Representatives of all eight institutes in the DRHEA gave their views on elearning and collaboration in a round table discussion. For me, some key points raised by the panel and the audience, were that while technologies come (and in many cases go) quickly, it takes time for large institutes to adapt and change their teaching culture. A desire for transformation among staff or students cannot be taken for granted. While adding value, eLearning is not yet considered essential among the DRHEA members. eLearning is not discussed at top level.
Collaboration also takes time:
Time needed to build relationships
More time needed to teach online than in the classroom
Funding is another driver for collaboration. In research collaboration is usually with institutes in another country. Should this apply to elearning too? There are potential downsides to local collaboration such as the loss of staff.
eLearning and collaboration are only a part of the bigger debate on the role of higher education.
The summer school is in itself an excellent example of collaboration. Congratulations to the team in DIT and organisers from the other member institutes.
Fostering Collaboration is the focus of this year’s Dublin Region Higher Education Alliance (DRHEA)elearning summer school. The DRHEA consists of the four universities and four institutes of technology in the Dublin region, which have a total of almost 11,000 staff and about 75,000 students. An elearning newtork of excellence is being established, starting with a preliminary audit on elearning among its members. The audit focuses on the use of VLEs and among other things urges the expansion from course management to greater use of learning activities and the upgrading of skills to support this.
The role of educational technologists in the transforming of education was discussed in a lively presentation by Larry McNutt. He illustrated the growing role of collaboration and the declining importance of content by comparing the rise of Wikipedia with the decline of Microsoft’s Encarta encyclopedia. While noting that the Irish Learning Alliance is an umbrella group for Irish eLearning companies, he advised learning technologists to ‘reclaim the field’. Technology needs to be ‘put in its place’ with learning technologists and academics using technology to help broaden access to education.
Librarians from DIT and DCU introduced the role of Web 2.0 in higher education. This was followed by hands-on workshops in collaborative technologies, including my own on blogs and wikis. I found that there were 2 bloggers among a class of 15 – including Michael Seery. By the end of the class all participants had written blog posts and contributed to a group wiki. We used Campus Pack from Learning Objects which are available for both Blackboard & Moodle so that access can be restricted to class members.
My own presentation was on Approaches to History taking in Medical Education. It showed how UCD School of Medicine and Medical Science is using online learning to teach the skills needed in taking case histories from patients, particularly in sensitive areas such as psychiatry and gynaecology. The slides give a flavour of the presentation but while the actual resources can be shown at conferences they cannot at present be published on the web. I’m planning to change this with future developments. Currently, the resources are in Blackboard for use by UCD staff and students.
Another medical presentation was by Mark Campbell of eMedia who gave a demonstration of ‘Pocket Anatomy’ medical elearning developed for the iPhone.
