Neil Morris
University of Leeds, UK

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.89.21

Students entering Higher Education (HE) bring with them increasing expectations about how they will be taught and how, when and where they will interact with learning resources. They carry about their person a variety of powerful smartphones and tablet devices capable of accessing and interacting with content in a wide range of formats, and they are accustomed to using them to manage their learning and social lives. According to recent figures, almost 49% of UK adults own a smartphone and over 10% own a tablet device (Ofcom, 2012); anecdotal figures suggest that the figures are much higher on our university campuses. However, we are only just beginning to realise the potential of technology to enhance learning, and the concept of blended learning is relatively unfamiliar and far from universally accepted. For the uninitiated, blended learning is the term used to describe techniques and approaches to enhance face-to-face learning, as happens in lectures, tutorials, practical classes and such like. Blended learning techniques generally involve the use of technology, either within the classroom or for use in self-directed learning, and are used with students who are campus learners (as opposed to distance learners). Blended learning, digital, e-learning or technology-enhanced learning strategies are an increasingly common feature of HE institutions (HEIs) around the globe.

Blended learning has many potential advantages for learners, and although its use is commonly associated with high student satisfaction it also presents a number of challenges for learners, teachers and institutions. Primary amongst these is the seemingly huge chasm between learners’ competence with technology and the perception of their ability to harness technology effectively. Whilst students are usually adept at posting and sharing content on Facebook, few have a clear understanding of online privacy or other essential digital literacy skills. Coupled with this, time-starved academic teachers, faced with a myriad of competing priorities, also lack the digital literacy skills and technical abilities to fully harness technology to enhance their teaching. For institutions, there are a number of challenges, including the need to equip students and staff with digital literacy and technical skills, respond to student expectations, respond to innovations in the sector and invest in the infrastructure required to support technology-enhanced learning.

The primary focus of this article is to describe potential uses of technology to enhance students’ learning in a blended learning environment, providing evidence of effectiveness and impact on student learning and engagement, where available. Ways in which these technologies can be harnessed to enhance research impact are also noted, where appropriate.

Multimedia resources can enhance learning

There is growing pedagogical evidence that use of audio and video in learning and teaching can have a major impact on students’ learning. Innovative use of audio and video in learning and teaching allows students to engage with learning in a variety of ways, to work collaboratively, to share learning materials and to showcase their creativity and research. For staff, publication of learning resources in a variety of formats encourages deeper student engagement and learning, and designing and delivering teaching and assessments using audio and video is in keeping with expectations from students, employers and government strategy on use of technology in higher education. Furthermore, publication of research outputs (e.g. research seminars, research data, etc.) in multimedia formats has benefits for the impact and dissemination of research and for enhancing research-led teaching.

One of the simplest mechanisms for providing students with audio resources is to record teaching sessions with a digital audio recorder. Students greatly appreciate being able to ‘listen again’ to lectures, tutorials, feedback provided in supervision meetings and other staff–student interactions. Importantly, data suggest that such initiatives do not adversely affect students’ attendance at teaching sessions. Results from a recent study with biomedical sciences undergraduates in the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the University of Leeds, where a large number of lectures are provided as podcasts, indicated that over 70% of students reported having listened to more than half of the recordings available to them, with most students usually listening to each recording once or twice. Interestingly, over 90% of students perceived podcasts to be ‘important or very important’ to their study, with 90% stating that their concentration in lectures was improved as a result of access to podcasts (Smith & Morris, unpublished data). Furthermore, there is evidence that providing students with podcasts of lectures can increase academic performance (McKinney et al. 2009; Morris, 2010). More sophisticated mechanisms to record lectures, using event (or lecture) capture technologies, can provide students with a synchronised resource, containing video, audio, presentation materials and animations, all available via a simple web-link. These resources are hugely popular with all kinds of learners (Owston et al. 2011), including high achieving students (who can skip to a challenging section), students struggling with the material (who can listen multiple times, pause and replay when necessary) and students for whom English is not their native language (Shaw & Molnar, 2011).

A natural step from recording live teaching events is to provide students with pre-recorded teaching materials, to access in advance of, or after, live teaching events. These might include multimedia pre-practical resources, assessment information or additional materials, which can be produced in a range of tools, depending on the sophistication required. A number of institutions have produced multimedia resources of this kind (e.g. University of Bristol’s eBiolabs, www.bristol.ac.uk/ebiolabs/) to support students’ understanding and preparation for practical sessions (e.g. health and safety training, equipment competence training) as well as improve student engagement, performance and use of laboratory time and demonstrators (Whittle & Bickerdike, 2012). Students can be mandated to access these resources in advance of practicals, via a virtual learning environment (VLE) or can access them within practicals, using tablet devices (Morris et al. 2012a). An increasingly common term within e-learning circles is ‘flipped’ teaching or classrooms, which describes the phenomenon of providing students with pre-class exercises using online materials (e.g. recorded lectures, multimedia resources, activities, etc.) and using face-to-face time to discuss problems and learn collaboratively.

Using existing resources to enhance student learning

Open educational resources (OERs) are learning and teaching materials that are freely available online for anyone to use. OERs can consist of full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, videos, tests, software and any other tools, materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge. OERs come in many different formats, including text, images, multimedia, audio or video and can be found on a large number of websites. OERs are licensed to permit their free use or re-purposing (reuse, revision, remixing or redistribution) by others. Normally, small units of OER (e.g. animations, videos, podcasts) seem to be most attractive from both the re-use and production angles, as they are easier to embed into an existing lecture, module or programme. Many teachers embed OER material into teaching sessions (e.g. lectures, practical classes, workshops, seminars) and/or provide links to OERs via the VLE to enhance self-directed learning opportunities. There are many benefits for educators and learners that can arise from creating, sharing and utilising OERs in student education.

Most OERs are licenced using Creative Commons or similar licences (for more information see creativecommons.org). Applying for a Creative Commons licence to materials means that the creator of the resources retains copyright, but allows others to make use of, copy and distribute the resource and may allow changes to the resource. There are six Creative Commons licences that can be applied to OERs, which give the user differing levels of rights to use and alter the resource. One of the common features of all Creative Commons licences is ‘By Attribution’ which means users must credit the original creator, thereby ensuring that the creator is acknowledged in all subsequent use of their resource.

The production and use of OERs is growing rapidly worldwide at all levels of education, including within the HE sector. In the USA, a number of leading universities have been forerunners in this area, most obviously Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who have released virtually all of their course materials freely online (MIT open courseware). A number of UK HEIs have a leading position in OER production and use (e.g. Nottingham, Leicester and Oxford). Podcasts of lectures and interviews with academics released by the University of Oxford, via the iTunes U website, have been downloaded over 18 million times by listeners in over 185 countries.

OERs can be found by searching dedicated OER repositories (e.g. Jorum, Merlot, HumBox or Khan Academy), by using OER search engines (e.g. OER Commons, OER Dynamic Search Engine), photographic or other slide sharing websites (e.g. Flickr, Slideshare, ImageBank), Institutional and Learned Society pages (e.g. American Physiological Society, Society for Neuroscience) or other web-pages, particularly those that are based in the United States. Some of these repositories and search engines will allow filtering of search results by content type, level or ranking.

Mobile devices can enhance student learning and engagement

As more of our students enter campuses with smartphones and tablet devices, universities are looking at ways in which these tools can be harnessed to enhance the student learning experience. As the ‘bring your own device’ ethos looks set to expand, universities will be expected to ensure that their mobile resources and services are platform agnostic, providing all students, whatever the type of device they own, with a high-quality user experience. A recent study (Morris et al. 2012b) into the impact of a tablet device on students’ studying behaviour illustrated that students make extensive use of such tools to study (over 3½ hours per day on learning activities) and use them in preference to existing devices (e.g. laptops). Tablet devices can also help encourage students to make use of audio/video (e.g. iTunes U) and interactive learning resources (e.g. quizzes), due to the ease of accessing such resources via apps. Tablet devices also offer opportunities for students to improve their learning within teaching classes (e.g. practicals/fieldwork). A recent trial using tablet devices in a neuroanatomy practical class illustrated that students greatly value the opportunity to access relevant apps (e.g. 3D brain, HD Brain, Sylvius brain scans) whilst learning (Morris et al. 2012a).

Social media in higher education

Social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have pervaded every aspect of our lives over the last 5 to 10 years, but their uptake by teaching staff within HE has been slow. Clearly, our students make extensive use of social media tools in their social lives, but they are now also beginning to recognise the benefits offered by these tools to enhance their learning, collaboration, access to information and professional development. Academics have been cautious about engaging with students in these predominately social spaces, but as the tools have grown in sophistication and functionality, usage by teachers has also expanded.

Twitter, a micro-blogging tool, allows individuals to ‘follow’ one another, thus receiving information from a controlled group. Tweets are text-based messages of up to 140 characters, often with links to websites or images. Tweets can be posted or read on a PC, laptop or mobile device and can be integrated with other social media tools (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs). Twitter has become an incredibly successful instant communication tool for broadcasters (e.g. BBC Breaking News), companies, recruiters, advertisers, charities, journals, funders and, of course, individuals. For students, using Twitter as a learning tool can give them access to a constant stream of material relevant to their course, if they follow appropriate individuals and organisations. For example, a physiology student wishing to keep up to date with news in their discipline could follow learned societies (e.g. @ThePhySoc), journals (e.g. @NatureNews, @sciencemagazine, @JPhysiol), research groups, individual research scientists and potential employers.

For teachers, Twitter has many potential uses as a tool to enhance learning and teaching and for research purposes (Lowe & Lowe, 2012). Individual teachers can post information to support students’ learning, re-tweet (i.e. re-post someone else’s tweet) materials from other sources which may be relevant to their students, and encourage communication between students and staff. Many academics have Twitter accounts and post information about their research news (e.g. papers published, latest findings from the lab), which their students find incredibly useful to help with their understanding of the discipline. Some teachers also set up specific Twitter accounts to support modules or programmes, providing students with materials relevant to the specific activity. This type of approach is highly appreciated by students as it encourages them to read beyond the course materials and provides them with access to materials that their academic teachers have recommended.

Facebook is seen by many academics as a more difficult social networking tool to engage with than Twitter. Students have traditionally viewed Facebook as a purely social tool, and have resisted attempts by academics to use it as an extension of a VLE. However, many academics have successfully engaged with students through this medium, particularly in the areas of community building, transition to HE resources and staff–student social interaction. Facebook also offers students access to educational materials, by ‘liking’ pages from organisations, companies and individuals. Facebook is increasingly engaging with the education sector, and has recently launched ‘Groups for Schools’ which are private group areas (e.g. for a module, course, society, etc.) that only students at a particular HEI can join and use for collaborative learning. Therefore, it is likely that social learning in this space will increase significantly in the future.

LinkedIn is a particularly useful tool for students to learn about during their time at university. This tool, considered as a professional social networking tool, allows individuals to post professional profiles (in the form of a CV), link up with colleagues and external partners, join communities, post job opportunities and engage in professional discussions. For students, having a professional LinkedIn profile can assist them with career development and job hunting. LinkedIn is also a source of educational materials for students who subscribe to the pages of relevant organisations, companies, journals, etc.

In conclusion, technology has the potential to enhance students’ engagement and learning within their discipline, when used within a blended learning environment. Academics who engage with technology-enhanced learning also support development of students’ digital literacy skills, which are sought after by employers. Blended learning offers students a variety of ways to interact with learning materials and makes productive use of the technology available to them.

References

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Morris NP (2010). Podcasts and mobile assessment enhance student learning experience and academic performance. Bioscience Education 16. Available at: www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/journal/vol16/

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Morris NP, Ramsay L & Chauhan V (2012b). Can a tablet device enhance undergraduate science students study behaviours? Adv Physiol Educ 36, 97–107.

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