Transforming Learning Support: An Online Resource Centre for a Diverse Student Population
Rosemary Clerehan, Jill Turnbull, Tim Moore, Alanna Brown and Juhani Tuovinen, Australia
Abstract
The diverse student population at large multi-campus universities requires English language and academic skills support which is targeted to their needs and easily accessible. The Online Student Resource Centre web site, developed at Monash University, provides opportunities for students, no matter where they are, to make contact with staff and to access information, but more significantly offers a suite of stand-alone tutorials and downloadable resources, using NetObjects Fusion as the platform. These derive from some 100 print booklets covering academic writing, reading, listening, speaking, grammar and study skills/exam strategies.
This paper outlines the process and philosophy of development of these tutorials, based on a constructivist framework, with guided and self-directed learning paths designed to accommodate a range of learning styles. Two tutorials are analysed to highlight some of the pedagogical challenges in translating print resources for the online environment. The paper concludes by reporting on a pilot evaluation of the two tutorials.
INTRODUCTION
At the beginning of the 21st century in Australia, internal full-time students represent slightly less than 60% of the total student body at university. External and multi-modal student numbers are increasing, as are the numbers of student who work part-time - whether enrolled full or part-time (McInnis, James and Hartley, 2000). Also growing is the number of international students. Monash University is the largest in Australian with more than 48,000 students in ten faculties on six campuses in one state, Victoria. In 2002, there were two overseas campuses in Malaysia and South Africa and two centres, in Italy and England. The student body at Monash is one of the most diverse anywhere. In 2002, a 25% of students were international and a total of 45% of all students were born outside Australia. Of the local students, a total of 22% spoke a language other than English at home. A significant minority, 17 %, were enrolled as external students. By 2020, the University anticipates the number of international students enrolled in various modes will equal the number of local students.
With such a large and diverse student population, systematic language and learning support can make a difference to students’ progress and grades. The challenge of integrating language and academic skills support into faculty teaching, however, is great. The mission of the University's Language and Learning Services Unit is specifically to provide systematic support for students who are working in their second language; and to integrate language and learning support into faculty teaching – for the benefit of all students. Each year the Language and Learning Services Unit draws over 11,000 student attendances to face-to-face courses and workshops - many of which are closely linked to faculty teaching - and almost 5,000 to its one-to-one sessions. So, while many students are able to attend face-to-face, the challenge is to provide academic support on the widest possible scale in flexible modes which all students are able to access.
CONTEXT
The Unit was able to gain university strategic innovations funding for a project, Electronic Delivery of Core Communication Skills and Language Support, designed to provide an electronic gateway to language and academic skills support for all Monash students. The aim was to create a suite of resources for students, both on and off-shore, who were unable (or unwilling) to draw on the benefits of face-to-face teaching. The language and learning resources envisaged would be relevant to undergraduate and postgraduate students in all faculties irrespective of their background, but would target international and other non-English speaking background students, particularly first-year.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
To maximise self-access learning opportunities for students, the Unit determined to transform its general and discipline-specific learning skills booklets into online learning resources which could be used a) by students for any time/any place self-access, and b) in the Unit’s classroom teaching. The Unit had developed a range of some 100 original print-based resources in the form of booklets to cater to undergraduate and postgraduate students’ needs. These booklets may be grouped generically under the headings of: Writing, Reading, Listening, Speaking, Study Skills (including Exam Strategies) and Grammar.
Under these broad categories, there had been numerous different booklets developed over the years by different staff. These covered a range of sub-topics (such as case studies, reports etc under 'Writing') and a further range of discipline-specific, and sometimes even task-specific, booklets which drew on the generic 'master' versions. Some of these had been developed as 'stand-alone' learning materials and some were workbooks linked to specific classes. In evaluations of the Unit’s teaching, the booklets were always rated particularly highly for their quality and their relevance.
The booklets were grouped according to sub-topics and rated in terms of quality by the staff. Those staff originally responsible for a selected booklet were asked to re-conceive the material in a form appropriate to the web environment. The aim was not only to increase accessibility of the materials, but also to improve current practice (Thomas, Carswell, Price and Petre, 1998) through the increased interactivity made possible by web delivery. General booklets were worked on first, through a collaborative process involving staff, the project coordinator, the web developer and the project leader, and also liaison with faculty to ensure relevance and appropriateness for the target audience.
PROJECT PERSONNEL
The Unit, while small (approximately ten EFT academic staff), could draw on the benefit of having taught Monash students at all levels and in all faculties for a number of years. The project leader had developed the original proposal, and had facilitated the development of the bank of original materials which were to be developed. The project coordinator had a background in ESL and CALL - especially using computers in writing - and in using and evaluating concordancing software for development of students’ grammar and vocabulary . The web developer had previous experience with developing a 'Virtual Librarian' project at the university and had an interest in pedagogy. The other staff in the Unit had solid experience and expertise in providing concurrent language and academic skills support, but none initially in developing online materials. Expertise in educational design was drawn from a number of sources (see Project Roles), and a small amount of funding was available to allow some graphic design and advice on project evaluation.
Thus, there were only two staff funded for the project, one full and one half-time. The rest of the Unit's staff had no time-release funding, and had to reduce their face-to-face teaching in order to contribute. While the project leader had identified the project as the Unit’s priority for the year, it was to prove difficult for the other staff to turn away individual students and faculty staff wanting support classes developed for their students.
WEB SEARCH
A survey of existing web-based academic skills sites was conducted to identify and evaluate the design features, instructional methods and activities used. The project coordinator and another staff member researched web-based design and delivery issues, and reviewed design features and content of learning materials on existing sites. This review enabled the project to identify the structure and functionality required of the new web materials, and also identified appropriate web sites for linking. The search fanned out to include around 80 sites within Australia, the United States, Canada and Hong Kong. These were sampled for 1) Design and 2) Content (discipline-specific and general) for Grammar, Listening and Notetaking, Oral Presentations, Reading, Study Skills, and Writing.
The main disadvantages of these sites from the project's perspective were that, while there were some which had discipline-related material, there was little that was particularly interactive, and navigational problems had the potential for leading to less than satisfactory learning outcomes. Often, the smaller college and university sites simply provided a link to pages under a particular topic heading (for example, under the heading 'Oral Presentations' a link to a page of one of the larger universities would be given). Having links to other sites has obvious advantages; nevertheless, this can create concerns - both for navigation and identifying authorship. First, the individual page may occur further down the hierarchy from the home page and not have the originator’s identifying information as the page. This gives the impression that the information is from the site doing the linking. Moreover, without navigational buttons or an index the learner is unable to move within this new site to obtain further information on the topic. The second problem is that the link may be created with the use of frames, meaning that only the URL of the site doing the linking appears on screen, and the URL of the original site is not displayed. Also a reader may not be able to return to the linking page from which they started, and the 'Back' button on Netscape cannot be used.
These difficulties highlighted for us navigation and design features that should be a) included, or b) avoided, in our own site.
PROJECT ROLES
A steering committee was formed which had representation from instructional developers, information technology services, lecturers from the Education and Information Technology faculties with experience in pedagogy and web design, and an ESL specialist from another university. The committee provided guidance on the web concept, development issues, and development and evaluation plans.
The role of the coordinator was to coordinate activities under the guidance of the project leader, with the web developer acting as design consultant, undertaking the web authoring (using NetObjects Fusion), experimenting with and testing interactive features and publishing the developed materials on the Monash web server. A core group (the project development group), comprising the project leader, coordinator, web developer, and a core group of the Unit’s staff, met for an initial period to set directions and scope the project. The majority of the Unit’s staff were able to act as content developers: all were experienced teachers and their work in developing the original booklets had been impressive. To bring the team to the point where members could turn their hand to instructional design on the web, 'training' consisted of circulation and discussion of relevant literature and URLs, demonstration sessions in the Unit's Writing Laboratory, staff seminars and on-the-job experience. The Writing Laboratory was used for trialing and evaluating web materials by the Unit's staff, by the steering committee, by individual students and by student focus groups.
PROJECT SCOPING
The project was envisaged as having the following (overlapping) phases:
· Developing concept: researching student needs; discussions with faculty staff and with colleagues at other universities; literature search; preparation of proposal
· Financing and staff selection: cost analysis; securing of funding; appointment of existing staff member as project coordinator; advertisement and selection of web developer
· Defining project: formation of steering committee and 'hands-on' project development group and; 'cleaning up' the Unit’s network drive where the materials were held; prototyping of web concept
· Scoping: developing of time-line for progressive development of resources; gauging how many booklets could be developed; and a site design that would be achievable
· Researching: survey of existing language and academic skills sites; experimenting with different tools; seeking copyright clearances with the assistance of an administrative assistant
· Design and Development: training of Unit’s staff to enable them to develop web-based materials; liaison with multimedia artist; developing a new section of the Unit’s web page as a resource centre with virtual 'rooms'; development of web resources and of additional functionality such as a discussion forum; compiling and linking learning resources to the web page; some out-sourced programming
· Monitoring and Evaluation: ongoing throughout project, facilitated by project steering committee reviewing progress of the web development; providing feedback and advice to the project team on improving navigation, design, content and interactivity; advising on other educational, technical and administrative issues relating to the integration and use of the new resource within the existing structures of the University
· Revisions: ongoing throughout project
· Promotion: liaising with departments so they could be aware of what was available for their students; promotion in University publications; presentations at meetings
· Integration: liaison with departments for the creation of hyperlinks, specifically, to information regarding particular assignments, for students to be able to access support materials easily.
A number of key issues warrant further elaboration.
DEVELOPMENT OF RESOURCES
Criteria for selection of booklets were developed. These were: availability; originality (including questions of copyright); substantiality of content, general importance, quality of assistance for ESL students. The development group decided on an order for development of general tutorials: listening (a priority for incoming first-year students); essay writing; reading; report writing; oral presentation; study skills. The coordinator created a 'map' of existing resources so that, for any topic, eg 'Writing', the sub-division of topics such as 'referencing and integrating sources' could be seen, as well as the files where they could be found and their original authors.
Staff nominated preferred times to work on tutorials and particular discipline-specific resources, and a time-line for completion of the work was drawn up to ensure an even distribution of the web development over the project’s lifespan. As the project developed, time constraints unavoidably meant narrowing of scope. As the complexity of the task became more and more apparent, the original idea of developing all selected generic and discipline-specific materials into interactive tutorials had to be re-assessed. It was decided that a more generic approach than had previously been planned would be necessary, that the web site would be the matrix from which further more discipline-specific material could be launched. Time would preclude the more discipline-specific materials from being developed for interactive tutorials. These would be lodged in another section somewhere on the site for print (PDF Adobe Acrobat format) materials.
EVALUATION PLAN
Project evaluation is often regarded as the least well-done element of project development (Alexander 1999). Alexander (1999) maintains that only one-third of 104 projects surveyed in a two-year study in Australia were able to report improving student learning outcomes as the actual outcome of the project. The desired outcomes of content learning in subjects can be, and often are, specified in behavioural terms: being able to do something, showing that students know the characteristics of something, that they can manipulate materials in a new context. With language and learning support, the specifying of outcomes is more problematic as we are dealing not with content, but with processes. Clearly, the desired end result is that students learn, and pass their subjects; however, measuring the amount of learning that has occurred within a language and academic skills framework – even at the end of a face-to-face session – can challenge ingenuity. Desired outcomes may change, in any case, under the influence of what the student can cope with: the 'outcome' may end up being that the student is now equipped with strategies so that they are in a better position to learn. For purposes of evaluation purposes, the target group for this project was potentially 'all Monash students' across all disciplines in a variety of settings. It was thus difficult to conduct evaluation of learning outcomes along the lines Alexander is recommending. In any case, assessing improvement in processes and approaches is an area which requires further investigation.