Summer 2004

Talking Maths

Taking Off with Online Learning

Teachers are forever being told to exploit the educational potential of the technology, but how? DONNA GIBBS and ROBYN PHILIP discuss the extraordinary potential of online learning and an upcoming system that will make it simpler for teachers to join the cyberspace race.

Most teachers and students use technology for various purposes in the classroom—editing written work, using the Internet for research, preparing PowerPoint presentations and maybe constructing web pages. But few schools are experimenting with online learning where students interact electronically with their teacher and peers.

Online learning can seem formidable but once started on this journey you’ll find many advantages for you and your students. Students will appreciate your efforts because they realise what great educational resources are available on the net and would like the chance to explore them more. Technology is part of their everyday world (eg texting, emailing and chatting), so it’s reasonable for them to expect the classroom to make use of these same technologies. While they are often knowledgeable about technologies, they are not necessarily trained in using them effectively in their studies. This is where a teacher’s guidance and direction is invaluable.

Getting started means you need access to an e-learning system. Find a system that is easy to use and meets your needs. It is likely that your school will have, or will be looking to acquire, a learning management system containing tools that can be used for online learning. Each system is designed differently and allows you to manage communication and content in different ways. A new system we’ve been trialling is the Learning Activity Management System (LAMS). It has an easy-to-use drop and drag set of tools that allows teachers to design, manage and deliver activities online, and enables students to work individually or collaboratively online, in the classroom or elsewhere. Designing for this system is similar to traditional lesson planning. LAMS will be released as freely available open source software in February 2005.

When you design activities for students online, choose things that you can’t do easily in a classroom. Exploit the educational power of the technology—don't simply use it for the sake of using it. Technology allows students as a group to be involved with a task and to see how others are doing that same task; it allows students to interact with people and places they wouldn’t ordinarily have access to; it provides access to current information not available in a textbook and so on. Let’s consider three of the tools available to online learners in LAMS and see how they make it possible to capture the benefits of technology within a pedagogically sound framework.

The Question/Answer tool

When teachers ask questions in a regular classroom not everyone has the chance to answer. In an online classroom it is possible to engage every student in an activity so thatfour or five students don't dominate the discussion. Boys in particular have been found to be more willing to offer their opinions online than in a classroom (especially if the answers are presented anonymously). The LAMS Question and Answer tool allows students to immediately see what others have answered and this tends to increase engagement with the task, and with each other. From the teacher’s perspective, time can be taken to frame a question so that it’s likely to encourage a response from all students, and the online format allows these questions to be reproduced or adapted for other classes. Teachers can also view answers as they are typed by students (much easier than walking around looking over shoulders at workbooks), and a typewritten version of the students’ answers for assessment, diagnostic and demonstration purposes is readily available.

Imagine the interest for a student who can immediately see what others have answered after posting their own answer to a question such as: In your opinion what makes someone a hero? What are the problems with cloning? How can a circle be defined? Think how you can then capitalise on that interest by using other online tools to encourage small group discussion around the issues raised, or by sending students to websites which offer the views of scholars in the relevant fields. Such a lesson has advantages that can’t easily be achieved in a regular classroom.

The Voting tool

This tool can be used to motivate students by showing them in tabulated form how their classmates voted on a particular issue. Voting in LAMS is carried out individually, followed immediately by a screen that shows the number of votes for each choice so far (this screen then updates live as new votes are cast). This can be fun. Which character comes at the bottom of the list and why? Results of this kind can promote very lively discussion across a whole range of subject areas. While a similar voting process can be conducted in a classroom, it is unwieldy and the results are less quickly and dramatically presented.

The process can also be used for other purposes. A teacher could present a multiple choice question in maths, and if most students vote for option 3, when the answer is actually option 1, the teacher knows this very quickly from observing the LAMS class monitoring screen. This allows the teacher to direct attention to the difficulties or misconceptions students are having in a timely way. The anonymity function used here can also be liberating for students. They tend to feel less concerned about voicing their opinions when their peers don’t know the author of the answers.

The Share Resources tool

If we want to discourage a ‘cut and paste generation’ developing and build mind habits in students that are conducive to deep learning, then we need to demonstrate use of technology that encourages higherorder thinking and critical interpretation.

The Share Resources tool in LAMS not only presents content, but enables teachers and students to search for sites and share them with each other including a comment or analysis. If teachers want to send students to particular sites, they can post the address and superimpose instructions or comments on the selected web pages.

Imagine, for example, sending students to www.froguts.com/flash content/demo/frog.html where they can dissect a frog in an ecofriendly manner; or asking them to visit http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/  where they can view the Milky Way at ten million light years from the Earth; or choosing a web quest for them to follow from those available at http://webquest.sdsu.edu/. By superimposing additional instructions or comments to guide the student in their use of these sites they can be helped to work with them in productive ways. Superimposed questions that direct the students’ attention to, for example, who authored the website or how the choice of images create meaning, ensures students are critically immersed in the medium that’s providing the information. Instructions of the kind described here could be provided on paper or the board, but it is much more efficient and effective for the student to read the instructions closely linked to the source of the information.

Using Share Resources for online publishing

The Internet and online learning tools have enormous potential to facilitate the action of student publication. By sharing their work students not only see and enjoy more of what others can do and what they think, but it also creates opportunities for students to learn from their peers. Using the Share Resources tool students’ work can be published to restricted websites where only class members or even small groups of class members can read and critique work appropriately. If work is suitable for wider publication then people beyond the classroom can be made privy to it. Managed judiciously this can aid in the process of polishing or drafting work.

Not only polished or completed work can be usefully viewed online. In LAMS, students can publish or communicate their creative work or thoughts on particular issues so that the whole class or a sub-section of that class can view and consider what is being presented. Within a safe and known environment, this work can be collaboratively developed.

Conclusion

As software improves and becomes more teacher-friendly, the creative and imaginative possibilities for online learning will multiply. If you haven’t tried teaching online now is a good time to start. And if you have begun, why not take advantage of the online environment to exchange learning plans with others for your mutual benefit?

Further information is available at www.lamsfoundation.org/

Donna Gibbs is an associate professor in the School of Education at Macquarie University.

Robyn Philip works as an education research coordinator at the Macquarie E-learning Centre of Excellence, Macquarie University.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au