Teachers and learners look for 'attractive' resources
DEL regional stories
Developing high quality interactive content for sharing and re-use
| L2O project |
| University of Southampton, with partner Universities of Reading, Portsmouth and Surrey |
| Contact |
Julie Watson |
| Software used |
Software tools developed in-house |
Two projects with a similar theme - the sharing and re-use of e-learning resources - have produced some interesting findings.
The starting point for both projects was their observation that the quality, attractiveness and easy accessibility of resources is of fundamental importance - otherwise neither teachers nor students actually bother to use them.
To achieve this, they came up with quite different solutions.
The University of Southampton (L2O) focused on how to support teachers in the adaptation and development of resources to enable a good end result. They found that developing and customising templates and style
| REHASH project |
| St George's, University of London; Guy's, King's and St Thomas' School of Medicine; Kingston University; Croydon College |
| Contact |
Terry Poulton and Emily Conradi |
guides, combined with group workshops, gave teachers the confidence and support they needed to 'have a go'.
The REHASH project (St George's, University of London) wanted to make existing medical and healthcare e-learning resources available to FE and access courses, to help students making the move from FE to HE. They looked at the principles and standards that can assist the creation of good quality resources appropriate to a particular audience.
L2O project
Critical success factor is...the need for materials to be 'attractive' to the end-user Julie Watson, from the L2O project, says the reason for developing templates wasn't simply about styling. They had identified some key elements that seemed to make a difference to whether e-learning resources worked effectively and were used - that content needed to be 'attractive' to both teachers and learners, it needed to be activity-based, incorporate feedback, to be context-rich and be easy to re-use or re-purpose by others.
They also found that if teachers wanted to create that kind and quality of resource they needed help to do it.
In their approach to developing effective online learning resources they took into account the Conversational Framework developed by Diana Laurillard (Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University), which was designed to encourage deeper level learning, and build the tutor/student relationship.
This led the team to develop Dreamweaver/Flash templates, which integrated with forms, and enabled activities that built on each other. The aim was 'enforce reflection, interaction and reflection and discussion with self through enhanced levels of feedback', says Julie.
To support this quite advanced form of content development, they also provided training and feedback to those who wanted to contribute materials. They have now developed the system into a fully fledged content development tool, which aims to support the production of high quality Re-usable Learning Objects (RLOs), and the community using the resources has grown to include over 100 language practitioners.
You can sample some of L2O's learning activities which cover areas such as languages, study skills and introducing international students to practical aspects of living in the UK.
REHASH project
The partners in this project already had large collections of image-based, interactive resources, which had been extremely well-received by staff and students at the HE level. The team felt that if they could re-purpose them appropriately, they would make a valuable resource for FE learners. As Terry Poulton said, their use could 'help to reduce uncertainty and vulnerability among a large body of non-traditional learners [and] lead to an improvement in levels of achievement and retention'.
'there is definitely a place for good quality dynamic, subject-based and validated content'
But to ensure that the new resources would 'continue a consistent pattern through different levels of courses', they felt that it was important to develop a framework of principles and standards for developers to follow.
They introduced processes that ranged from mapping objectives and identifying suitable resources to assessing the validity, attractiveness and overall quality of the materials once they had been developed.
If you would like to see some of the learning resources that have been re-purposed, it is possible to set up a guest account at the REHASH website
They also knew that the end materials needed to be easily accessible to teachers and learners, and made recommendations around the usability and overall quality of the interface, consistency of presentation and conformance to technical standards.
However, they found that existing repositories were not always user-friendly, and were putting off potential users. So, similar to the L2O project, they developed a customised website to act as a repository.
The team now feels it is important to build on the conclusions that came from the REHASH project, and are now looking at developing additional video-based resources, using the principles and processes they have established.
'developing banks of popular and simple topics may have outlived its usefulness'
Terry Poulton, from the project, says that the ready availability of simple, image and text-based resources via the web means that 'simply developing banks of popular and simple topics may have outlived its usefulness'. They feel that the valuable areas they can concentrate on is the high quality, top-end resource, or those which are significantly interactive.
What both projects concluded was that there is definitely a place for good quality dynamic, subject-based and validated content - and they would like to feel that others could build on the methodologies and tools developed in these projects to help develop and grow this kind of repository.
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