My role, as a Learning Technologist, involves supporting teaching staff as they begin to explore different media to enhance their students' learning. One of the ways our team try to do this is through providing a website packed with 'how to' guides and links to further resources - Designing for e-Learning at the UoP (UoP username and password required) For my final PGCE module, 'Researching Relations between Theory and Practice', I decided to critically evaluate the site's effectiveness.
'But shouldn't user-testing be done throughout the design process?' I hear you say. Well yes... ideally. Unfortunately in the real world, we simply don't have the time! We always ask for feedback but, unless something is badly wrong, such as a link not working, we very rarely get it.
I began my evaluation with sending out a survey - unfortunately this didn't get to all the teaching staff it was intended for and I think the responses reflected this. The site was also the subject of a teaching observation where I observed my tutor (a typical user) navigate D4e-L.
Results of Evaluation
Positive comments:
- good to find out what other people are doing around the Uni
- useful explanation around 'what is e-learning'
- packed with useful information
- vibrant and welcoming
- links to external resources really useful
- contact details of learning technologists
- FAQs useful
- site difficult to find - search for 'e-learning' brings up many out of date, untitled EDaLT pages
- too many links on the front page makes navigation complicated for non-techies
- too text heavy
- information out of date - no information about SharePoint
- too many assumptions that people know about things before hitting the site
- images take up alot of top space so you have to scroll down to read text
- images should be relevant to content
- showcase faculty links not obvious
- Creating content should be more prominent on front page
- could flow better - eg. link SSBTV as an example of using video in 'Creating Content' section.
- Learning Technologist pages should include photos to aid feeling that a person can be contacted
- not all links working - content of each link should be evaluated for quality and relevance.
- refrain from making the site too big as it may ultimately undermine its usefulness
- explain the examples of best practice - include case studies
Analysis:
I am pleased that the staff questioned value D4eL as a useful resource. This backs up my own experiences when I have presented it and confirms that there is a 'need' for it. What interests me most, however, are the criticisms and how these can inform the site's improvement. Many of these could be fixed quickly and easily from a technical point of view but this evaluation has prompted me to think more deeply about the purposes of the site. These are:
- to promote good practice for designing new or converting existing learning materials to be delivered online.
- to connect like-minded people for collaboration on e-learning projects and avoid 're-inventing the wheel'.
- to advertise the services of Learning Technologists and other e-learning support teams.
Who decides what is good practice? An individual? A national body such as JISC? QAA? In my experience JISC and other such organisations disseminate good practice, informed by funding innovative projects and research, to a national and international e-learning community. Wenger (1998) characterises a 'community of practice' as 'members brought together by joining in common activities and by what they have learned through their mutual engagement in these activities' . University teaching staff automatically belong to such a community as we are all working to Plymouth's strategies and policies.
'To connect like-minded people and avoid re-inventing the wheel' - although I work for all faculties and am fairly well placed to connect people and projects, I suspect that loads of effective e-learning solutions originating from the UoP remain unknown to me. The Horizon Report (2007) comments on the rise in popularity of 'social networking' - giving students the opportunity to contribute, share, communicate and collaborate with peers. Siemens (2006) describes 'connectivism' as a 'new learning theory for the digital age'. He states that 'learning is a process of connecting specialised nodes of information sources. A learner can exponentially improve their own learning by plugging into an existing network.'
With these in mind I returned to the criticisms and looked at what I, personally, couldn't fix as easily:-
- information out of date - no information about SharePoint
- too many assumptions that people know about things before hitting the site
to be reconsidered.' I don't consider myself to be an e-learning expert - e-learning is a huge area and I'm learning all the time! However, I do feel able to contribute ideas and share informed opinions with others involved with e-learning - a 'community of practice'.
Conclusions
From the above considerations, and with the availability of Web 2.0 technologies enabling real-time collaboration, I feel 'Designing for e-Learning at the UoP' would be a more effective resource if it was presented as a wiki. According to the most well-known wiki, 'WikiPedia', a wiki is ' a website that allows visitors to add, remove, edit and change content, typically without the need for registration. It also allows for linking among any number of pages. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring.'
But would staff engage in 'collaborative authorship'? Obviously introductory sessions to wikis with opportunities to try out contributing would be essential. However, research carried out by Wheeler (2007) suggests that those new to wikis require 'leadership' in the form of moderators - in this case managers of information. I'm prepared to put up the site so far and continue to contribute - is anyone else?
