What Los Have to Offer the Teacher

School and teacher issues using learning objects

ByCarmel Clifford and Robert McCormickRITESFaculty of Education and Language StudiesThe Open University

(e-mail: )

Paper presented as part of the ‘Learning objects in the classroom: a European perspective’ symposiumat the British Educational Research Association annual conference, Manchester, 16-18 September, 2004

© Carmel Clifford & Robert McCormick
This paper arises from the work of the CELEBRATE project.

Introduction

The various strands of the evaluation associated with the CELEBRATE project collect different kinds of data from different respondents. To complement the survey data from the Teachers as user questionnaire (see Li & McCormick, 2004), we decided to develop interview studies. One of the difficulties for a project researching in several different countries, not all of which have researchers associated with them, is to deal with the language of respondents. Putting open-ended questions in the questionnaire, which is administered in local languages, makes analysis very difficult because, with no local researchers, the responses would have to be either translated into English or analysed by a non-specialist. The interview studies therefore tried to collect this kind of qualitative data, and also to attempt to give us some insight into any school issues, rather than just those of individual teachers. Each co-ordinator in the six pilot countries arranged for the conduct of interviews in schools, for the analysis of the results and for its translation into a report in English (the next section deals with the methodological issues involved in this process).

In this paper the preliminary analysis is made of the reports from each country. These reports were varied in their style and in the extent to which they included extracts from the interviews. Thus in the quotes we use, some will be directly from teachers, but some will be reported versions. As the data are qualitative any indication of numbers who respond in a particular way are simply to make clear the sources of the responses, not to indicate any strength of opinion. Our aim is to illustrate the issues they address and, the numbers of responses on a particular issue do not necessarily indicate whether or not they are general issues for teachers. Inevitably we will be saying something about country responses on the basis of relatively small samples, and this has to be recognised as a weakness in the data.[1]

Methodology

The countries involved in the interview studies are Finland, Norway, Hungary, Israel, France and UK. Design of the Interview studies was discussed at a Project meeting in September 2003 with the coordinators of these six countries who would implement these studies.[2] Common questions and instructions for conduct of studies were agreed and discussed at this meeting (see Appendix). At end of May 2004 an analysis meeting was held in London with the five country coordinators involved in the interview studies, to work through some of the data and agree on the analysis and write-up of reports from each pilot country (Israel was done separately by telephone).

In Finland total of 9 schools and 10 teachers (4 head teachers and 8 ICT coordinators) were interviewed, in France total of 10 schools and 14 teachers, in Hungary, total of 5 schools and 5 teachers, in Israel total of 6 schools and 11 teachers, in Norway total of 8 schools and 26 teachers (8 head teachers) were interviewed, and in the UK 2 schools and 2 teachers. In all, 40 schools are represented and 68 individuals were interviewed, and all the teachers involved were considered of high ICT ability.

The individual who wrote the reports for each country were not all professional researchers and therefore researchers of the Open University combined all the reports to make one combined interview studies report. (This report will be published in due course.)

Findings

We present the findings according to the major question areas drawing out in each the issues raised by teachers. Although we designed the interview studies to focus on schools, few issues at this level arose. This is mainly because for most of the schools only one or two teachers were involved, and it was a small part of their teaching activity, such that it was unlikely that there would be any impact on the school. For example, if only one teacher is using LOs in the computer suite, there are minimal implications for the ICT co-ordinator in terms of usage of the suite or the provision of network facilities. The lack of school focus may also be related to the way the interviews were analysed in that the responses to questions were looked at across the schools, losing the school dimension. (When we compile the combined interview studies report we will add some individual school profiles to try to restore this element.)

The areas covered in the findings are: the training teachers were given as part of the pilots in each country; the system issues and in particular the way teachers had access to and could use LOs; teachers’ views on LOs; and pedagogic issues of use of LOs.

Training

The training occurred in Norway, France, UK, Finland, Israel, and Hungary over the period from November 2003 to June 2004. During the early training sessions there were technical problems with the Demonstration Portal (see below) that many teachers found frustrating. Some of the teachers felt that the training they received was sufficient and thought that they would intuitively learn other things about the use of the Portal. Other teachers felt that the training was good but would like further training using the templates (that allow particular kinds of LOs to be created; see below).

Those teachers who had received training on pedagogy, appreciated it, other teachers wanted such training on pedagogical use of LOs. French teachers are the only ones that stated that they needed no help with pedagogy.

The system: Demonstration Portal

The ‘system’, as far as teachers are concerned, is to be able to search the repositories of LOs and to be able to use them either directly within the system or to download them onto their networks or desktops. Access to the system is through the Demonstration Portal, which has developed over the pilot period. Figure 1 shows the Homepage of the final version. There are various features of the Demonstration Portal that are linked to the Homepage:

Search: this is available in two parts of the Demonstration Portal; the Homepage and Advanced Search. The Homepage offers a browse by subject and a search by specific learning object (title). The advanced search refines the search into categories of Keyword, Age; Subject; Language; Learning Object/Learning Asset.

Basket: this is the virtual space where learning resources found in a users search can be stored, organised and managed.

Authoring area: within this area facilitates for the creation of LOs by sequencing learning objects and multimedia resources are available. Users can use templates in this area; for example, a ‘crossword’ template can be used to construct a crossword as a closed activity that requires pupils to fill in a missing word or phrase. Other templates include multiple choice questions, slide shows that present sequences of images etc.

Virtual Classroom: this provides a way for teachers to create and manage an electronic environment for pupils to participate in a learning experience.

Create/Contribute

a.  Add a learning resource: this is used to upload LOs and/or LAs created by any system user to the repository.

b.  Edit Metadata: this is used to edit the metadata of LOs or LAs that are uploaded to the Demonstration Portal (metadata describe the LO for the system).

c.  Evaluate a LO: this section is used to obtain feedback from teachers who use learning resources provided by CELEBATE and these ratings can be seen by other teaches.

Overview: this provides background information about the project.

News: this provides news of the latest developments in the project

Advice: this provides teachers with pedagogical suggestions and guidelines for the use of LOs; project questions and answers; glossary of terms; useful links; the technical specification for LOs; CELEBRATE metadata.

Community: this provides a discussion forum where teachers can share ideas, comments, and experiences with other teachers of their own country, as well as ask questions, find colleagues online and seek partners for collaborative projects.

In general, teachers found that the system of searching and obtaining LOs is very ‘long winded’ and results in too much information. Initial versions of the Demonstration Portal, drew criticism from teachers but they prefer the final version.

Figure 1: the Homepage of the Demonstration Portal

Local technical problems

While there were technical problems related to the Demonstration Portal noted in interviews; these problems only appeared to occur in the early stages of the pilot phase and have now been resolved. However technical problems were noted in other areas unrelated to the Demonstration Portal and these were predominantly local network problems.

One of the most interesting technical problems to have occurred is related to pre-established systems. In Norway it was noted that schools using Linux had problems registering on the Demonstration Portal (which involved completing a questionnaire) and accessing the VLE; Hungarian schools have had problems that were related to the school’s application systems. In Finland, problems that initially occurred in one school, where downloading LOs to the ‘C-drive’ on the pupils’ computers was a problem, are no longer evident when the publishers, National Board of Education and Lingonet[3] changed the default setting of LOs that required this. In Northern Ireland the network that schools are connected to, P2K is centrally managed and this caused problems with downloading. Because of this some LOs are blocked by their filtering system and they have to e-mail this network to get the LOs unblocked.

Search

The use of the search facility enabled teachers to find LOs that they might use; teachers mainly used the Demonstration Portal for such a search. However, as Google is a common search engine, teachers reactions were coloured by expectations of such a sophisticated engine, which the Demonstration Portal could not reached. Below is a list of the main issues raised by teachers;

·  The search by subject was too broad and needs to be subdivided into topics, but this in turn requires an accurate tagging of the metadata, which the Portal searches.

·  The search by age range was considered as a guide to teachers but most teachers did not see it as a necessary search option.

·  Too many results were given after one search and as a consequence teachers had to go through pages of results; a task that was time consuming.

·  The metadata, and brief descriptions for each LO were inadequate and did not give enough information about the LO. Teachers therefore had to open (preview) individual LOs to check the relevance to their subject.

The Basket

This was used by teachers to store LOs that they thought they might use in a lesson. Teachers thought the basket was particularly useful as it avoided unnecessary surfing by pupils over the internet. Some teachers thought that the basket needed more organisation because it could easily become full with LOs that the teacher may use and later, when it came to using a particular LO, the teacher may not be able to allocate it to a class. One teacher illustrates this point in the following scenario:

I was certainly discussing it with a couple of my colleagues and it was kind of once you find something good you thought right I will use that for my Year 8s [pupils aged 12-13] next week and then you have got your Year 8s in front of you and you have got them in settled and quiet and then you are standing at the board for five or ten minutes trying to find that exact learning object and by that stage you know the flow of the lesson is interrupted you know.
(UK report, p7)

Such a facility requires a ‘current’ and ‘archive’ structure to the basket, or one that can be organised according to classes the teacher teaches. This point illustrates how teachers have effectively used the basket as a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) because they are using LOs in a classroom directly from the Basket. Teachers also allow students direct access to the LOs and the Demonstration Portal performs like a ‘class area’ or ‘workspace’ in a VLE. Many teachers did not therefore understand the function of the Virtual Classroom area of the Portal, seeing that the Basket performed the same tasks as the Virtual Classroom did.

Learning Objects

General reactions to Learning Objects

It is conspicuous by the analysis of the answers, that everybody’s opinion – without any exceptions! - was positive about the effect of the use of LOs. They think that through using LOs they can hold their pupils attention more successfully and they can persuade them easily toward individual work and thinking.
(Hungary report)

The above quote gives a very positive view of how teachers have reacted to using the LOs and this reflects the overall view amongst them. But teacher have been critical of some of the LOs they used. The following reactions and comments by teachers are, unsurprisingly, based on teachers experience of particular LOs and the relevance of the LO to their teaching topic and therefore reactions have varied.