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The first presentation of TM112 Introduction to Computing and IT 2 began on 7 April 2018. To help all London region students to get an appreciation and understanding what tutorials that been arranged for their studies on TM112, I prepared a short document which summarised everything in one place. This blog post is an excerpt of the first part of that document. One thing I should add is that different students in different parts of the UK might receive different messages to this one.

Welcome

On behalf of the School of Computing and Communications I would like to welcome you to the first presentation of TM112 Introduction to Computing and Information Technology 2.

This document is a summary of all the tutorials and day schools (which the university also calls ‘learning events’) which are available to you as a TM112 student. You might want to print this document out and keep it as a reminder of what tutorials are available.

For this presentation of TM112, there are two face-to-face events, which we sometimes call day schools. There are also a series of online tutorials and drop-in sessions which are delivered by your tutors through an online teaching and conferencing tool called Adobe Connect.

Purpose of learning events

Before summarising the programme, it is important to say something about all the learning events that are scheduled. All learning events and tutorials are intended to help you. They are an important component of your Open University studies. 

They represent opportunities to meet with your tutor, to ask questions, and to develop your understanding of concepts that are taught through the module materials. They are also opportunities to meet with other Open University students. Sometimes, your tutors will give you useful tips about how to complete your important tutor marked assessments. 

They are also intended to be fun and engaging. Do try to attend as many as you can, since they are an important part of your learning: they are for you. Also, do try to attend the sessions that are facilitated by your tutor.

Summary of learning events

Face-to-face events

There will be an introductory face-to-face day school at the start of the module, and another face-to-face learning event towards the end the module to help you with the preparation of your important third TMA. Both face-to-face events will take place at the London School of Economics (LSE), which is one of the OU’s study centres. The LSE is located in central London and is a short walk from Holborn underground station. More information about how to get to the LSE venue can be found at the end of this document. Both face to face sessions begin at 10.30 and end at 15.30. Although there are cafes close to the venue, it might be a good idea to bring a packed lunch. Also, if you can, do bring along a laptop (if you have one) since your tutors may plan some activities which might require a computer (but don’t worry if you don’t have one).

Online tutorials

The module team have set up a programme of online tutorials that will help your progress throughout the module. These tutorials will be facilitated by one of more tutors. You will probably see the name of your tutor against some of the tutorials on the programme that follows. The tutorials are repeated (sometimes with different tutors) to give you the best opportunity to attend a live online session; if you can’t attend on one day, there might be another later. You are free to attend as many of the online tutorials as you want. In fact, we encourage students to attend as many as possible! Remember; sometimes different tutors explain and present things in slightly different ways that work for different students.

The online tutorials can be accessed by going to the ‘Tutorials’ part of your TM112 module website and clicking on the link that says ‘online room’. When you click on this link, Adobe Connect will start, and you will join an online room. An important point is: do use a headset rather than your laptop speaker and microphone; headsets really help a lot with the quality of the audio. Before you attend, do ensure that you are in a comfortable place, such as at a desk, where you can easily make notes if you need to. An important point is: the more that you put into a tutorial, or the more that you contribute, the more you will get out of a tutorial!

If you can’t attend the face-to-face introductory event, do attend both of the online introductory events; parts 1 and 2 will introduce different aspects of TM112.

Online tutorials start at 19.30 and end at 21.00. They may be recorded, but this is currently up to the discretion of your tutor; if you don’t attend, you might miss out.

Drop-in tutorials

Drop-in tutorials are informal student-led sessions where you can discuss module related issues with tutors. Like the online tutorials, drop in tutorials start at 19.30 and end at 21.00. Unlike the online tutorials, these tutorials are not recorded. This means that if you don’t attend, you will definitely miss out! Do try to make it to as many drop-in tutorials as you can. 

Module wide online tutorials

During TM112 there will be two learning events that have been organised by the module team: a library event, and a expert lecture tutorial. The library event is facilitated by the OU library team and members of the module team. It will introduce you to the OU library, which is a resource that will be useful throughout your OU studies. To offer you some choice, two different library sessions will be run; you can attend either of the two events.

The expert lecture tutorial is an opportunity to participate in a discussion that relates to a lecture about cyber security and other themes that feature within Block 3 of the module. You will get to interact with Mike Richard’s, OU academic and speaker and discuss the connections between Computing, IT, security and society.

These module wide tutorials will take place within the TM112 Online module-wide room. You can find this room by clicking on the Tutorials link that you can see at the top of the module webpage.

Booking to attend learning events

To attend any of the day schools or tutorials, do take a moment to reserve your place through the OU learning event management system. If in doubt, do book your place. Booking means that you will automatically receive updates if any of the arrangements for that particular learning event changes.  Whenever you book onto a learning event, remember to make a note in your personal diary so you remember to attend.

As mentioned earlier, do try to make a special effort to attend the sessions that are facilitated by your tutor. Your tutor will always be pleased to see you!

One part of my job that I take really seriously is associate lecturer development. I've been to loads of AL development days. It was through these days that I, essentially, learnt how to become an effective teacher and facilitator. It is true, however, that I was pretty confused and bewildered during many of these events – but, gradually this feeling dissipated as I became more experienced.

AL development has always been a regional activity. Even though many of the regional centres are closing, I have heard that the university is still committed to running these events. I do, however, worry. There are a whole bunch of unanswered questions, such as: will we be able to effectively plan things in the ‘brave new world’ without all of our English regional centres?

Back in February, I attended what was my first ever ‘STEM faculty’ (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) AL development event. It was held in Kent’s Hill Conference Centre, which is just across the road from the OU campus. Since a large proportion of the tutors had to travel, the university laid on accommodation and kindly fed us all.

What follows is a quick summary of the event, or, my main ‘take away’ points. I hope to submit a very different version of this article to the Snowball Associate Lecturer newsletter when I’ve got a moment.

STEM Faculty – why, how and where we are

The keynote was made by Anne De Roek, dean of MCT. Anne spoke of ‘shifting sands’ (in terms of developments in STEM, and in the university), and mentioned that division between subjects, such as science and mathematics is artificial. A thought that came to mind was: surely everything is Mathematics, right? I countered this with another thought, which was ‘I’m not sure the social scientists would agree…’

Anne went onto talk about jobs in STEM, the importance of engineering, security and privacy in IT, and the ethics of technology. Another point was that there were opportunities for growth: there will be new curriculum areas: an MSc in Space, modules in electronics, mechanical engineering and environmental engineering, and the availability of ‘shared research facilities’. Anne also presented a bunch of stats. One notable figure was that there are over 1,800 STEM associate lecturers in just one faculty.

The STEM faculty is being made up of the two ‘heritage’ faculties: Science and MCT. One of the arguments in favour of the faculty mergers is that faculties will then have more of a direct responsibility for retention and progression: the STEM faculty will ‘own’ their students more directly than ever before.

There is clearly a lot going on: work on the ‘student seamless journey’, work on subject specific bootcamps, a review of level 1 assessment, forthcoming changes to the academic year, and a new approach to induction. There were other changes: changes in the staff tutor contract, which means that many of us will become home workers; there are changes to governance and management of curriculum, and in the world outside the OU, there are private providers clamouring to offer degree apprenticeships.

At the end of Anne’s talk, there was a short question and answer session. One of the key points that I noted down was that ‘ALs knowledge of students is not getting through to the people in the student support teams’, with the implication that tutors are not as effectively sharing knowledge about the needs of students as they could.  Other points related to travelling time to tutorials, and the FutureLearn MOOCs (which are paid for by OU capital funds). Anne also emphasised that ‘this faculty has no intention of going on-line only’. Colleagues in MCT had been worried, because as far as I know, Science (I believe) delivers all their modules on-line.

Group Tuition Policy Implementation

The second presentation of the day introduced the Group Tuition Policy (or GTP, as it is known). It was described as being all about increasing student choice of 'synchronous teaching'. One of its aims is to publish timetables a time table of events three months in advance. Students will be able to make decisions whether to go to events, since its purpose (which is linked to module learning objectives) will be described in advance. This means, from the staff tutor perspective, timetables have to be planned five months before the module start date. I have to confess, this is a bit of a worry, particularly when we’ve got to deal with new modules.

A really good bit of the policy is the concept of an academic community. This, I understand, is going to be up to the staff tutors (with help from the module team). This may, of course require us to do some more work, but I think it is important work that needs to be done. The aim of academic community building is also in keeping with the intention of improving the student learning experience and academic success.

Learning events can be either face to face, or can take place online.  Another principle is that if there is a face to face event, there must be an online alternative. In principle, this also sounds like a great idea. The challenge, of course, is that face to face and on-line can never be directly equivalent, since they afford different pedagogies: one teaching modality will be able to convey certain learning objectives better than others.

Tutor groups will be organised in clusters of between six and eight students, and boundaries between clusters will be based on student density (I’m not sure exactly what this means, and my notes are not giving away their secrets). There may be either two or three clusters per module, and these will be managed by a ‘cluster manager’. The ‘cluster manager’ will choose venues where face to face teaching events will happen, but at the moment, I have no idea how these will be booked.

A key bit to the GTP will be something called the learning events manager, or the LEM: a new YAOUTLA (or, also known as ‘Yet Another Open University Three Letter Abbreviation’)

Group Tuition Policy Workshop

After the GTP talk, tutors were encourage to attend a number of different events. I decided to attend a GTP workshop (which I thought might be useful, since I’ll be responsible for scheduling some of the GTP events). The workshop was facilitated by three colleagues are performing some research to review tuition practice at MCT.

We were put into small groups and shared ideas about how the policy might be realised.  We chatted about the scheduling of timetables and events. Another topic that I noted was the question of whether there would be mechanisms to email a group of students who signed up to remind them about an event.

Panel session

The final session of the day was a question and answer panel session, which was run by a group of staff tutors. One important point that was discussed was the associate lecturer contract negotiations; since I’m both an associate lecturer, and someone who is a staff manager (who is the designated line manager for associate lecturers), I’m also very interested in these discussions.

I have to confess that I’m really worried about the new contract, for the simple reason that I have no idea how it will affect my role. I have, however, decided not to worry about it too much, though, for the reason that negotiations are still going on, and the final character of the new contract might be very different to the picture that is being painted through the snippets of information that I receive from time to time.

Another important theme was the impact of the regional closures. All MCT contracts are to be moved to Manchester by the beginning of January 2017, which feels like a very short timescale, especially since contracts from seven regions have to be moved to one region all in one go.

A final point that I’ve noted down was a reference to the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). Tutors were encourage to record any teaching qualifications they might have. I haven’t had a look into it, but there’s a possibility that the TEF might be allied or connected with Higher Education Academy (HEA) professional recognition.

The university currently supports a route to application through something called OpenPAD (an abbreviation for Professional Academic Development), which is currently being refreshed. There was some talk about that the Institute of Educational Technology’s Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice might get reinstated, but there were no clear conclusions at this point.

Reflections

This first STEM Faculty AL development event was overwhelming. I don’t know how many associate lecturers were there, but I seem to recall someone mentioning that there might have been around ‘two hundred’ attending that one event.

In terms of getting a key message out about the group tuition policy and some of the changes happening across the university, the event certainly did its job for those who attended, but I’m mindful that this event just represented the start of a new way of doing things.
I did, however, find it difficult to find everyone I wanted to chat to. I personally prefer the smaller, more defined regional events.

From my side, I’ll continue to do my best to make as much noise as I can to make sure that these smaller (regional) events still happen, but I do worry that the constant movement towards centralisation might make it harder to run the development and training events that help our tutors to make a difference.

From time to time I use a system called OU Live.  OU Live is a software application that tutors use to deliver learning events (such as tutorials) through their computer.  It’s taken me quite some time to get used to it because teaching through OU Live is very different to teaching face to face. 

When I first learnt about OU Live it immediately stuck me that there were loads of things that that you could do in during face to face tutorials that you certainly can’t do in OU Live.  I really enjoy planning and running face to face tutorials; they are a great opportunity to share your enthusiasm about the subject that you’re teaching.  They are also a great opportunity to learn from your students and to immediately understand what aspects of your tuition works and what aspects don’t work. 

Teaching ‘electronically’ is very different: it’s harder to get a more direct connection with your students and it’s also difficult to know whether certain concepts are understood well enough so you can move to other topics: it’s more difficult to see ‘the whites of their eyes’!

Over time, I have been persuaded that OU Live offers some really great opportunities for students.  Although you can do things in face to face settings that you can’t do in OU Live, I’ve also come to see that the opposite is also true: you can do things in OU Live sessions that you can’t in face to face sessions.  I’ve also realised that one of the challenges for the university is how to share best practice in how to use OU Live not only between tutors, but also between module teams.

This blog post aims to summarise my understanding of different ways that OU Live can be used; it is a post that connects with the broad idea of ‘OU Live pedagogy’.  It aims to share some ideas about how it can be used during the presentation of an OU module.  Some of these approaches have been picked up by chatting with colleagues, and others are methods that are currently used today.  I’ve also added a couple of approaches that I’ve invented (but other people might have also thought of them too).

In essence, I’m posting this as a really rough ‘grab bag’ of tentatively named pedagogic tools that I hope someone might find useful.  If you have any comments, or have accidentally found this useful, do get in touch.

On-line tutorials

When I first started to use OU Live I used it to replace face-to-face tutorials.  There are two situations where I’ve needed to do this.  One of the modules that I tutor is completely on-line; students can be from different parts of the country (or even different parts of the world).  In this situation, face to face tutorials are obviously impossible: the only thing that we can do is to run OU Live sessions. 

Another situation was where I wasn’t able to physically get to a tutorial due to a scheduling clash.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to reschedule the event for the weekend since the new date would then be too close to the TMA cut-off date.  To get around this problem, I decided to run an evening OU Live tutorial, which I then recorded.  I was pretty surprised that a good number of students came along to the session (including some students who were never able to get to the face to face sessions).

In some respects, an OU Live tutorial can become a bit like a face to face tutorial (if you plan it well).  A tutor can present materials, do some talking, set up activities, ask for student responses, and even get students to work on a shared task by putting them into ‘breakout rooms’: there is a lot that is similar.  There are, however, some differences.  OU Live sessions can be pretty tiring for the tutor.  A tutor can’t just ‘glance across’ a classroom to see what is going on.  Instead, a tutor has to engage with a cognitively demanding interface and very regularly request students to ‘do stuff’, to ensure that their attention is maintained.  Tutors might also be faced with technical issues of challenges to contend with, i.e. some students might not have microphone headsets, they might have connected up the microphone jack to the headphone jack, or they might have set the volume setting so low that they can’t hear anything at all.

Another point is that sometimes the material designed for a face to face session might not be easily transferrable to an OU Live session because it just isn’t appropriate.  Students can’t write things on pieces of paper and exchange notes, or move to an empty space in a room (with the intention of demonstrating a physical concept or idea).  For an OU Live tutorial to work and work well, tutors (and, arguably the module team), need to come up with a learning design that is appropriate for the on-line environment.  Also, tutors and students need to be given some time so that they become familiar with the on-line environment.

I believe that an OU Live session can replace certain aspects of a face to face session, as long as they are designed with a lot of care and attention.  A final point is that an OU Live session shouldn’t go on for as long as a face to face session.  Longer sessions, for some reasons, just don’t seem to feel right.  We all need a break from looking into a screen.

Demo tutorials

A couple of months ago, I was alerted to some OU Live training materials (OU VLE) which shows how you might use OU Live during tutorial sessions (you might have to have ‘tutor permissions’ to be able to see these).  These exemplar sessions cover a range of different subjects, and they are quite short (around ten minutes), which means that you don’t have to go through an entire tutorial.  If you can access these, I do recommend them.

The first one is entitled ‘Working with metre in poetry’ makes use of highlighter and a web tour (from around the seven minutes mark).  The next session, entitled ‘Multisensory pronunciation training’ was all about learning German.  What was really nice about this one was the way that the ‘put your hand’ button was used and how the tutor used the webcam.

A subject that is close to my heart has the title, ‘Writing and running simple code’.  This makes use of the application sharing feature from around the two minute mark.  I also liked ‘Finding and using secondary sources in legal essay writing’, where the whiteboard was used from around the three minute mark.  I really like the way that ‘click and drag’ is used.

There are, of course, other exemplars.  Do have a look; it’s a really good resource.

On-line debate

A week or so ago I was chatting with a really experienced tutor who said that he really enjoys running OU Live sessions.  He told me that he had teamed up with another tutor.  ‘We have a debate’, he said.  ‘One of us takes one view, and the other tutor takes an opposing view.  Our students love it!’ 

This struck me as a whole other way to use OU Live.  TV programmes like Newsnight have a very familiar format.  OU Live not only allows us to create a ‘virtual TV studio’, but it also allows us to create a situation where the ‘virtual TV audience’ can ask the experts some questions.  Another thought is that we could potentially create situations where students can (and should) be encouraged to challenge the points of views that are exposed by the experts.

From my perspective, I would really like to see an example of how this might work.  There are aspects of technology and computing education where ‘the debate’ format might work.  Another point to bear in mind is that to get the best out of these opportunities, module teams need to be considering these opportunities when they are designing modules.

Recording a lecture

Running an on-line tutorial can be a tough business; there’s a lot going on.  You’ve got slides, different OU Live tools, students talking, problems with microphones, text messages appearing and also the need to manage and control activities. 

During the presentation of a module a tutor might discover that some students might struggle with a certain topic.  Rather than to offer comments through a discussion forum, or perhaps a group email, another approach is to run, and to also potentially record, a short lecture.  OU Live can be used to record a short session that can be considered to be akin to a ‘video podcast’.

When a session has been recorded, tutors can then refer students to the resource in their correspondence tuition, as well as during examination preparation sessions. 

I used this approach to run a revision session for M364 Fundamentals of Interaction Design.  I kept getting scuppered by technology.  The first time I ran the revision session there was a power outage at the university which meant that students couldn’t login to my session.  The second time I ran the session, I discovered that I couldn’t use the record button, and after the session students contacted me asking when a recording would be available.   The third time I ran the session, I just made a recording; there were no students.  When I had finished the recording and I had made it available to everyone, I let all the students know by making a post to the module discussion forum.

One question is: how long should a ‘recorded lecture session’ last?  Unfortunately, I don’t have any research to back this up, but when it comes to student engagement my instinct is to try to keep them pretty short.  This is something that I ought to look into.

Focused Demo

The idea of a ‘focused demo’ pretty much follows on from the idea of a lecture.  Quite a few computing modules make use of some specialist software, such as programming environments such as Eclipse, Netbeans or Sense (you don’t have to worry about what these are, just know that they’re special bits of software).  For design and engineering modules, students might have to use tools such as Open Design Studio.  Some students might find that some of these pieces of software pretty baffling to use, especially if they’ve never seen them before.

One approach to help students is to ‘show’ them how to use a piece of software.  OU Live has got a great facility called ‘application sharing’, which means that you can show students what you see on your screen.  You might show students how to begin to use a software tool during an on-line tutorial, but there’s always the risk that things might go wrong, i.e. an internet connection might go down, or a big and complex bit of software might begin to misbehave. 

Rather than doing a ‘live’ demo (which is, ultimately, a really good thing to always try to do), another idea is to record what could be loosely called a ‘focussed demo’, i.e. you could show students how to use a particular bit of a software system by recording a quick demo using OU Live. 

If you’re teaching programming, you could also use this approach to show how to solve a particular problem.

Drop in session for students

I remember when I was an undergrad our human-computer interaction lecturer said to everyone, ‘I’ll be in my office on a Wednesday afternoon between these times… if you have any questions about anything, just pop in to see me: I’ll be very happy to have a chat’.  I thought it was a great way to encourage informal discussions about the course, and the materials.

After having a chat with my colleague from the South East region, I discovered that she used the exact same approach to support her students.  Rather than running a face to face ‘drop in session’, she ran a virtual one.

The way it worked was that she would advertise times when she would be available for a chat in her tutor OU Live room, and students could just turn up if they wanted a chat about anything. She would keep an eye on what was going on in the room whilst doing other things: exactly the same way that it used to work when I was an undergraduate.

What I really liked about this approach was how informal it is. There is no plan or agenda, but it clearly suggests to students that they can ‘drop by’ and gain some support if they need to.  I haven’t tried this approach in my own tutoring, but I am certainly going to!

Additional support session

For students who struggle with some aspects of a module the university can offer something called an ‘additional support session’.  This usually takes the form of a one to one session between a student and a tutor.  There are different ways that an additional support session could be run.  One way is to run a face to face session at a regional centre (or another venue that could be booked by the university).  Another approach might be to have a telephone session.  A third way is to run an additional support session through OU Live.

One of the main advantages of using OU Live for an additional support session is that both the student and the tutor can make use of the whiteboard.  In some cases, a tutor might decide to prepare a couple of slides so the tutor can work through some of the ideas that a student might be struggling with.  This might be particularly useful with arts subject, languages (where a tutor might write things onto a whiteboard), or even mathematics, where a tutor might take a student through how to solve an equation, or work through other mathematical ideas.

In the big scheme of things, face to face is always better than on-line, but on-line can certainly be (with adequate planning) significantly better than the telephone.  One question that should be asked if one is faced with running an OU Live session is: ‘how can I make the best use of this tool to help this particular student?’  One way to get a feel for how to approach a session is to take the time to explicitly ask the student which areas to focus on.   When we know a bit more, we can use the time that we have a whole lot more effectively.

Session between students

After recording the M364 revision session that I mentioned earlier, I noticed an interesting discussion on one of the module discussion forums.  One student proposed the idea of an ‘on-line chat’ in a module wide OU Live room.  I seem to remember that this started a short debate between tutors about whether students should be left alone in an on-line space that is operated by the university.

In a face to face university, students chat with each other in university owned common rooms and corridors all the time, so why shouldn’t this happen in an on-line space?  The tough thing about distance learning is the isolation, so it seemed like a really good idea to allow students to chat to each other about a forthcoming (or impending) exam.

I sense that different people have different views about the use of on-line spaces, but I also can see that module team members, forum moderators, or curriculum managers might be able to play a role in facilitating (or seeding) student led discussions through on-line rooms.  Plus, in some modules where group work is essential, I sense that the use of OU Live has the potential to play a pivotal role.

Final thoughts…

One of the things that I really like about OU Live is that you can record sessions which is one of the things that you can’t easily do in a face to face session: if you’ve missed a face to face session, it means that you’ve missed it.  The recording facility gives tutor the power to create new types of potentially transitory learning resources that have the potential to help students in a number of different ways.

Recordings

My own (personal) view about recording is that we should record everything, since this has the potential to help the widest number of students.  Also, if a tutor makes a recording of an on-line tutor, students need be clearly told that they will be recorded: they should be given sufficient information to help them to make a decision about whether they wish to come along to a ‘live’ on-line session.

There are differing views about recording OU Live tutorials.  One argument is that if they are recorded, students won’t bother turning up; they’ll just watch the tutorial.  A counter argument to this is: if they don’t come along then they won’t be able to influence the tutorial in a way that will allow them to get their best possible learning.  A recording, I argue, should show students what they’re missing so they become suitably motivated to come along to the next live session.

Another argument is that if a session is recorded then students might be less likely to participate during a session.  This might well be the case, but I don’t see this as a very strong argument.  It’s very easy to forget that a recording is being made, and if there are exceptional points that a student wishes to share with a tutor then perhaps an on-line session isn’t the best place.

A final argument that I’ve heard is: ‘a tutorial is a tutorial; if you want to record something that students can access as a resource, then perhaps it should be recorded as just that: a resource’.  My point is that there isn’t any reason why we can’t do both.  OU Live allows us to do this, and there’s no reason why tutors can’t reference one type of resource from another.  During a ‘lecture’, you might hear the recorded phrase, ‘… and it was exactly this point that we covered during our earlier on-line tutorial’ (which students then might be tempted to go and listen to).

As far as I am aware, there isn’t yet any explicit faculty wide guidance about the recording of OU Live sessions, but I hope that there will be some one day.  When it comes to recording, my argument is very simple: we should use technology to help as many students as we can, irrespective of when and at what time they study.  Recordings of OU Live sessions can help with this, but I accept that there are important debates to resolve, especially the ethical dimension.

Module teams

One of the main points of this blog is that OU Live can be used in very different ways.  A lot can be done, but to get the best out of it, tutors (and staff tutors, who manage tutors) need a steer to understand how OU Live can be best used in the context of a module.  From the module team perspective, it’s important to offer explicit guidance to tutors about how it should and could be used.

Also, there is no reason why module teams cannot run their own OU Live sessions.  An OU Live session run by a module team should, of course, have a very different feel to any OU Live sessions that are run by tutors.  One idea is that a module team might run a series of ‘introductory lectures’ for a module: one at the start of a module, and one at the start of each major block.  This could be distinct from the sessions that tutors run which is all about small group work.

The module teams also have an important role to play in offering advice and guidance to tutors about the types of activities they consider to be useful.  At the beginning of a module presentation, the module team are the experts, and the tutors will occasionally need help in terms of understanding what to do in terms of how to effectively design a pedagogically engaging on-line tutorial.  Suggestions from the module team, perhaps working in collaboration with experienced tutors, can be invaluable.

Using OU Live for research

OU Live can be also used for research.  I’ve been recently been involved with an internal research project that has been all about understanding tutor experience on on-line modules.  The approach that the researchers (who were fellow associate lecturers) took was really interesting: they used OU Live to as a way to not only to help to facilitate a research interview, but also to record a research interview too.  The tutors managed to convert the recorded sessions into MP3 format and pass them onto me for analysis.

Group Tuition Policy

The university has recently been working on something called a ‘group tuition policy’, which is a university wide policy that aims to improve the learning opportunities that are available for students.  I’ve yet to fully appreciate the full significance of this policy, but one thing that I have heard is that students will be offered different types of session so that they will be able to attend a wider variety of learning events.  In the ‘new world’ of the group tuition policy, there may be on-line equivalents of face to face sessions.  I fully expect there to be a need to ‘group’ tutors together for on-line sessions in a way that my faculty currently groups together tutors for some face to face events.

Concluding points

This blog has considered the different ways that OU Live can and has been used.  I’ve heard it said that technology can move and develop a lot faster than pedagogy.  Put another way: we’re still figuring out how to most effectively teach using these new interactive tools.  As I mentioned earlier: you can do some things in face to face tutorials than you can in on-line tutorials.

It has personally taken me quite a bit of time to understand that there are a whole range of different interesting, exciting and dynamic opportunities that couldn’t have been possible if you only adopted face-to-face teaching.  A continued challenge that we have to collectively grapple with is how to effectively manage the important blend between the two.