Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
Tasks and Potential Obstacles
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Tasks and Potential ObstaclesThe core principle of modern goal-oriented education is that it is supposed to be successful. Teachers are expected to present students with a certain amount of material and skills. Students, in turn, are expected to master them within a determined period of time. In this process, teachers create and manage courses and provide student support, while students have to confront subjective and objective variables that affect their performance. The success or the failure to overcome these variables results in subsequent variation in the level of material retention and grades. E-learning and e-teaching, in order to be successful, involves trying to resolve the issues that make it qualitatively different from traditional face-to-face and blended approaches and, at the same time, not fall into the trap of appropriating new technology to facilitate old approaches. A meticulously designed e-learning course offers just the tools for helping students to develop into critically thinking, curious, self-reflecting and autonomous learners capable of being team players. However, just as all of these pedagogical goals cannot be achieved within one course, relative success or the lack of such within the course depends on more than one variable (Hills, 2003, p. 40). Teachers and students have to be aware of these variables to stay realistic about the outcomes and be able to devise a strategy on how to overcome them. This chapter attempts to present other than technology-related challenges, discussed in the previous chapter, connected with e-learning from both the teacher’s and the student’s perspective. For structural comfort, potential obstacles in each section are grouped based on either a product (stages of course development and maintenance) or on a person (contextual and personal variables).
An effective e-learning course requires, on the part of the teacher, a high level of precision with respect to all elements of the course because a student needs to have a clear image of what is going to happen when and for what reason. Special attention has to be paid to several aspects, including course materials design, course management during its run and student support. On the receiving end, students depend on accessible and logical presentation of material, administrative and personal support of teachers to successfully complete the course, thus, it is important that none of these aspects is underestimated. At the pre-run stage, course materials have to be designed and then managed for the whole time a course exists. The design stage is key for the further success of the course because this is when the planning and realization of its objectives takes place. Weasenforth, Meloni and Biesenbach-Lucas concur that ‘the realization of pedagogical objectives … in distance courses must take place primarily through curriculum design … and support of different kinds offered via materials and student resources’ (2005, p. 195). When studying online, the materials, instructions and exercises constitute the student’s main reference points; that is, however, not to say that support is less vital. When accessing the course page, students see the layout first and, based on it, they can form learning strategies for this particular course, assess the amount of work required and devise their own studying schedule. The teacher’s support, on the other hand, occurs only at predetermined points or when students require individual attention. Thus, course materials, especially instructions, should be designed in such a manner as to anticipate students’ questions and to avoid repetitive requests whenever possible. At the same time, in accordance with student-centred approach, materials should not have a form of lecture transcripts because this would undermine the whole concept of learning as open, collaborative and creative (Harasim, 2012, p. 83, 84) and turn back towards didactic teaching. Instead, they rather should invite for a dialogue between the teacher and each individual student or groups of students. Moreover, students could greatly benefit from engagement with the material even at its initial presentation. Links to further resources and simple questions about the contents can be incorporated directly into the material. Hills (2003, p. 96) goes further and proposes to restructure learning materials in such a way as to make them task-oriented and provide only brief explanations where necessary. This approach can indeed be beneficial for learners with a developed appreciation for autonomy, but at beginner stages more close supervision may be needed. Further, to promote higher effectiveness of learning, it is necessary to accommodate for various learning needs and preferences at the stage of course material design through the media available, such as traditional text or images and more innovative video and audio. Hurd (2005) maintains that teachers need to take into account a wide range of learners’ cognitive and affective needs and to implement methods, strategies and activities accordingly (p. 8), and that the combination of different media, both visual and verbal, allows to cater for these learning needs as well as to tailor the mode of delivery to a specific task (p. 14). Admittedly, teachers may be hesitant to incorporate the interactive component and media into the materials due to doubts about the efficiency of such an approach and substantial time investments required for their production. However, firstly, educational and consumer software is becoming increasingly more user-friendly, intuitive and automated even for novice users, so much so that the mastery of just basic skills can be enough to produce an end-product of sufficient quality for education purposes. Secondly, students themselves may be the most convincing reason to include various media into learning materials. It is quite possible that students are already acquainted with and feel comfortable using them which is exactly what could contribute to less stressful work with materials and, hence, better retention. Ideally, students would be able to seamlessly switch between their normal activities on the computer to learning and continue doing what they are already used to thanks to the Internet, that is ‘searching, reading, scrutinizing, authenticating, collaborating and organizing (Tapscott & Williams, 2006, as cited in Harasim, 2010, p. 82). Here, management of the course is understood broadly to include issues related to administrative and technical tasks, such as monitoring of students progress and activities and solving technical problems. In this respect, Hills (2003, p. 95) highlights several points teachers should be particularly aware of. Namely, the fact that learners often do not follow the instructions and that they can interrupt the learning progress in the way not intended by course design. Students may do this consciously in order to exert control over their learning or not, due to a misunderstanding of instructions. For this reason, initial instructions should be accessible and comprehensive. Also, it may contribute to a smoother run of the course if students are intentionally limited in their opportunities for interrupting a pre-determined path. For example, gaining access to a subsequent task/s can only be possible after the completion of the preceding one/s, which is technologically possible in VLEs such as Moodle. It is again a matter of providing clear guidelines; students need to be made aware of what they are learning in each task and what the goal is. Lewis and Whitlock (2003, p. 113) emphasize the importance of online presence for a teacher or a tutor. They set time boundaries for the basic tasks, such as acknowledgement of student’s enrolment within 36 hours and of receipt of assessments within 48 hours, provision feedback within five days and accessibility for consultation online for at least two hours a week. Other outlined responsibilities require consistency rather than immediate presence online, for example, monitoring of students’ progress and contributing to course forums when necessary. Communication with students via email regarding other course-related questions should also be included into the list of responsibilities to be performed within a reasonable timespan. Of course, some tasks, for example, sending out emails confirming enrolment or receipt of a task, can be done automatically today. Although the time that Lewis and Whitlock propose for the performance of these tasks lies indeed within sensible boundaries, the amount of presence in the course for the management part may seem overwhelming in the beginning. In this respect, the number of students can also be a contributing factor. E-learning is not constricted by the classroom size and, at the same time, each student requires more individual attention. So, while an online course can at once accommodate a larger number of students than an offline one, the number or tutors should be increased proportionally to maintain the quality of the course. In order to be effective in e-learning, student support requires a complex approach. The degree of effectiveness is measured by not only by the material retention but also by what other skills the course helps to develop. A well-constructed support system promotes autonomy and, by entailment, control over the learning and critical thinking along with other features. At the same time, disregard for one of the components of student support in an online course – student-teacher relationship, motivation or feedback – can result in failure to fulfil short- and long-term pedagogical objectives of a course and leave students in frustration. It is necessary to underline that promotion of autonomy does not mean leaving students in deep water by delegating them the responsibility for the course outcomes (at least at the beginning). Instead, through the implementation of a carefully devised pedagogical system, students are helped and encouraged to develop independent learning skills (Holmberg, 1989, as cited in White, 2005). This topic cannot be addressed in necessary detail within a few paragraphs; therefore, the aforementioned three elements of student support are discussed in detail in the following chapter.
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