teachers' voice on elearning as an approach to quality in higher education

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Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education Nan Yang [email protected] Doctoral School in Psychological Sciences and Education University of Trento Barcelona, 26th - 27th, September 2013 Thursday, September 26, 13

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Presentation in the EFQUEL Innovation Forum 2013, Barcelona, Spain

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Page 1: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Nan [email protected]

Doctoral School in Psychological Sciences and EducationUniversity of Trento

Barcelona, 26th - 27th, September 2013

Thursday, September 26, 13

Page 2: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

Outline

• Introduction

• Research question

• Research design

• Initial findings

2

Thursday, September 26, 13

Page 3: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

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EFA GlobalMonitoring Report

Educ

atio

n fo

r Al

l

2 0 0 5

THE QUALITYIMPERATIVE

Educat ion for Al l

At the Heart of educationUNESCO

Access Value

QualityCompetitiveness

Internationalization

Thursday, September 26, 13

Page 4: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

What do we mean by “Quality” in Higher Education?

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Page 5: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

Complex “Quality”

• Value-lade Concept (Harvey & Green, 1994)

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Page 6: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Learning Design for eLearning Quality in Higher Education - from teachers’ perspective Nan Yang, [email protected]

Complex “Quality”(cont.)

• Three levels of Quality (Zhang, Jin, Shi, 2009)

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Micro�

Meso�

Macro� HE system contribute the society

Innovative Talents Cultivation

Teaching & LearningScientific ResearchSocial Service

Thursday, September 26, 13

Page 7: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Learning Design for eLearning Quality in Higher Education - from teachers’ perspective Nan Yang, [email protected]

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Why eLearning for quality?

Thursday, September 26, 13

Page 8: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Learning Design for eLearning Quality in Higher Education - from teachers’ perspective Nan Yang, [email protected]

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Driver & Tool for Pedagogic Innovation

(Ehlers & Schneckenberg, 2010)

Thursday, September 26, 13

Page 9: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Learning Design for eLearning Quality in Higher Education - from teachers’ perspective Nan Yang, [email protected]

Why focus on Teachers?

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Page 10: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Learning Design for eLearning Quality in Higher Education - from teachers’ perspective Nan Yang, [email protected]

• The core of complex quality - Teaching & Learning

• Teachers and students are the key stakeholders

• Teachers have transformational leadership in T&L

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“the development of a concept of quality and its implications for the teaching strategies of educational professionals have not been taken care of sufficiently” - Ulf-Daniel Ehlers

Thursday, September 26, 13

Page 11: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

Research Question

• What are university teachers’ perception of quality in the teaching and learning process?

• Do they adopt eLearning and why?

• How do they improve the quality with(out) the help of eLearning?

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Page 12: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

Research design

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Critical Realist & Constructionism

Interpretivism

Grounded TheoryInterviews

Class Observation

1. Ontology & Epistemology !�

2. Theoretical Perspectives�

3. Methodology !� 4. Methods/Techniques�

Research Design�

Thursday, September 26, 13

Page 13: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

Research Design (cont.)

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Analysis

Collect

Design

Initial Data collection

Interviews: 17 university teachers (from China, Italy, UK )13 for campus based learning; 4 for distance learning (DL)

Class Observation: 1. Postgraduate level on B2B marketing2. Undergraduate level on Media and Communication

Online Course Data (screenshots, focus on the design): 1. DL, postgraduate level, linguistics and TESOL2. DL, postgraduate level, PGCE3. DL, postgraduate level, international education

Thursday, September 26, 13

Page 14: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

Initial findingsTeachers’ perception of quality

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Pedagogic approachSocratic methodExciting and related to people’s real life experienceMultiple levels of learning targetsCohesive pedagogic process

ContentFrontier knowledgeAccessible content (DL)AttractivenessRelevance on learners’ previous knowledgeCoherent content designMultimedia

Learning OutcomeApply knowledge in real situation (metaphor: hammer)Deep understandingDigital literacy skillsCollaborative learningBe open and think critically

Thursday, September 26, 13

Page 15: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

“when you start receiving questions that really challenge you and challenge the knowledge that you have presented, then I think you have done, you serve a better job because they really start to see the application of each single topic and more than single concept they are required, a logic of discussing or a logic behind the subject.” - cognitive science

“When you teach to the students, most of them have high understanding where you teach during the course and of course they have high final evaluation because they really understood what you were teaching” - economics

“Not only learn how to develop software using a particular programming language but also understand the idea/logic/rule behind the programming language so that it’s easier to learn a new language” - computer science

“The important thing is to understand the idea behind the mathematic formulas and know how to use these statistics methods in certain contexts” - statistics

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Deep understanding

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Page 16: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

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large class problem“for master students, the thing I do is they are in charge. One chapter each person then we will discuss when we have questions, so I see some problematic things... So in these participation moment, with understanding and we can exchange (ideas). It's interesting, but you can't adopt in (the class with) 140 students” - psychology

“I have 250. So I cannot use this method because the class at least at the beginning, but in the end, after half of the course, half of the people is gone. The last one that stays, they are the people that really interested in the class. So with them, you can do more individualized job” - philosophy

“I prefer classes maybe more like 20 students, then you should have quality teaching as that point means interacting students, making them think, giving them things to challenge them, but you can't really do that with 200, 300 students” - neuroscience

“The idea of workshop, it would be interactive, students could ask the questions, but because of the numbers, we have to slightly change the way that we teach them now. So we can't make students do presentation because it's just too big, it just won't work.” - media study

Reality: Quality Gap

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Page 17: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

Why they use eLearning?

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Page 18: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

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Encourage learners’ participation

“I usually have discussions with people and you can't have an easy discussion with 190 people, just by saying: what anybody think? But where I asked it in front of 190 people, they will do it by sending you a tweet. So it's just a different way of taking questions”

Necessary tutorial session for international students

“It's just a strategy because there are many our students not in the UK all the time, they go home, go oversees, so often having some kind of virtual space is the only way you going to do it really, face to face is not possible”

Track students’ learning progress

“I can follow their learning process by using the forum, by using exercises I assigned to them, they have to solve some problems, to solve some issues, the basics of the lectures of the topics where studied during the frontal lessons”

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Page 19: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

Why they don’t use eLearning?

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Page 20: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

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Primitive understanding

“I think that I would like to hear something from you because it's your speciality, to tell me why read books and take notes in the old fashioned way helps you memorize and understand much better than read on the computer, I will never be able to read Google books, we are never able to take some notes in a Word document”

Lack of financial support“...depends on how much money you have for the class, here, sometimes, they do some eLearning, especially the past, they try more than now...if they have only limited amount of money that give you the possibility to do the forum but nothing else, they would never give me an assistant to do this if I offer this opportunity, it's me that completely for free”

Lack of eLearning expertise

“The quality of teaching that I can give online, in my view, less than I can give in the class. So in the end… Maybe this is because I am not comfortable with this type of interaction; I prefer the real life interaction. So in the end I dropped it.”

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Page 21: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

How to improve the quality of teaching and learning?

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Page 22: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

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Update assessment method - fight with plagiarism

“I immediately understood that it was a completely different situation. Students copy all the time and some in a very bad manner like cut and copy and other do better work trying to rephrase what they see in Internet. So I stopped. Then I started doing the same, giving them a very large question but they have to write the paper in the class, but they start to copy again, they had pieces of paper or they stole this sheet that university gives them, so they started cheating again...So I stopped with this method, and now I do very open question but I decide the questions and they don't know, every time I change my questions, so they cannot prepare to do a specific material and bring to the class.”

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Page 23: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

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Teach how to learn - balance of quantity and quality

“I reduce the amount of topics I addressed but I tried to make the topics I addressed where they understood. It wasn't just a survey of the topic because I sort of change my idea from giving an overall survey of the topic to let the people intuitive, from this, actually get the students to fully understand how I would approach one specific topic and maybe leave them on their own to address all the topics in the similar way”

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime - Lao Zi

Thursday, September 26, 13

Page 24: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

Special Thanks to...

• prof. Patrizia Ghislandi (supervisor in my PhD study)

• prof. Grainne Conole (tutor in my abroad period)

• Dr. Palitha Edirisingha (tutor in my abroad period)

• Dr. Juliana Elisa Raffagheli (post-doc in the team)

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Page 25: Teachers' Voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher education

Sep 26, 2013 Teachers’ voice on eLearning as an approach to quality in higher educationNan Yang, [email protected]

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Thank you and welcome to any comment!

Nan [email protected]

Take Home Message

To use eLearning as an approach for quality, the important thing is to know how to add value from technology to pedagogy rather than just throw it in

Thursday, September 26, 13