use of PowerPoint. Fading out to a white screen.

Includes background musical soundtrack.

HMcL: This won’t answer all the questions, but it will help in some way. It will help them to bring their own materials, and their own notes into the online, e-learning market. And if they can blend that with materials then that are already available, like the NLN and Ferl materials, we should have a good teaching proposition.

Effective practice in e-learning logo fades in with musical soundtrack and video closing title: ‘Effective Practice with e-Learning, © JISC 2004’. Fading out to a white screen.