e‐Learning Excellence Awards 2015 An Anthology of Case Histories Edited by Dan Remenyi
e‐Learning 2015: An Anthology of Case Histories: An anthology of case his‐ tories. Copyright © 2015 The authors First published October 2015 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the pur‐ poses of critical review, no part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copy‐ right holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright De‐ signs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6‐10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Applications for the copyright holder’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publish‐ ers. Disclaimer: While every effort has been made by the editor, authors and the publishers to ensure that all the material in this book is accurate and correct at the time of going to press, any error made by readers as a result of any of the material, formulae or other information in this book is the sole responsibility of the reader. Readers should be aware that the URLs quoted in the book may change or be damaged by malware between the time of publishing and accessing by readers. Note to readers: Some papers have been written by authors who use the American form of spelling and some use the British. These two different approaches have been left unchanged. ISBN: 978‐1‐910810‐69‐9 Printed by Lightning Source POD Published by: Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited, Reading, RG4 9SJ, United Kingdom, info@academic‐publishing.org Available from www.academic‐bookshop.com
Preface .......................................................................................................... vi Experiences with a Remote Photovoltaic Laboratory Richard Blanchard and Sheryl Williams ...................................................... 1 Building an online faculty development opportunity: the approach taken and the feedback received on The 12 Apps of Christmas @DIT initiative Frances Boylan .......................................................................................... 17 Testing ‘flipped learning’ by marrying online and face‐to‐face interactions Jeffrey Browitt .......................................................................................... 28 Intercontinental Masters’ Program in Adult learning & Global Change: An e‐Learning Case History Garnet Grosjean, Ph.D. ............................................................................. 39 Using e‐learning to build accounting competency amongst first year students Alice Luby, Frances Boylan and Tony Kiely ............................................... 54 Case Study: Podcasting Studio and Smart Classroom Wendy Pate and Allison Ruppino .............................................................. 71 The Role of Programming Language Concepts and APOS Theory, promoting Computational Thinking Wilhelm Rothman and Dr Andre de la Harpe ........................................... 83 Lessons from a B‐Learning Course in Information Literacy for Engineering Freshmen Armando Sousa, Manuel Firmino Torres, Cristina Sousa Lopes, Teresa Oliveira Ramos and Luciano Moreira ...................................................... 96 Formal learning for out‐of‐school children in developing countries Hester Stubbé, Rebecca Telford and Aiman Badri .................................. 114 Learning to Teach Online ‐ Evolving approaches to professional development for global reach and impact Simon McIntyre, Karin Watson and Negin Mirriahi ................................ 128
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Transforming the international student experience: a unique online learning resource providing transition for international students entering UK Higher Education Julie Watson ........................................................................................... 141 Effects of Virtual Conversations with American Students on International Students’ Intercultural Communicative Competence Jingzhu Zhang ......................................................................................... 155
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Acknowledgements We would like to thank the judges, who initially read the abstracts of the case histories submitted to the competition and discussed these to select those to be submitted as full case histories. They subsequently evaluated the entries and made further selections to produce the finalists who are represented in this book. Professor Amanda Jefferies Dr Amanda Jefferies is Professor of Technology En‐ hanced Learning in the School of Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, where she leads the Technology Supported Learning Research group. She has directed, evaluated and disseminated several Jisc‐supported UK projects including STROLL, EEVS, and iTEAM for managing institutional change when technologies are introduced into Higher Education. In 2011 she was awarded a UK National Teaching Fellowship, in recognition of her long standing commitment to promote an excellent student learning environ‐ ment and for her associated research into using technology to support blended student learning in universities. She has presented her work at national and international conferences across the UK and Europe and fur‐ ther afield in the USA, China and Australia. Dr Marija Cubric Marija is a Reader in eLearning and a member of the Information Systems and Project Management subject group at the University of Hertfordshire. She is interested in the development and evaluation of innovative learning models within the framework of design science research. Her work is frequently inspired by design patterns from other domains such as engineering and business, which she collected while working as a software and system designer in the telecommunications industry. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Concordia, iii
Montreal, and an MSc in Mathematics’ and Informatics from the University of Belgrade. In e‐learning circles Marija is best known for her innovative use of wiki‐supported‐collaborative learning and agile practices in learning and teaching. Dr Sue Greener Sue is a University teacher in HRM, Business Context, Research Methods and Learning & Development. She has received a Teaching Excellence award from the University of Brighton and is Programme Leader for the Foundation Degree in Business. Sue is also the Course Director for the online final year undergraduate course with students in diverse world regions. Her research interests are focused on e‐learning strategy, teacher development and reflective learning. Sue is the co‐founder of the Business e‐Learning Research Group and a member of the CROME research group on employment issues at Brighton Business School. Her Doctoral research focused on exploring students’ readiness for online learning. Sue holds a BA, MBA, EdD, FHEA and is a Chartered Fellow of CIPD. Prof. Dr.‐Ing. Robert J. Wierzbicki Robert is Professor for Online Media at the University of Applied Sciences in Mittweida, Germany. He is an expert in eLearning, author of numerous publications and winner of prestigious awards in communication media. He is, among others, an evaluator in the accreditation of educational programs and a specialist in international standards and procedures. Robert is Consortium Member for the European Virtual Academy EVA (www.evaonlinecourses.eu) and founder of the International Workshop of Online Teaching Initiatives IWOOTI (www.iwooti.eu).
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Dr Laura Czerniewicz Laura has been leading the Centre for Educational Technology at the University of Cape Town since it was formed in 2005. As director, Laura describes herself as a “deep generalist” overseeing all of CET’s work and operating at multiple interfaces. She says her greatest talent is identifying exceptional people to work at CET. Otherwise she works on various local, continental and international collaborative projects. Presently, she is the research leader on an intriguing project on students’ technological habitus use in Higher Education Institutions within South Africa. She is also interested in the emergent knowledge domain of the field, mobile learning, the digital divide and ICTs and scholarly communication.
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Preface It is hardly surprising that e‐Learning has become such an important issue, especially for academics. The opportunities which it presents are really only limited by the imagination of the teacher. e‐Learning is now firmly established as an important element in many courses in academic institu‐ tions and in other teaching/learning environments. Most teaching institu‐ tions nowadays have some element of e‐Learning or perhaps blended learning in the way they assist their students. However, many of the applications which have been employed have repre‐ sented the computerisation of old methods. There is no doubt that these have been important and they have made education much more accessible than it was a few decades ago. But there is much more that can be achieved by e‐Learning. It was for this reason that Academic Conferences and Publishing International decided to create the e‐Learning Excellence Awards, which runs alongside the European Conference on e‐Learning. The awards are based on case histories which describe examples of successful and innovative applications of this technology. A panel of experts was es‐ tablished and a call for case histories was announced. The competition was open to academics and practitioners and the examples to be described could be in the university environment, business or industry, government departments or schools etc. The call for case histories was announced in 2014 and 60 submissions were received, describing on an outline basis what was achieved with these ap‐ plications of e‐Learning. There were 36 interesting examples described in these abstracts which were invited to forward a completed case history. The panel of experts then chose 12 case history finalists who were invited to present their work at the 14th annual European Conference on e‐ Learning at the University of Hertfordshire at Hatfield in the UK in October, 2015. As can be seen from the Contents page, the topics presented range widely, as was expected when working with a subject like e‐Learning. It may also be observed that the entrants come from many different parts of the vi
world. The competition requires the 3 best to be chosen and it is clear that the judges will have a challenging task to select the winners. Dr Dan Remenyi Editor October 2015
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