Integrating Digital Resources into Online Learning
Environments to Support the Learner
Margaret Markland1 and Bob
Kemp2
1 Manchester Metropolitan University and
2Lancaster University
m.markland@mmu.ac.uk,
r.u.kemp@lancaster.ac.uk
This paper
describes an investigation into the ways in which tutors and students identify
and obtain online resources and examines some new tools and services which are
being developed to enable tutors to integrate the information resources which
support their teaching into online learning environments in more efficient ways
than are currently possible. Such
resources might be found for example, in digital libraries, on university
library websites, in electronic journals or books, in reading lists, on the
Internet, in existing VLEs, or indeed in any kind of paper-based resource. They could be text, images, speech or
music. Current needs and
difficulties are explored from the tutor and student perspectives, and what the
tools are aiming to provide to help with these issues is described. The paper concludes by suggesting why
the need for such tools will be come more urgent as the Government’s initiatives
to push teaching and learning out into work and community contexts gathers
pace.
learning
resources, learning support, online information resources, e-learning, user
behaviour, user needs
As part of
its evaluation of the JISC Information Environment (IE), the EDNER project
conducted a series of studies into the ways in which tutors, researchers and
students identified and acquired the resources they needed to support their
teaching, learning and research activities. Previous JISC-funded studies such as the
HyLife Project (HyLife 2000) and the INSPIRAL Project (INSPIRAL 2001) had
identified a need for closer integration between the library and teaching
communities, and more particularly for a clearer understanding of the link
between online learning activities and the digital learning resources needed to
support them. How such integration
was to be achieved was as yet unclear.
These investigations then were motivated by JISC’s need to know whether
the online resources provided in the JISC IE were being used and valued among
the teaching and learning communities, or whether tutors were turning to other
kinds of resources to fulfil their needs.
The key
objectives of these initial exploratory studies were
and
While the
evaluation of the JISC IE was still in progress, JISC also funded another
Programme, known as Linking Digital Libraries with VLEs (DiVLE). The formative evaluation of this new
Programme, the LinkER project, was carried out by the EDNER team, and
thus there were synergies between the two projects. The DiVLE Programme aimed to explore the
technical, pedagogical and organisational issues of linking digital library
systems and VLEs. Its specific
objectives were to
This
Programme then was essentially exploratory and experimental; an opportunity to
try out ideas which might lead to the development of practical tools and
techniques which would help the tutor integrate a range of online resources into
the VLE at the point of need. Thus
it began to address some of the issues highlighted in the EDNER studies and
elsewhere.
The studies
which form the first part of this paper used well-established qualitative
research methods, namely interviews with individuals and focus group discussion
to study “the behaviour of individuals in all the complexity of their real-life
situations” (Bawden, 1990, p27).
Strategies involving artificially-constructed experiments or large-scale
questionnaire surveys were rejected, because although these may reveal patterns
of behaviour, insights into the reasons behind the behaviour are more difficult
to identify. What was sought was
closer to what Taylor and Bogdan (1984, p5) describe as “research that produces
descriptive data: people’s own written or spoken words and observable
behaviour”. Fifteen tutors and
fifteen students at Manchester Metropolitan University took part in the
interviews during Summer 2002 and Spring 2003. They represented teaching staff
from a broad cross section of teaching Departments, and both the undergraduate
and postgraduate student population.
Interviews were recorded and transcribed, and then in order to capture
the richness of the data it was decided to present these as vignettes. Vignettes have been described by
Stenhouse (1981) as the evaluator (or researcher) interpreting a particular
incident and using it to illustrate a more general situation. The individual vignette ‘speaks’ as if
from one person’s experience, though it may in fact be based upon the
experiences of several interviewees, who together represent a particular type or
group. What is reported here is a
synthesis of these vignettes, and some key messages for those addressing the
integration of online learning support resources into online teaching
environments.
The
objectives of the interviews with tutors were to explore how they learned about
online information resources to support their teaching, what kinds of resources
they were selecting to support their online teaching, the role of JISC IE
resources in their choices, and what problems they were encountering in
integrating resources into the online environment.
Before
exploring the results obtained it is worth noting some contextual conditions.
First, the use of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), in this case WebCT, was
relatively new within the institution, and although all of the interviewees had
undergone training in how to use the VLE and how to design and develop teaching
materials, the issue of embedding resources to support learners had not been
addressed in any greater depth than indicating that it was possible to link to
the institution’s library website. Staff appeared to be well-motivated to use
the VLE and the possibilities that online resources offered. Most of those
interviewed for the study were keen to provide links to online resources to
support students’ learning; one said this overcame the excuse that her students
couldn’t do the work because they couldn’t get hold of the resource, ‘if it’s
online they can get it when they need it’ she said.
The kinds of
resources selected by staff were varied. Several staff members had set up a
‘mini digital resource’ listing links to recommended websites which students
could explore for materials to underpin their assessed coursework, and had
placed these in a discrete location within the online teaching module. There were also examples of tutors
extracting a particular website from a JISC subject gateway or the URL of a
favourite web page and placing it at the point of need within a narrative, of
the creation of new resources such as a glossary of scientific terms with
hyperlinks from the text in the teaching materials to the glossary whenever a
difficult or new term appeared, and of the creation of course modules around
particular websites.
Tutors
praised the facility with which they could include new types of media within
their teaching, such as images or audio files, games and interactive sites, and
how this gave them new and different ways of approaching syllabus material. For example, one History tutor remarked
upon the value of online historical maps.
‘When I talk about decolonisation’ he said ‘they can actually look at a
map of where the countries were, where the empires were’. They liked being able to access very
current information and to incorporate this into their learning materials
immediately before the lesson, and this was a particular asset to subjects such
as Law or Modern Politics. Almost
all of the tutors interviewed associated ‘online’ with ‘websites’. None had looked for ways of integrating
direct links to full text online journal articles or to individual items of
material within bibliographic databases provided by the university’s traditional
resource provider, the Library, nor had they discussed this type of resource
need with librarians. ‘I do liaise
with librarians’ said one, ‘but not for online resources or websites. I mostly go to them for training for
myself and my students, and also when I need information about new passwords’
Regarding
their students, some claimed that the student library induction session gave
sufficient knowledge of the library and its services to equip students for their
academic careers. The most that was
usually provided for students within the VLE was a high level icon link to the
Library web page, or at best a pointer to the appropriate Subject Resources
section. Some had not realised that
this was possible. There seemed to
be a ‘discreteness’ about all the resources available through the library,
whether paper based or online, as if accessing these was a separate activity
from working in the online learning environment, and not something that might be
integrated into learning materials at the precise point of need.
Apart from
the Virtual Training Suite, few tutors were using resources from the JISC
IE, although several claimed to
know about them. There were examples of tutors extracting a particular website
from a JISC subject gateway, but for the most part these resources did not
feature. This may be partly explained as an awareness issue, with the point
above about the lack of contact with librarians regarding online resources being
significant.
The kinds of
problems and issues faced by tutors can be summed up as currency, quality, and
effects on working practice. Several tutors had had problems when integrating
websites. They noted how frequently
URLs were relocated, though few made regular methodical checks to ensure that
links were still live. ‘I do
housekeeping during the summer vacation’ was the only example cited of such
behaviour. None mentioned using
link checking software. Some
complained of the impermanence of websites and the impact that this had had upon
their use of online resources. One
had lost a whole course module because of this. They were also unhappy that information
seeking on the Internet was such a time-consuming process compared to searching
through on-line journals and bibliographic resources. ‘Online is a lot of work’ said one. ‘It’s invisible work, and my colleagues
think I do less.’ One noted a
decline in the availability of free content on commercial subject gateways
saying that he now had to pay to access high quality materials upon which he had
previously relied. None seemed
aware that copyright law applied to web-based materials as well as to print
based.
Some
interesting discussions on the quality of learning resources obtained from the
Internet were triggered. All of the
tutors were confident of their own ability to evaluate the quality of the
content of websites, and one claimed to be ‘impressed by the web explosion’, but
there was anxiety about the skills of their students. ‘They might love it for chat and their
own personal ends, but I’m not sure for work’ being a typical comment. Several quoted instances of students
incorporating inappropriate online material into their coursework. One described students as ‘confused’
about what ‘quality’ meant when it came to online material, claiming that this
was ‘a bit like not discerning the difference between a popular magazine and an
academic journal’. Several were
surprised that while students seemed able to evaluate the academic quality of
paper-based resources, they were less able to transfer their skills to the
online environment. There were
discrepancies between how tutors had responded to this anxiety. One approach was to offer ‘ad hoc’
advice to individual students when the need arose, usually in response to the
selection of an inappropriate resource.
Other tutors integrated information skills training into their teaching,
but usually only when this formed part of the curriculum of the subject
area. A few tutors had made use of
JISC’s Virtual Training Suite for this activity because the training modules are
subject based, and when there was no appropriate subject module available, a
generic package such as Netskills was used instead. It was not uncommon though for tutors to
take the view that this sort of training was not their responsibility. One pointed out that she had neither the
time nor the skill set to teach her students evaluation skills, which she
described as ‘an add-on for which I wouldn’t be paid’ and also suggested that
students may be reluctant to undertake training which did not carry with it the
reward of ‘counting towards their degree’.
The objective
of the interviews with students was to discover the processes they would use to
find resources to inform a piece of assessed coursework, and to see what role
online resources played in this activity.
There were three clear favourite strategies; either they took a reading
list of recommended books and journals to the library, or they searched the
library OPAC and web page for journal articles and online databases, or they
went to the internet and carried out a keyword search using Google. The only
difference between students was which strategy they chose first.
Their heavy
reliance upon a reading list proved a double-edged sword. On the one hand students were confident
that the list contained high quality key resources because their lecturers had
recommended them, and as one remarked, “Lecturers will tell you where to go, and
it saves legwork”. Yet at the same
time there was a definite “down side” to reading lists consisting mostly of
books and journals. Students
complained and even seemed to panic when the particular recommended book was
already out of the library on loan or was missing, and although they might
browse other books with the same shelf mark, they were not confident that an
alternative would be just as good.
There was also a marked reluctance to visit other academic libraries in
the search for books and printed journals despite the fact that there are
several within a radius of a very few miles from their home site library. Convenience was the major factor here,
and also familiarity with the layout of the physical library. One student remarked that she was sure
that the main Manchester public library held good material, but “it’s so big and
scary and I can’t find my way round.
I always end up asking someone and feeling like a fool because I couldn’t
find it myself.”
Despite the
concern which tutors expressed about the ability of their students to evaluate
what they found on the Internet, there were some encouraging messages from the
conversations with the students themselves. All of them were aware that there could
be problems with the quality of the information they might find on the Internet
in the context of using it for academic work. They had evaluation strategies such as
finding out whether sites had been ‘vetted’, or judging on the basis of domain
names, by using sites recommended by their peers, or by finding out who the
author was. They were concerned
about whether Internet resources were ‘reliable’, and complained of being
overwhelmed by the volume of material available, much of which was irrelevant to
their learning needs. In fact they
emerge as quite cautious and conservative in their selection of resources.
Despite these
encouraging signs the strongest reasons given by far for using the Internet were
not good academic ones. They were
the speed with which information could be retrieved, and the convenience of
working in this way. These were
perceived as definite advantages in an online resource and outweighed arguments
for quality. As one said “I use the
internet because I’m lazy, because I don’t want to have to get up and go to the
library and you know if you find an article on the internet you can just print
it straight off instead of having to search through journal issues and photocopy
them.”
The picture
which emerges is one of enthusiasm within both the teaching and learning
communities for using online resources to support and underpin learning. The reasons for this enthusiasm are both
good and bad, and there is some cause for concern. Reading lists emerge as a key source of
materials to support learning, but when these contain mostly paper based
resources, the amount of effort required to access them seems to lead to a trade
off between getting the recommended resource or uneasily making do with an
alternative. It appears that the processes that tutors use to find out about
online resources do not draw upon all the support available to them, with a lack
of use of the traditional support services such as the librarians in this
context and as yet no sign of impact from the new learning support services both
within and without the institution There is also concern that it is impossible
to predict the permanence of websites which impacts upon their usefulness as
resources to support learning. Quality is a major issue, with a critical tension
between the desire of staff to maintain control of the standard of resources and
that of students to get easy access to resources.
The samples
in these interviews were small, but the use of interviewing as a technique
ensures a rich picture of user behaviour and attitudes. The sample may not be generalisable to
the wider population, but the results do indicate some clear messages which are
very relevant to the kinds of questions to which the JISC was seeking
answers.
Certainly
within the library community there has been an awareness for some time now that
the move to teaching in the online environment presents great opportunities to
integrate library based resources into the VLE to enhance the learning
experience at the time and point of need.
What has proved difficult is making this happen. A review of published library and
education literature on this subject, (Markland 2002) which identified practice
and experience in the UK and elsewhere showed that much of the initiative for
integration was coming from the library community. Examples of initiatives in which library
and teaching staff had worked together to integrate specific digital library
resources into a particular teaching module in a virtual learning environment
were not numerous. Mostly these
seemed to emanate from situations where learners were working at a distance,
rather than providing for online learning for campus-based students, a model
which is becoming familiar in Higher Education Institutions.
In an attempt
to address the difficulties of information seeking and integration into online
learning environments, the DiVLE Programme took some first steps towards
exploring ways of developing and providing easy to use tools to facilitate such
activities. Nine projects were
funded to develop and test software to provide, among other things, tools
to
The Programme
aimed therefore to satisfy both the impatient student and the busy tutor. The
Programme was of short duration, only ten months, but what was achieved is
promising for tutors and learners alike.
It was shown,
for example, that it is indeed feasible to provide a tool within a VLE which can
search across a mix of online resources simultaneously. The PORTOLE tool developed by Leeds
University (Sotiriou et al. 2003) can search one or more library catalogues, the
Resource Discovery Network (RDN), an in-house database of subject-based listings
of electronic subscriptions, selected external websites, and Google, and then
retrieve a single set of links.
Next the tutor can select resources from the list, annotate these with
supplementary information, sort and group them, mark them according to level of
importance, and integrate the list into the VLE at the point of need. The list can be edited at any time by
the tutor but not by the students, and at the outset the tutor can select which
resources to search. What the
student sees when working in any particular unit is a list of learning resources
of various types which have immediate relevance to that unit; resources which
will enhance his understanding and facilitate learning. The list might be a mixture of books,
journal materials and websites, might encompass a range of visual and audio
media, and will therefore bring together ‘library OPAC searching’ and ‘internet
searching’ activities.
Other
projects such as the EnCoRe project at the University of Derby (Keady et al.
2003) tested the possibility of linking directly from within the VLE to full
text online materials such as journal articles or book chapters. So instead of the tutor simply ‘flagging
up’ an electronic journal article which the student then had to retrieve through
the library catalogue or other service provider, perhaps going through an
authentication process to do so, there would be a seamless one click link
between a point in the teaching unit in the VLE and the article. The underlying software would carry out
the process of searching for the article and authenticating the student. Furthermore, if the student did not have
the necessary permission to access the article from within university resources,
the software would tell the student where else it could be obtained or
bought.
A further
facility which this project explored was the feasibility of linking tutors to a
digitisation and copyright clearance service. This would enable the tutor, for
example, to select a particular chapter in a print-based textbook, and have this
converted into digital format for embedding within her VLE at the point of
need. Some examples had been found
of tutors carrying out this type of activity on an ‘ad hoc’ basis, and there was
concern that this might infringe copyright law. A further problem was tutors paying to
have texts digitised with copyright clearance when the University library had
already done so. This tool
therefore, would both ensure that copyright law was not infringed, and also
match what was being requested with what was already available within the
institution. It would also make
tutors aware of the cost of their ‘course packs’ of digitised materials. In the event, this facility was not
completed within the project timeframe, though it was clear that it was possible
to provide this type of service.
Another focus
was to test ways in which teaching materials created for use in one e-learning
environment could be offered for reuse by others, perhaps using a different VLE
platform, by means of the library catalogue. The Talking Systems project at the
University of Wales College, Newport (Noyes 2003) for example suggested a
scenario where a Computer Science lecturer might observe that her students were
struggling with a particular mathematical concept that she was unable to cover
during her teaching, and yet which they need to understand in order to complete
an assignment. They suggest that
she might collate her existing resources on the topic or put together a list of
library resources on the subject.
She may suspect though, that her colleagues in the School of Mathematics
have an e-learning resource to teach this particular concept, but without a
username and password for their VLE she has no access to it. The project went on to explore how the
metadata used to describe e-learning resources and library resources could be
cross-mapped, so that the library catalogue could be made to present not just
the usual library resources, but e-learning objects too. The Computer Science lecturer would be
able to search her library catalogue in the usual way and retrieve from it a
mathematics tutorial suitable for her students.
The impact of
technological change upon the working practices of tutors, students and
librarians was something that all of the projects had to consider. As another DiVLE project, DEVIL reported
“One cannot force systems on to users and expect them to be happy with them.”
(DEVIL 2003) It became clear, for
example, that the annual practice of sending reading lists to the library so
that resources could be made available for the start of the academic year would
no longer fit with the concept of a resource list that was being constantly
updated and revised. There may be a
need for the digitisation of key book chapters at any time of the year, for
copyright permissions to be obtained for online materials not held by the
library, for newly created e-learning resources to be added to the library
catalogue.
There was
some discussion too of the issue of ‘trust’ or ‘altruism’ in the context of
whether tutors were in fact willing to share the e-learning resources which they
had created. A considerable
reluctance was identified to doing this and a real fear surfaced among academics
that they might not be recognised as the author of their work. It became clear too that asking tutors
to place their learning objects on a library catalogue meant asking them to
create the metadata needed to
describe the object. The metadata
creation process calls for certain skills which are very familiar to librarians
but less so to tutors. Projects
discovered that they could not assume that tutors were willing to spend time
acquiring these skills or creating the metadata, and that when they did so, the
metadata was often of insufficient quality. Librarians however, they found, did not
always have sufficient understanding of the underpinning pedagogies to describe
the learning resource accurately, and so they too were unlikely to create high
quality metadata for this new kind of material without the assistance of a
subject tutor.
It became
clear that there was more to bringing new tools to tutors than simply presenting
them with a technological possibility.
Full account must be taken of how the tools would impact upon the
workload and practice of the individual tutor, and of how the smooth integration
of such tools might be affected by different institutional cultures.
In the
foreword to the UK Government’s Department for Education and Skills publication
‘Towards a Unified e-learning strategy’ Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary
stated that ‘e-learning has the potential to revolutionise the way we teach and
how we learn’. He goes on the
present a vision of integrated learning opportunities which permeate not only
the traditional centres of learning – schools, colleges and universities - but
also the workplace, specialist colleges and the home, a vision which includes
many learners who currently have difficulty accessing learning
opportunities.
Students
understand that underpinning resources from the online environment whether
provided through their library services or by their tutors, bring with them a
stamp of academic quality. So their
general expectation is that high quality resources to support their learning
will be provided for them, in locations convenient to them, whether online or
place-based. They consider this an
essential part of the university experience. Clarke however, has laid down the
challenge of providing for new kinds of learners, and particularly those
studying away from the ‘safety’ of the traditional environment with its
efficient support network. Taking
the learning environment to the learner wherever he or she is based means taking
the resources to support learning too or providing access to them in some other
way. It means taking learning to
people who are preoccupied with their work or their home responsibilities as
well as their learning, and few learning in the home or workplace will have the
luxury of an academic library to visit and the time to go and browse the
shelves. Such students in
particular will benefit greatly from the kinds of facilities which these tools
promise, and that promise is a much closer integration between their online
course and all of the core resources which they need to support it as and when
they need them.
The studies
with tutors illustrated that few of the JISC funded resources within the JISC IE
had yet made their way into individual modules within an online
environment. What was uncovered
though, was a great keenness among tutors to integrate a wide range of online
resources into their VLEs and much enthusiasm for enhancing their teaching in
new and exciting ways. However it
also became apparent that this enthusiasm brings with it a need for new skills
and new tools if the time-consuming and weighty process of integration is to be
facilitated.
Students too
like the online environment. They
are keen to use digital resources.
The internet is one of their preferred sources of information to support
their learning, because they like the speed with which search engines can
deliver information to them, this despite occasionally being overwhelmed by the
sheer volume of material retrieved, or confused about the quality of what they
find. It would appear that the
ideal situation for the student would be to have resources to support their
learning delivered to them online with the speed of a search engine, and the
‘quality stamp’ of their university library or their tutor’s recommendation.
The projects
in the DiVLE programme are a first step towards realising the kinds of services
needed by the teaching and learning communities if these aims are to be
achieved. Most projects produced
explorations and prototypes; an opportunity to ‘try out’ ideas to see what might
work and what might prove more difficult.
They offered a chance to feed these new possibilities into the teaching
and learning communities, and to solicit their reaction. Many of the projects have already had a
favourable response from tutors, and indeed some have had expressions of
interest from the international community.
Others will require further development and refinement if they are to
emerge as tools which will be taken up with enthusiasm. Whatever the outcome for the individual
projects, this programme has contributed to both a body of technological
knowledge and an enhanced understanding among tutors of how the resources they
need to support their learners might be better integrated into their networked
learning environments.
As government
policy drives the expansion of an ever more widely dispersed student body, the
need to understand the behaviour patterns of tutors and learners in the online
environment and to provide new services to support them will become more
pressing. New kinds of demand are
already emerging and tools are being developed to address them.
Integrating
digital resources into online learning environments challenges both the tutor
and the technologist, and further study is needed to understand the needs of
tutors and students and how these can best be served. Only by gaining such knowledge can
the technologist ensure that the tools being developed meet these needs, and
facilitate the integration of digital resources into online learning
environments.
Thanks are
due to Jill Bentley, PhD student at Manchester Metropolitan University, who
carried out the student interviews and focus group as part of the EDNER project,
and made her data available for this paper.
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