Vignettes from the Field
Snapshot
Darcy |
Lecturer |
Discipline |
Law |
Delivery mode |
Mix of internal and external students |
Level |
Undergraduate |
Experience with WBLT |
Positive |
‘…(WBLT) has provided me with an opportunity to treat our external students as well as the internals, I’ve worried for many years that our externals get (a) much poorer deal than our internals .’ Darcy
Teaching Context
(I) try to get the motivation levels up, because most of them don’t want to be there. At the beginning of the unit they can’t see why they’re there in the first place.
Darcy teaches a Law subject to a mix of internal and external students in an undergraduate Life Science program. During his 20 years of University teaching Darcy has experimented with technologies for flexible learning. He currently uses many of the communication features of the institution-wide Learning Management System (LMS) and praised ‘ the seamless nature of the lectures, the tutes and the forum…I’m keen for lots of opportunities for interactions with the students because it’s all brand new and scary stuff for them.’
Darcy describes his approach to teaching as having changed from ‘transmitting factual stuff’ to assisting the students to ‘understand the underlying concepts so that when they start reading their own legislation in other courses or in their careers, they’ve got the tools to understand it.’
WBLT and teaching
This is Darcy’s second year of using WBLT and he describes his experience as ‘always positive’.
I started directly talking to the external students during (WBLT) recording…I could ask questions in a lecture and within an hour or two externals have heard the lecture, heard the question and posted on the discussion forum their responses to the questions, so it’s more of a united group of students now.
He comments that ‘particularly in the last couple of years I found that the students are helping each other more and more, not just with concepts but also supporting each other emotionally.
Darcy provides the MS PowerPoint slides about a week ahead of each lecture:
My experience is that they then scribble all over those. It means they can focus on the interesting bits rather than the mundane bits.
Impressions of using WBLT
‘I think, internal/ external divide is much less than it used to be. That’s really the main benefit I see from my use of (WBLT) now.’
Darcy describes himself as using the lectures to motivate his students and encourage their engagement. There has been a ‘net positive effect’ in enabling external students to participate more immediately. Even for internal students he sees that communication has increased by the integrated use of WBLT and the online discussion forum in the LMS:
They question much more in (the online discussion forum) than they ever would’ve in lectures…and with 150 odd students, you don’t get much discussion (in lectures).
He attributes the combination of WBLT and the online discussion forum as having contributed to more collaborative learning by the students:
Collectively they did better. In one part of the exam last year, everybody passed with flying colours. (That) doesn’t normally happen.
Darcy strongly disagrees with the suggestion that attendance may have decreased in his lectures as a result of using WBLT, however he does recognise the changes he has made to his lecturing style:
I used to do lots of additional things in lectures that would take me away from the computer and away from the screen…now I’m confined to the length of the microphone cord. Some of the stuff that I used to do I now feel I can’t do. Some of the materials I used to use I can’t use so freely for copyright reasons. Probably there’s way around it, but it gets semi-awkward.
Learning Futures
I suspect in terms of making university budgets balanced, we’re going to have to access students from a wider range of backgrounds with more flexibility being demanded by them. And therefore, online stuff, be it (WBLT) or (an LMS), or whatever will be more and more required to manage all of that.
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