Author: Ian Ruffell (i.ruffell@classics.arts.gla.ac.uk)
JISC e-Learning Activity Area: technology-enhanced learning environments
Higher Education Academy Subject Centre: history classics and archaeology
Case study tags: online learning, an effect on exam results, an effect on student personal development, innovation in learning and teaching, staff satisfaction with e-learning,an influence on policy, an effect on social equality, an effect on learning, tangible benefits of e-learning, university of glasgow, technology-enhanced learning environments, history classics and archaeology
Background & Context
Why did you use this e-learning approach?
The principal reason for deciding on an e-learning approach was a strong personal commitment to encouraging students to take an active role in learning and to become critical thinkers. All my honours-level courses emphasise these elements, whether in the classroom or online, and two of them involve formal and assessed online elements. I also wanted to use online learning to foster a sense of community among the students.
These pedagogic aims stem in part from a social and political view of higher education as a means to develop active and engaged citizens.
Supplementary reasons included encouragement within the Faculty and University to develop e-learning approaches, and factors involving accessibility, although I am conscious that online learning represents a double-edged sword in this respect.
What was the context in which you used this e-learning approach?
Glasgow Classics courses have traditionally been of the 'chalk-and-talk' variety. Despite some moves towards seminars, our courses at both pre-honours (team-taught in years 1 & 2) and honours level (largely taught by individual lecturers) are both heavily based around lectures. Having said that, there has been strong support from my Head of Department for the development of e-learning and in many ways the department more generally is supportive, if not always proactive in this respect.
Honours courses range from ten to forty. At thirteen, my group was at the low end of this scale. In a similarly structured and delivered (but not identical) course last year, the numbers were slightly but not significantly higher. The smaller group sizes were potentially useful for encouraging more focused discussion both in seminars and online.
Although some of the students had experienced the previous partially-online ('blended') course and specifically said that they were opting for a similar course, the majority of students on the course had not had prior experience (either because they were junior honours/3rd year) or for other reasons. Given the lack of prior experience in online learning, this was a potential problem.
What was the design?
The course was a thematic and generic one, examining the Greek genre of paroidia (hexameter parodic verse) and some related/comparative material (satyr play, comedy, parodic vase-painting, prose parodies by Lucian).
The aim was to integrate online and face-to-face learning. Two students per week would post online reports on related (but not identical) aspects of the topic under discussion, two days before a face-to-face seminar. Students were expected to contribute ahead of the seminar by discussion online in response to the posted reports. The students who posted the reports were expected to introduce the seminar discussion and all students were expected to provide follow-up comments.
Assessment for the course consisted of the following elements:
- online reports on the topic (usually text or genre) of the week (20%)
- online discussion (10%)
- seminar contributions (20%)
- end of module project (50%)
The end of module project was left open as to format and medium, although it could include a standard essay or an online or offline electronic contribution of some form.
In addition, the majority of the texts studied were provided online rather than a print medium. Partly this was a choice driven by the lack of available translations and partly because of cost implications (the range of texts studied). However, one aim originally was that this might lead students to use texts in creative ways (e.g. hypertext or via a wiki).
The design decisions were partly influenced by background reading on online course design, partly by awareness of the existing student experience at Glasgow and partly by some reflections on previous online experiments in Glasgow. In particular the assessed components reflect less successful unassessed online discussion at both honours and pre-honours level, and the reports were an attempt to provide more focus to the discussion.
For further details about the design, see our Honours handbook (scroll down to CL7: Putting the Gods in Their Place).
How did you implement and embed this e-learning approach?
There was no specific training for staff or students. All students at Glasgow have to pass a basic certificate of IT competence in their pre-honours years.
There was considerable discussion of the 'project' component of the course, and as part of that ad hoc training was offered (e.g. in web design) as part of the negotiation over topic and method. In practice, more support was needed for face-to-face components, particularly the seminar-leading element, which had one student originally seeking to leave the course.
There was no formal evaluation for this course, although there was (as with similar courses I have run), an informal dialogue on process as part of both face-to-face and online encounters.
In terms of problems in implementation, the provision and use of texts online was less successful than I would have liked: the former owing to time pressures (which led to some out-of-copyright texts being used rather than translating them myself) and the latter needed a lot more thought (see Lessons Learned). Discussion was patchier than I had wanted (see Lessons Learned).
Technology Used
What technologies and/or e-tools were available to you?
The online components were conducted through the departmental VLE, a Moodle installation (latterly migrated to a combined faculty installation). The main components used were forums and wiki, but a variety of other technologies were available.
Tangible benefits
What tangible benefits did this e-learning approach produce?
In terms of assessment, this (along with its partner online course on comedy) showed strong performances from the students, with a mean and median of over B3 (low 2:1) - slightly above average for, but not out of line with the other departmental scores. The projects were double-marked (and sampled by our external), but I do have residual concerns about potential grade inflation because of the nature of some of the assessment.
At its best, there was genuine dialogue between the students and some challenging arguments developed through the discussion, both face-to-face and online. For some students, at least, there was a marked increase in their capacity for critical discussion through different media.
As part of a series of courses that use online methodologies, this could be said to have tangible institutional benefits, in that the Department of Classics is driving moves in the Faculty of Arts towards e-learning, both through contact with HATII (see Ian Anderson's case study) and through university-wide events on e-learning in which Classics case studies have played a role.
I have reservations about whether there were any further tangible (or measurable) benefits on this occasion, except in that it has given me further food for thought about how to develop e-learning on the next occasion.
Did implementation of this e-learning approach have any disadvantages or drawbacks?
In organisational and preparation terms, there certainly weren't any significant time gains and potentially time losses, with online interactions and quite a heavy and challenging assessment load.
There were problems, I felt, with marrying this particular material to this particular approach. While I was keen to encourage the students to be exploratory in their approach to evidence on which there has not been a substantial amount of previous research, I think they needed more of a roadmap. While this meant that students were freed somewhat from the tyranny of the secondary reading, some found it a bit disorienting (see Lessons Learned).
How did this e-learning approach accord with or differ from any relevant departmental and/or institutional strategies?
See some of the comments in context. e-Learning has been developing slowly in the department, and perhaps the most notable developments otherwise have been at pre-honours, in the area of language-learning (use of the desktop Latin trainer Flexio and of the Moodle quiz module in particular) and visual and material culture (again formative use of the quiz module to back up online provision of visual material). Support forums for pre-honours courses have been used by a number of colleagues with varying success.
e-Learning approaches in the Faculty and University have been somewhat piecemeal, and the narrative on the Arts side has been to focus on beacon departments. In the past three years, the University has standardised on the Moodle VLE (whereas previously there were a range of VLEs used by different entities within the University) and there is a growing network of support for and promotion of Moodle co-ordinated through the University's learning and teaching centre.
Lessons Learned
Summary and Reflection
Compared to the course which I taught in a similar vein last year on Greek comedy, also taught using 'blended learning', this course developed less strong discussion and argument. This may not necessarily be due to the teaching methodology, but partly because the issues in this course were less clearly identified and far less contentious. The course was particularly asking students to consider the concept of parody and the texts involved arguably had far less at stake than some of the big issues in Greek comedy.
As part of this, there was also less sense of community, in both positive and negative terms. The previous group had some very strong personalities (although that brought attendant issues of moderation). There may also be issues around online community-building: last year we had a twice-weekly seminar (plus online discussion) and this year only the single weekly seminar. This did not create the same community and in retrospect I did far too little to establish the online community. It was a deliberate policy on this outing to keep my presence in the forums to a minimum in order to give the students more room and to avoid the discussion turning into a series of individual dialogues. On reflection, I think this went too far.
For a heavily textual course, the use of texts in many ways was in general poorer on this outing. Some of this was unrelated to e-learning (e.g. a lot of texts required closer familiarity with Homer than was the baseline for the course). There was, however, some very good work relating texts to material culture. There was also some spontaneous creative writing by some members of the group, although the incorporation of this into a final project was disappointingly unreflective.
If I run this course again, then I think there are a number of elements that need to be looked at:
- earlier and fuller text provision
- samples of engagement with texts (use of wiki, commentary, hypertext, etc.)
- new background reading and reference provided online
- some online modules introducing more of Homer to the students
- specific training and more direction for end-of-module projects
- more engagement in the forums
Further Evidence
'In terms of assessment, this... showed strong performances from the students'.
'At its best, there was genuine dialogue between the students and some challenging arguments developed through the discussion, both face-to-face and online.'