All Ireland Society for Higher Education
| Name: | Maggie Leese |
|---|---|
| Email: | maggie.leese@wlv.ac.uk |
| Institution: | University of Wolverhampton |
This paper discusses the planning, implementation and evaluation of a Technology Supported Learning (T.S.L.) project that was used to encourage students to engage in out of class activities (O.O.C.A.) between taught sessions. The solution used was a Virtual Learning Environment (V.L.E.) known as Wolverhampton Online Learning Framework (W.O.L.F) to encourage collaborative working within learning sets because it is said to have the potential to improve communication and offer support to students, along with making links between taught sessions and other activities. (Chou and Liu 2005, Dutton et al. 2004, Boyle 2005). It was imperative to ensure that regardless of their past experience all students would be able to participate in the activities and that they understood the reason for the activities as this was crucial to motivate student engagement (Whitworth 2005). A number of authors have suggested that learning sets can give students a shared purpose and therefore they can `get the job done' and they highlight, that by using peer-learning groups students are more likely to feel that the task is achievable (Booth et al. 2003, Chin 2004, Fox and MacKeogh 2003). Students were given weekly tasks that needed to be completed using allocated time within taught sessions. Feedback was collected in three ways, including informal discussion, module feedback forms and a short questionnaire about the use of the V.L.E. Overall the students' feedback was positive and they commented on gaining a number of skills including, using technology, group working and presentations. The students that completed the module after the changes had a slightly higher average grade and the overall pass mark for the module had increased.
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