There is much written on the benefits of applying reflective processes to unit developments for online learning and teaching. However, there is little information on how this can be done practically. This article presents a collaborative unit development between lecturer and educational designer, driven by a reflective action framework to provide a systematic process for designing an online Masters unit in the Faculty of Education. The framework, based on Kemmis and McTaggart’s action research spiral (1988), helped to strengthen the collaboration by promoting the need for a shared understanding of the development undertaken. Use of student feedback from previous years and principles of effective teaching were paramount in deciding upon the way the unit should be re-designed. This process was recorded in a working document and exchanged over a four month period, bringing together key elements, our ‘thematic concerns’, such as promoting student centredness, advocating reflective practice and designing for active learning. Development is still to be completed and the redeveloped unit will be delivered in first semester of 2005.
Background perspectives
Nowadays a team of professionals supports lecturers in the online learning and teaching context, one such role being that of the educational designer. Torrisi-Steele and Davis (2000) say that lecturers’ expectations and experiences of online materials development is critical in planning and structuring support to address their needs. Interactions with educational designers can culminate in positive changes to teaching practice.
The lecturer, Umesh, works in the Faculty of Education and has a background in inclusive and special education. He has delivered his units online for the past two years. He is computer literate and uses web page design programs and online learning management systems, with a small amount of support. Most of his students are working teachers in primary and secondary education, who have returned to study to enhance their understanding of and gain qualifications in special education and inclusion. Students are obliged to participate online and are most likely to be studying off-campus.
The educational designer, Margaret, works at the University’s Centre for Learning and Teaching Support, and has experience in developing online learning environments and supporting staff development activities in online learning and teaching. Umesh and Margaret share an interest in reflective teaching practice. It is this shared interest that sparked the emerging conversation captured in this article over a four month period and has informed the development of the online unit discussed.
Methodology
This paper highlights the more intangible elements of the collaborative relationship experienced between lecturer (Umesh) and educational designer (Margaret), by applying a reflective action framework to the unit development. The literature has emphasised the need for wider, more discerning application of learning and teaching practices that are underpinned by a shared understanding of sound pedagogical theory; for example, the use of reflective practices (McArdle & Coutts 2003, Boud & Walker 1998, Hardy & Benson 2002) and action research (Kemmis & McTaggart 1988, George 2002).
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We employed Kemmis and McTaggart’s model of action research for reflective practice to develop a reflective action framework, a conversational framework that has provided us with a systematic approach to the unit development. Kemmis & McTaggart see reflection as analysing, synthesising, interpreting, explaining and drawing conclusions, based on a ‘thematic concern’ (1998:86). We were eager to capture our discussions as a way to highlight our thematic concerns, which were, designing for active learning and enhancing reflective practice in students as well as in our own professional development. Our points for discussion could be described as a series of ‘action steps’ as Kemmis and McTaggart (1988:86) affirm, to begin thinking about the implications for progressive action over time and deciding what to do next.
The key elements we discussed include active learning, the value of reflective practice as good teaching practice and promoting student centredness in online learning. Student centredness was informed by student feedback from the past two years in which the unit has been offered. The lecturer has encouraged students to provide him feedback in order to make improvements to the unit according to their needs, experiences and insights. Student feedback is a powerful catalyst in bringing about effective change in a unit, especially in online learning environments (Mason & Weller 2000, Torrisi-Steele & Davis 2000, Brown & Thompson 1997, Lefoe, et al. 2002, Bishop, 2002). One major concern students had was that the unit was not structured for active and meaningful interaction between students. Lack of peer interaction is a major concern for learners who participate in online learning environments (Fisher, et al. 2000, Mason & Weller, 2000). In order to address this and other concerns, a Unit Innovation Grant application was submitted to the faculty and subsequently approved.
The development is still to be completed and the redeveloped unit will be delivered in first semester of 2005. Figure 2 outlines our reflective action framework, highlighting the key elements that moved our discussions, and subsequent development decisions, forward.
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Our conversation began with a discussion on active learning and reflective practice, informed by a number of readings, from which sprang our initial motivations to enhance good teaching practice. This intersected with our ongoing discussions on student centredness, informed by student feedback, placing value on the student voice throughout the unit development. Our methodology emerged from this, echoing Kemmis and McTaggart’s action research spiral, indicative of moments, or ‘action steps’, taken during the development process.
How can I make learning more active for students?
Umesh: The first question I asked Margaret was; how can I make learning more active for my students? Students had indicated to me that although they enjoyed the unit generally, they found the online environment boring and they didn’t engage with the material or each other for that matter.
Margaret: I was keen to find out more about the student cohort and to understand the background of the unit more generally, to begin development. I could see that Umesh had a clear idea of what he wanted to achieve in redeveloping his unit and he seemed very focused on making students’ learning more active.
Umesh: I wanted to ensure that students’ concerns were addressed when redesigning the unit, and to actively engage students in a motivating online environment. I have always provided activities, but didn’t feel that students were really committed to carrying out these activities.
Margaret: I shared Umesh’s concerns after I conducted a short review of the unit, seeing the need to move beyond the ‘read then do’ approach. From his initial unit structure, I could see that the activities mainly required students to read an article then post their thoughts to the online discussion forum. This usually occurred on a weekly basis.
We wanted to focus the unit development primarily on engaging students actively online. Active learning encourages students to act on information: putting ideas into written form; drawing ideas together and analysing them; interacting with others to further develop ideas. (Brown & Thompson 1997, online). We began our conversation by discussing the nature of the student group and the anecdotal feedback Umesh had collected from previous years. Students not satisfied with the unit in the past, cited the following reasons for their dissatisfaction:
no or limited knowledge of computers
boring environment- online learning is nothing more than a textbook online
limited interaction with students
hesitation to interact with other students
limited opportunity to meet with the lecturer
overwhelming number of online messages to respond to and
too many online readings.
However, there were some aspects of the unit that students thought were very good. We were careful not to lose these aspects already developed in the unit, as students stated that they were more able to:
examine their current teaching practice
be more reflective
consider the needs of students with disabilities
explore and critique a range of strategies to develop inclusive teaching practice
heighten their awareness of the implications for students with disabilities of any nature
undertake more active, critical questioning
see how the readings and assignments strengthened the case for inclusive teaching practice
develop their confidence to promote inclusion to others and
develop cooperative relationships with teachers and students in their work settings.
Students generally commented that overall, the unit was relevant, challenging and hard work. In an effort to develop the unit structure to enhance active learning, we are convinced that the design of online learning materials revolves around the student. A student centred approach encourages students to interact with the content (and with one another) in the learning environment, as opposed to more ‘traditional’ approaches where the transmission of content is more the focus (Torrisi-Steele & Davis 2000:285).
We considered Lefoe, Gunn and Hedberg’s (2002) eight recommendations for teaching in a distributed learning environment, as identified from the students’ point of view, to reconstruct the unit activities to engage students in more meaningful learning.
Set me clear role expectations
Talk to me
Provide opportunity to work and talk with other students
Choose the best medium for the task at hand
Teach me to use the technology
Provide resources I can use
Let me know what support is available and
Guide me through the administrative nightmare. (2002: paras. 25-37)
Umesh: Originally, I had set up weekly discussion topics to which students must post a response within that week. This meant little time for socialising elements, so students naturally felt a stranger to others in the unit.
Margaret: I believe socialisation is important to engage students who have not met face to face, yet are asked to interact with one another online. I was keen to re-design activities to include social elements and build a learning space for ongoing discussion between students.
Umesh: I could see, after working with Margaret, that the emphasis was on the task, with little context in which students could generate meaningful discussion with others, especially in the short time given to complete activities. These activities were also dislocated and didn’t connect together to form an overall learning experience.
Margaret: I often like to include some structured orientation to the online environment, providing students with help tutorials, tip sheets, audio help and links to student support services. This is important to help students feel more at ease with the technology, so it becomes less of a chore and they can focus on the essence of the learning instead.
Activity and active learning is often most effective when designed with moments and spaces for reflection and review. Sufficient time for thinking, as well as for reading, responding, reciprocating and formulating further responses, should be provided in structuring online activities. This promotes deeper levels of understanding; engaging in more abstract thinking, rather than superficial, didactic expressions, which usually results in a regurgitation of facts and figures or decontextualised quotations.
There seems to be a preconceived notion that communications within a formal educational setting should be devoid of social elements. Thankfully, this is far from the truth! Without developing elements of familiarity and trust amongst students, processes such as group work and group discussions, including online discussion forums, cannot become meaningful. We are inherently social beings and should not dismiss these elements as trivial, but essential to establishing meaningful environments for learning. By engaging students socially we encourage them to do so in their own teaching sites. In the unit development, we sought to have Umesh model what he hoped to see in his students. Modelling ‘good’ teaching is the first step to engaging others in good teaching practice.
How can I encourage reflective practice in online learning?
Umesh: I felt it was important for us to build a shared understanding of the literature on active learning while collaborating on the unit development. I asked Margaret for any readings that demonstrated reflective practice in education and active learning, in our first development meeting.
Margaret: I presented Umesh with a reading by McArdle & Coutts (2003) and also referred him to the work on action research by Kemmis & McTaggart (1988) and Grundy (1995). In return, Umesh provided me with readings on inclusive education. Although I had a teacher education background, I had not touched on inclusion specifically.
Umesh: It has been great to have Margaret as a ‘sounding board’ for refining ideas for the unit development. This is also evident in the literature (Torrisi-Steele & Davis 2000, Hardy & Benson 2002).
Margaret: I could tell that Umesh was interested in his teaching and in seeing his students learn. He also showed a personal preference for reflective processes, which I immediately connected with and so I suggested we capitalise on this and have Umesh model this in his teaching.
We wanted to capture the development process in order to reflect on the ‘action steps’, or changes, as they occurred, rather than on a specific end product. We recorded these changes in a document, which grew into a weekly unit outline. This document has helped us both to monitor the process of development, insofar as it has provided a common or shared ground on which the development is based. Kemmis and McTaggart talk of the need to change the social relationships, discourses, practices and forms of organisation, in order to truly improve education. It is through these changes that we can sustain improvement and by our reflections, steer our next ‘action steps’ in a process of continuous change (1988:44).
As we found early on, a useful, structured framework, which accounts for time, resources and some background information, informs those areas needing development. McArdle and Coutts (2003) describe the ‘good’ teacher as displaying a set of core qualities, which provide a basis for reflective practice. These are confidence, ballast, value maturity, strength and balance. These, together with a strong core of sense making, shape and are shaped by (shared) experiences. It could be said that apart from the practical elements that help to shape a ‘good’ online unit, these qualities must also be considered so as to produce an atmosphere of collaboration within which good unit design can occur. Understanding, willingness, openness, and positive expectations are all evidenced in ‘good’ teaching practice.
Sense making combines processes of reflection and meaning making, while arriving at judgements arising from, and applied to, professional practice. The key to this processing is that it allows connections to be made between different experiences and different forms of experience (McArdle & Coutts 2003:230).
In our attempts to make more sense of the ideas we discussed for the unit development, we put ourselves in the students’ shoes; empathising with, and valuing, their position. We took turns in acting out the student role, in the form of a short scenario, where the ‘student’ would complete a learning activity or navigate a unit web page. We found this useful to not only reflect on the students’ position in the learning environment, but also to be open to accommodate any changes or adaptations that emerged from our reflections on the scenario. We were also conscious of the need for students to make sense and meaning of the learning activity. We also wanted to be sure that the student voice be heard throughout the development process.
We involved other staff in the later stages of the unit development, including a multimedia developer and faculty technical support staff, in response to the needs that had arisen in the development process. Hardy and Benson (2002) espouse that the reflective process occurring in development teams promotes healthy relationships in the team. It can also be seen as playing an essential role in design and development (2002:2). Torrisi-Steele & Davis concur that ‘…“it takes time to ‘re-jig’ thinking”’ and to reach a shared understanding between educational designer and lecturer (2000: para.52). This is a critical point in determining the outcomes of the collaboration.
The unit outline evolved over the four months with the addition of a unit multimedia matrix, shared between the lecturer, the educational designer and the multimedia developer, mapping out the interactive multimedia components to be designed. It was necessary to present a clear, meaningful picture of the multimedia needs to the multimedia developer. The matrix was only developed after about three months of meetings between the lecturer and the educational designer.
How can a lecturer and an educational designer work well together?
Margaret: I was curious to know Umesh’s opinion of working with an educational designer. I asked him what he thought an educational designer brought to a collaborative arrangement such as the one we had established.
Umesh: I saw an educational designer as a catalyst to change the way I looked at how technology can be used to make online learning more active for students. This collaboration differed say to the collaboration I might have with my faculty colleagues, as educational designers focus more on the learning and teaching process than the unit content. Margaret showed she understood the theoretical underpinnings of learning and teaching theory and I hoped we could build this into the unit development.
Margaret: I thought it was useful that we set up regular meeting times, starting once a week and extending to once a fortnight, as our discussions progressed and the unit took shape. It meant we were able to commit to and prepare for upcoming meetings, based on previous discussions, thus maintaining connectivity between the ideas we discussed.
The opportunity to meet on a regular basis was a key ingredient in the collaboration, as we both understood the need to make a commitment to set aside time and space to generate meaningful discussion. Lecturers often have other commitments that impede their time to meet with educational designers on a regular basis.
In managing our time for development, we were also mindful of the time students need, not only to undertake learning activities, but to be able to develop deeper understanding of theoretical concepts covered in the unit. We attempted to create structured activities that engaged students’ interests, encouraged their participation and linked them with other students to flesh out these activities based on their teaching experiences. Therefore, we endeavoured to link social, interactive elements with the need to cover the unit objectives.
The unit, in its pre-developed form, is currently offered online through the university’s web based portal, an information and communication system developed to integrate the resources and services provided by the university for its staff and student community. Figure 3 shows the unit homepage, as seen by students when they first log in to the portal. Figure 4 shows an example of a weekly web page, which outlines the work students must cover in that week. Contrast this with the more structured weekly page, resulting from our unit development, shown in Figure 5. This layout evolved from the discussions on setting out the tasks students should cover in the week, coupled with learning objectives and often including graphical or multimedia elements.
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Conclusion
Finally, the unit development has been a great learning experience for us both. The outcome of the collaboration is, hopefully, a much improved unit. However, unless students feel the same way, and the unit can positively change students’ attitudes towards inclusive education, the ultimate objective of redesigning the unit will remain unachieved. The use of the reflective action framework presented in the methodology was very helpful for us in developing the unit. A willingness to accommodate each other’s ideas and adapt our approach as needed, were two key elements we thought paramount to the overall development process. Some other strategies that helped us included:
a) exchanging a working document to discuss and progress ideas for the unit development (including weekly tasks and use of multimedia)
b) regular meetings (weekly or fortnightly) with a strong commitment to spending time on developing ideas
c) constant use of valuable student feedback (both positive and negative)
d) empathising with students by acting out the student role and reflecting on the outcomes of the scenario and
e) exchanging readings on effective design for online learning (by the educational designer) and inclusive education (by the lecturer), to reach a shared understanding that helped to take the unit development forward.
Other points lecturers might generally consider when approaching a unit development include:
a very good understanding of your learners and their learning settings
a commitment to take time to develop elements to their full potential
an expectation that you will most likely work with others, such as educational designers, in developing your unit and
a willingness to try out ideas, without constraints, or fear of repercussion from faculty or students!
How we frame unit developments can mean the difference between acquiring skills and changing the culture of learning and teaching. As George (2002) states, it is important to underpin staff and learning and teaching development with sound pedagogical models from the outset, rather than retro-fitting in hindsight.
This article captures the reflections and deliberations of two educational practitioners over a four month period. The unit development discussed here continues. It is hoped that this article brings to the surface some of the intangible elements required for successful and meaningful unit developments, with collaborative arrangements paramount in supporting such elements. The educational designer seeks to support lecturers to deliver units online or in a blended mode to students, with empathy for both student and lecturer. The students ultimately determine the success of a unit development, their learning experience and how they see their learning being encouraged and supported.
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