I am leading a session at the SEDA conference next week about whether e-learning encourages good pedagogy and this made me think about what I was going to say to the group in the way of introduction. So I thought I would try out some ideas here.
I am Director of the Learning and Teaching Centre at the University of Worcester and I also teach web design which puts me in the privileged position of working in a teaching room where all the students have computers.
I first started using computers with students in the 70’s, at first as part of extra-curricular activities and then as part of my core teaching. There was no web so much of the work involved simulations on standalone machines.
It was not until the advent of the web in the early 90’s that I was able to use networked tools easily. It was then that I started to use a web server, which I set up myself, and a conferencing system, BSCW from the University of Heidelberg.
I was able to set up systems where students communicated with one another and with me using asynchronous conferencing and I provided information via web pages. All of this was relatively open and I could join anybody I liked to the system.
The University then set up its own system for BSCW and gradually the controls were applied so that participants were limited to registered students and relatively complex procedures were set up for use of the facilities. This culminated in 2003 with the setting up of WebCT which took control away from even the tutor let alone the student and causing a serious degradation in the flexibility of use of on-line systems.
Since then I have been experimenting with the use of blogs as a communication tool and the use of open web pages as information sources in an attempt to avoid the issues of students not being able to access learning materials because they could not log on to WebCT.
I am now in the process of extending use of blogs and wikis to enhance and encourage student learning.
