Vignettes from the Field
Snapshot
Edwina |
Lecturer |
Discipline |
English |
Delivery mode |
Mix of internal and external students |
Year |
Undergraduate |
Experience with WBLT |
Negative |
To be honest I encourage my students to attend and I take a roll that they think I check. They're absolutely desperate to get onto that roll if they're there. Edwina
Edwina’s story
Edwina has been teaching English for almost 13 years. Her students are a mix of internal and external students, for example in one second year unit there are 125 on-campus students and 35 external students.
Edwina has thought extensively about the curriculum in her units and has made considerable changes to the timetabling and components of the face-to-face sessions:
My subject was timetabled as not having any lectures. It was just a 2 hour interactive seminar every week. (Eventually) I found that there were certain concepts that the students were not grasping- that they simply weren't getting them or that we were repeating because we were all in separate seminars- me and the other tutors. We felt we needed to (convey) certain basic concepts and bring the students together for a certain amount of teaching. So I implemented 6 lectures- fortnightly lectures in order to bring the students together and to make sure that everybody is at least getting something of the same. It's creating a unifying thing.’
From Edwina’s perspective, the lectures provide the foundation concepts for the students and the tutors can then ‘have quite a lot of freedom to use their own style’.
WBLT and teaching
Edwina resisted using WBLT at first and still has some reservations about the impact of the technologies on student learning, ‘especially undergraduates’. Part of her resistance is due to the feeling that she had little control over whether to use the technologies. She agrees that she would have recorded the lectures for her external students, but feels disempowered by the pressure put on her by her department:
We were told we had to use it.
The transition into using the MS Powerpoint slides accompanying WBLT also caused Edwina some concern:
I use overheads when necessary, but using slides was not appropriate for my kind of use. I might have long quotes which I put on an overhead and then discuss… PowerPoint doesn't take long stuff and I just resisted that need to break anything up into small bites.
Instead of using MS PowerPoint slides, Edwina now puts her overhead slides or materials shown on the visualiser onto the course WebCT site, which is available for both internal and external students.
Another concern Edwina has about WBLT is the impact on student attendance. Edwina noticed a drop in lecture attendance when she began using WBLT four years ago:
I am really concerned about lecture attendance and a lot of my colleagues have found lecture attendance has dropped since (WBLT).
Reduced student attendance works directly against Edwina’s attempts to build a sense of community in her classes:
(When attendance was dropping) I wondered why I was bothering to stand up and prepare and give this lecture instead of just going to the studio and recording it if they're not going to come.It is only 6 lectures and they're told it's compulsorily (to attend).
Edwina is concerned that students who do not attend the lecture either miss out on the foundation concepts altogether or wait until close to their assignments to listen:
I've structured the course so that lectures are on Monday and all the seminars follow that week and the week after when there's no lecture.
She acknowledges that this makes it difficult for the tutors to structure the workshops to follow on from the lecture content and to accommodate the different students’ familiarity with the content:
If they ever listen to the lecture …they might do it just before their assessment which is not how I've designed it to happen.
In recent semesters she has decided to work to encourage students to attend:
I wouldn't have bothered with the roll before but I started taking the roll as a response to (WBLT)… then some of them started coming in, signing the roll and leaving, so I now will do the roll later in the lecture.
She also insists that students telephone her to let her know if they can’t attend lectures:
It's just reinforcing that expectation, because I do think it's important (that they attend).
Although she acknowledges that there are some benefits for students in using WBLT, for example catching up on missed lectures, Edwina would rather find alternatives to WBLT. One tactic she has considered is making tapes of the lectures available for loan from the library or her office, as back up when the occasional lecture is missed by students.
WBLT have also impacted slightly on the amount of dialogue Edwina includes in her lectures. She does endeavour to ‘repeat student questions for the recording’ but acknowledges that she has reduced the amount of student questioning as a result of the technologies.
Impressions of using WBLT
Edwina recognises that she has had both positive and negative experiences using WBLT. She has noticed that the external students appreciate being able to access the lectures almost in real time: There's a kind of immediacy that they seem to like.
The flexibility WBLT add to students’ learning, particularly those juggling part-time work is also seen as a positive:
It's all very tight for (the students) - they have to work out their days they can work, when they can do their shifts and when are their uni times. I'm prepared to accommodate them a bit because I can see how tough it is for them. It's tough for them now.
While recognising that students appreciate the back up that WBLT can provide, Edwina is concerned about the impact on the learning experiences of internal students:
It's great flexibility for the students, but it's too easy for them to just simply not do it. The conscientious ones will listen and they're the ones who contact me and say I can't come and ask to use the (WBLT). But, you know, there're all kinds of students and it gives some an easy out.
An expected benefit for Edwina and her department is in the recording of visiting lecturers for staff to access:
Sometimes we've had (well-known) guests come and take a session- we've actually used (WBLT) to record these and then we've put them up on our department website. So we've created a resource for staff as well as students.
Learning Futures
‘I think a lot more of it will be online and I think we could suffer unless it's done properly. I'm quite committed to the quality use of the online resources and I can see there's a danger of easy online learning which gets a bad name.’
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