Interview with Michelle Rogers: Institute of Education in Early Childhood Studies, Foundation Degree Partnership Management Team, Course Leader for the Foundation Degree in Flexible and Distributed Learning in Early Years. I have known Michelle for a number of years but I arranged a meeting with her specifically to talk about her work with the online course in Flexible and Distributed Learning. I am sure you will all find this interview really exciting and inspirational. Michelle, can you tell me about how this course came to be developed? The factor that influenced the development of this course was the decrease, and eventual ending of funding for students from Local Government. As many of us have experienced, loss of this type of funding results in a massive reduction in our student numbers. We recognised that this was going to happen and decided that we might be able to open up our courses to people who hadn’t considered it or were unable to access the courses previously because of their working patterns. This included people such as childminders as well as some other early years practitioners. We put together a programme that would be able to be accessed through the VLE (Blackboard) that coincided with Local Authorities realising that they had a number of people who had not gone through the traditional face-to-face method but who still needed to up-date their skills. We put together a package for these Local Authorities and so we were very lucky that they funded the pilot modules. The pilot modules were the first two modules of the Foundation degree, nothing changed from the face-to-face course, the content and the assessment were the same but the students just did not come in to University in the traditional way. The students came in to the University, on a Saturday, a few times just to help them develop their sense of community. It was very important to me that the students should still have that sense of being a University student. I think that sometimes that can be lost if they don’t have direct contact, whether that contact is through Skype or a 3D virtual classroom they need to be brought together so they can develop ownership of the cohort community. Students need to have a sense of community with one another at the beginning of an online course. As a result they are far more likely to provide support for one another, collaborate more easily and successfully complete the online course. The pilot modules successfully pulled together the two very diverse groups we worked with. What was really interesting was that they formed a group very quickly online, these were students who, in general, had very low levels of digital literacy, and they were not confident IT users. On the first day the students were in University Pete Thornton came to teach them about just two tools in the VLE, online discussions and the journal, so they had a (semi) private space and a public space. Part of the confidence building was that the students should take ownership of these spaces rather
than being told how they should use them by lecturers. I felt that the process of developing these spaces would help them develop confidence to deal with other online aspects they would have to cope with further into the course. To start the students off we gave them an article by Ashton and Elliott called Juggling the Balls, about Foundation degree students coming into HE for the first time and how they managed family, work and studentship. We gave the students the article on the first Saturday they were in University and by Monday 100% had added a comment on the discussion board. This caused a dilemma, we were glad they were using the board but if the board became too full it would just not be purposeful and the students would loose interest. I realised immediately that at the rate the students were engaging in the discussions, the discussion board would become clogged very quickly. Therefore we had to create more boards and relate them to specific learning activities. Besides creating more discussion boards for activities, the students identified that they wished to create their own discussion board and this became the hub of their learning, the place they returned to time and again. The students come in and out of that discussion as they see fit and when it’s most purposeful to them. I was very excited because the students were uncomfortable in their learning, questioning why they were doing it online but they were also very enthusiastic. In the first week they were using both the discussion boards and their journals but they were very anxious about their IT skills. The students wondered whether they would be able to keep up with the course if they had to use IT to engage with it. We had expected this type of reaction and had a plan to deal with it. The students’ journals were semi-private because the lecturers could read them; this gave us the opportunity to identify where students felt uncertain about their skills. To help them gain confidence we created activities where they would learn about the subject but also extend their digital literacy skills a little further with each activity they undertook. For example we gave students responsibility for leading a discussion thread and helped them to decide the direction they wanted the discussion to go in. We purposely encouraged students with lower digital literacy skills to lead the discussions and most of them did take it on board. Those students who did take up the challenge became very confident in leading the discussions and, in their journals, reflected on the activity at a far higher level than we expected. They were being quite critical of their own skills and linking it back in to how it would impact on their own behaviours as early years practitioners and how it would also affect the CPD of other people they worked with. From previous discussions with you Michelle I know you have never, “apologised” for using IT. You have always encouraged students and colleagues by being honest about the learning curve but also emphasising how exciting and advantageous the skills learnt will be. How do you go about this? There was a broad range of digital skills within the cohort of 38 students and we had to recognise that by considering individual needs. We started them off
with a discussion based on a video link we gave them. One of the students was experienced in leading discussions online and we asked her to lead this one. In the video the person presenting (Cathy Nutbrown) talked about things that were very relevant to the course and with which the students could easily identify. The video was about the potential professional voice that Early Childhood practitioners have, many of the students had never thought about this before and started to realise that they have a voice and it was worth listening too. For those students confident enough, we asked them to use the discussion board but for those less confident we suggested they used their journals. These less confident students were anxious that what they said was not important and that no one would reply to them. The students’ journals were only semi-private as the lecturers could view them. We told the less confident students we would look at their comments in their journals and would respond to them. The students found this very useful as we could recommend that their comments should appear on the discussion board. This gave them the confidence to join in the more public arena and made them realise that they had important things to say, that people would listen to them and would want to talk to them about their ideas. This all came about from a quite simple prompt used to its best advantage. That’s really interesting Michelle. Would you say then that resources are a very important part of an online course? I never, ever think of the technology or the tools first. I always start off with what it is the students need to learn, why do they need to learn it, how might they learn it, the pedagogy always leads the way. Students need to know, to appreciate that there is worth not just to what they learn but there is also worth to how they are learning about it – we need to organise tools and resources to help them develop that appreciation. Whether it is a face-to-face course or online, it is important right from day one that we help students develop as independent learners. In supporting students to become autonomous it has to be made clear right from day one that it is each student’s responsibility to engage with the materials, to think about it and to form an opinion. Students have to know that they belong to a community of practitioners who are waiting for their opinion, because your opinion or position might also change another person’s point of view. Students have to be shown that they have to work outside the lecture hall; the resources and tools we supply are for use outside the lecture hall. The time outside the lecture hall is when they read or view resources and think about them. The lecture hall is not where information is provided or how to use the information is explained; if that is what it is used for it is just a complete waste of the students’ time. The engagement between student and lecturer is the point at which their ideas can be unpacked. The time online that is shared (either synchronously or asynchronously) with lecturers and students is that unpacking time. So Michelle, rather than saying anything to students about the usefulness of the resource or the tool, you ensure that it is really useful to them?
Yes, in an online course it is really very important that the first interaction students have with the resources, the tools and the lecturers is a really interesting and purposeful interaction. First impressions last a long time; they affect your later work with the students, the level to which they will engage with you and with the resources. I know that some lecturers think they have to spend a lot of time teaching students about how to use the equipment but we just gave them the very basics to begin with. Most students, especially those that have limited IT skills, find it very difficult to remember all the buttons they have to press. To be quite honest many of them find being bombarded with new technology quite off putting. We just gave them a few buttons to learn so they could do the work in the first activities. Later they learnt through modelling, I used the technologies and they followed what I did, they learnt a little at a time. After the break when the students returned for the modules that carried on past the pilot, it really surprised the lecturers that the students thought their engagement in the VLE would carry on between modules. The students missed the professional/social side of the online engagement. Even though there was no teaching, the students had formed a community and it felt as if it was on hold. That’s when I realised how important that community was for all those individuals, so within the Foundation Degree now we have discussion boards that stand outside the course. We will pop in and out of them in order to maintain contact with those who have been on the course, our alumni. The students have all downloaded the Blackboard app to their own devices and we have explained that they can set up a thread themselves on whatever interests them; “you take ownership now”. Some of the students have said this is really addictive, as have some of the lecturing staff too. Some people might say that this is above and beyond the call of duty. I would not continue contact outside of the lecture hall but is it ethical just to walk away? This is part of the work that we do outside of a course, the work that we do with alumni and engagement outside the University. Hopefully this continuing engagement with alumni will also encourage and support their life long learning and, who knows, they might even return for further courses with us. This Flexible and Distributed group are part of a much wider online community of seven or eight partner organisations with UW as the hub of the partnership. Each partner has its own area online and students from all of them have access to the UW hub, which brings 478 practitioner/students together. The only other time we have an opportunity to contact all of these practitioners is the UW Conference, which not all can attend partly because they come from such a wide geographic area. The conference proceedings are placed on the UW hub so all can access them, which helps to continue the networking that starts at the Conferences. There still seems to be some misunderstanding as to how a University functions, people don’t expect it to be online. Some of the partner areas are not as active as the Flexible and Distributed group but I believe part of that is because people think if they just put resources online they will be used; that is not how it works. I think it is short sighted not to develop online courses
properly. I am convinced this online/blended type of learning is the way ahead, new modules and courses must consider not just flexibility but also the wider distributed community. If we can make courses more accessible, more people will want to attend University, this is good but it does mean we have to change how we do things. Like any good module, students want and expect the next modules to be just as good and the students who have been on the Flexible and Distributed course are expecting their next courses to be the same. So we are now working on providing staff development in our other courses to help lecturers realise it’s not just about putting what you do in a face-to-face class online, it’s a different way of teaching. We are currently looking at our other courses and seeing what things can be produced as webinars, podcasts, etc. Interestingly we are recruiting now for our next cohort and we have had 38 people already show interest, including people from Sweden, France, Spain and the United Arab Emirates. For me this is all so exciting, just think of what an enriched community of practitioners that would be. Unfortunately you don’t necessarily get the opportunity to do site visits. Footnote: Michelle is now ready to send to Validation a Flexible and Distributed Pathway for a final year top-up on Integrated Working with Children and Families. This will enable students to achieve a level 6 qualification but Michelle never rests, she is now wondering what is available for these students at level 7. There are also other exciting developments in the near future – watch this space.