A key part of my role as a Learning Technologist is to critically evaluate technologies for their application by the staff and the students.

I consider various overlapping aspects in relation to any technology, including:

• accessibility and usability,
• learner control and ownership,
• training and support requirements for staff and students,
• look and feel,
• privacy and security,
• integration with existing systems and processes (e.g. assessment) in the faculty,
• cost and longevity.

I use the following two examples to illustrate my understanding of the constraints and benefits of different technology. The links at the foot of this page provide further evidence, beyond the two examples below, of my understanding of the constraints and benefits of different technology.

Wikis

I was asked to recommend a new approach regarding a large-scale (225 students) collaborative group project which involved students in groups of 10 planning and scheduling activities, sharing information and files, co-authoring content, and record-keeping. In previous years students had used email and their own social media accounts to communicate and work together but they had found it difficult to self-organise and there were time-consuming disputes amongst students in which staff had had to intervene.

I considered a range of alternatives (e.g. Facebook groups, shared Google Documents) but discounted these due to the problems that using personal email and social media accounts often entail (i.e. conflating private/personal life with academic activities) and the problem of providing staff access. I recommended using a social technology designed for faciltating asynchronous communication and collaborative writing: wikis.

A wiki for each group would provide a single space for students to collaborate and it would keep a record of users’ individual contributions to the wiki, which could be helpful if disputes arose again.  I discussed with the lecturer the various constraints and benefits of two different wiki systems: the wiki tool available in Blackboard and the free wiki system available from PBworks. These are summarised below.

Benefits of using wikis from PBworks include:

• the ability to have threaded discussions via the comments at the foot of the wiki page (enabling clearer communication about the content of the page);
• the ability for students to adapt the look and feel of the wiki to suit their own preferences (enabling greater ownership and control over their own learning);
• students retain access to the wiki after the module of study ends (whereas students lose access to Blackboard module sites after 100 days);
• students can choose to receive email notifications of changes to the wikis;
• the wikis can be made available to the public for viewing, commenting and editing.

The constraints of wikis from PBworks, in contrast to those in Blackboard, are:

• students cannot log in with their usual university user account (they need a different username and password);
• student-generated content cannot easily be locked down and submitted into the university’s assessment system;
• content is not secured and backed up by the university, which runs the risk of it being lost.

I recommended using PBworks because students could retain access to wikis after their module finished, which was not possible with the Blackboard alternative. Secondly, although it was important that student-generated content was not lost, it would not be formally assessed so  it was not absolutely essential that the content was hosted and backed up by the university. I also suggested that with greater control of the technology and the content they produced, students may be more likely to take greater ownership of the project in PBworks than if using Blackboard wikis.

Reflection

On reflection, I believe that the choice of PBworks was the right one. Students, however, could still benefit from better support and scaffolding. In future runs of the project I intend to provide more guidance and examples on how students can make custom navigation pages and embed images on wiki pages, as these two points have caused difficulties for a number of groups. I would also like to  have a mid-project sharing session in which students volunteer to present and discuss their use of the wiki to highlight any functions and approaches they have found particularly useful. This would be a useful way to help students experiencing difficulties to learn from their more confident peers.

With the European Court of Justice ruling in October 2015 that the ‘Safe Harbour’ agreement is invalid, it will be necessary to re-assess whether PBworks remains suitable for our students, as this may be a constraint on its use.

TurningPoint: constraints & benefits

The university uses an in-class polling system called TurningPoint. I have frequently recommended its use as a way to increase engagement during face-to-face sessions and to foster more discursive and less didactic approaches to teaching and learning.

Benefits:

• Polling systems help lecturers to ask questions  which students will actually respond to in classes and lecture(e.g. to stimulate critical thinking; check students’ understanding; help in classroom management)s.
• Polling questions provide a different focus and by ‘committing’ to a response students are more likely to remember and understand the subject at hand.
• Students can respond anonymously.
• Students can gauge their own level of understanding by comparing their own response to the aggregated class responses.

Constraints:

• It takes up valuable teaching time to book, collect from a central location, handing out and collecting ‘clickers’ back in.
• Question-types are limited (by the kind of clicker devices the university has – buttons marked 0-9  only) so most lecturers use only multiple choice questions with a single correct answer.
• Students are often unsure whether their response has been successfully received – the only indication of success is a small green light (difficult to see in brightly lit rooms) which flashes once on the clicker.

In order to take advantage of the benefits of TurningPoint and to ameliorate the constraints, I led the introduction of ResponseWare in the faculty (and add-on to TurningPoint), which enables users to respond using their own Internet-enabled mobile device, instead of (or in a addition to) a clicker provided by the university.

Benefits of ResponseWare:

• A wider range of question/answer types possible (e.g. students can enter words and phrases).
• Clear feedback when a response is received.
• Students can send private messages to the lecturer (e.g. to ask their own questions privately – good for less confident students).

As with any technology there are constraints too, such as the need for mobile devices to be charged and, of course, for students to have a suitable mobile device with them.

Reflection

On reflection, the addition of ResponseWare has been beneficial to the teaching and learning experiences of staff and students. More members of staff are now using the polling system and there have been very few technical issues since its introduction in the faculty.

I would like to have focused more attention on the pedagogic use of the technology during the introduction of ResponseWare as I have noticed that single-answer multiple choice questions remain the most common question type employed. There is plenty of literature  regarding peer instruction (e.g. Mazur) which I could introduce to staff to help them make polling activities more effective for their learners, for example.

If I were start afresh I would aim to identify an academic willing to ‘champion’ the technology as I have found ideas about new technologies are more easily accepted when they appears to come from the academic community itself.

It is also worth reflecting on problems which might arise if the use of ResponseWare becomes more widespread in the faculty. There may, for example, be an expectation that students have a mobile device with which they can respond to polls. If so, whether students are expected to bring their own device (BYOD) or they are supplied with a device by the university becomes a key area of concern. Both require careful thinking as there will be, at the very least, an impact on student and staff experiences and IT support requirements.

Evidence

For evidence of my understanding of the constraints and benefits of different technology see the following posts: