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E-learning

Overview

Information Services provides a free consulting and technical support service for academics who wish to use e-learning tools to enrich the learning process for their students. The use of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) helps to facilitate course management, tracking of students, and administration of tests. VLEs can be integrated directly within web sites and the Portal to increase access to learning support materials.

Our team of e-learning specialists supports academics in the creation and delivery of e-learning materials through:

  • Virtual Learning Environments (WebCT)

  • Online Assessment tools (QuestionMark Perception) 

  • Interactive Web-Based Learning production.

  • Full multimedia production

What is e-Learning?

Any use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to enhance teaching and learning (e.g. computer-aided learning, virtual classrooms, online discussion forums) can be called e-Learning. Typical aims are:
  • to broaden the range of teaching activities for your students
  • to encourage self-directed learning
  • to provide self-test opportunities
  • to improve student-staff or student-student communication
  • to address the diverse needs of your students
  • to address specific teaching issues (visual analysis etc.)
  • to help cope with increasing student numbers
  • to encourage collaborative learning
  • to provide core material online, allowing more focused student-staff contact time.

Benefits for staff

From a lecturer's point-of-view, e-Learning can:
  • Help you to manage and organise your course materials more effectively and efficiently
  • Reduce the need for certain administrative tasks (for example, making paper copies, marking tests, giving out course reminders)
  • Enable you to monitor student participation and progress, ensuring that you can offer directed support and advice quickly and can make more effective use of staff-student contact time
  • Widen communication opportunities with your students
  • Help to change your role from "knowledge provider" to "learning facilitator", promoting self-directed learning
  • Reduce large-group teaching and increase time spent with small groups or individuals
  • Encourage the development of flexible learning materials.

Benefits for students

From a student's point-of-view, e-Learning can:
  •  Encourage anytime-anyplace access to course materials
  •  Provide self-directed and self-paced learning, allowing students to keep track of their own progress
  •  Increase opportunities for student participation, encouraging less confident students to take part
  •  Support different learning styles (using flexible learning materials)
  •  Promote student engagement (using interactive learning materials), improving learner motivation and satisfaction
  •  Give direct access to relevant and up-to-date information
  •  Enhance opportunities for collaborative group work
  •  Improve communication with course tutor and teaching assistants
  •  Facilitate communication between students, promoting peer group support
  •  Aid preparation of future topics, and revision of previous topics
  •  Improve organisation of course materials
  •  Increase the accessibility of information and course materials to students with disabilities.

Our Services

The IS Learning Team offers a diverse range of services.

In March 2007, Andy Beggan (IS Learning Team Leader) gave a presentation on the services offered by the Learning Team to colleagues in IS. This is a copy of the presentation. (Please note, some links to interactive content and video materials demonstrated during the presentation have been removed due to copyright restrictions.)

e-Learning Clinics

The Learning Team is running a series of drop-in clinics for consultation, advice and technical support in the creation and delivery of e-learning materials within the University. Information about these clinics can be found at e-Learning Support Clinics

e-Learning Seminars

The Learning Team provide an e-Learning Seminar every semester covering various topics.

e-Learning production

The IS Learning Team can help you deliver your learning materials online, exploiting tools such as Dreamweaver, Flash and Xerte to create engaging, interactive and eye-catching e-learning.

Originally formed to support the TLTP initiative (CAL Group) in the early 1990s, IS Learning Team members have been creating media-rich, highly interactive, bespoke computer-aided learning courses for over 14 years.

VLEs

The IS Learning Team supports the VLE WebCT. Technical assistance is provided to academic staff as required, via training, development and maintenance support of the courses delivered through either system. WebCT can be used:
  • to place lecture notes online, along with supporting tools such as a linked glossary, contents page, and search tool
  • as a gateway to topic-related external web sites for research purposes
  • for self-test exercises and assessment purposes
  • to facilitate collaborative group projects, in which students communicate with each other electronically and place their own work online
  • to create a fully integrated distance-learning course.

These environments not only enable the lecturer to upload his or her own learning material, but also provide tools such as bulletin boards and online quizzes. Only students registered and enrolled on your module will be able to access your uploaded materials.

VLEs allow a student's progress to be tracked, and therefore enable you to trace which pages the student has visited and when. This facility can make it possible to pinpoint potential problems at an early stage.

VLEs and the Portal

You may be wondering how VLEs differ from the Portal, and indeed how these two systems fit in with one another.

The Portal is a broader concept and offers a "gateway" to an integrated personalised web environment for both staff and students allowing them to interact in a seamless, secure environment for both teaching and research, and providing the opportunity to optimise business processes and objectives.

WebCT can be accessed via the Portal.

Online assessment tools

The IS Learning Team helps academics to develop their own online assessments - mainly through QuestionMark Perception. With our VLE (WebCT) we can also facilitate the production of online assessments through the inbuilt tools within each system.

The great advantage of online assessment tools is that they can mark tests automatically and instantly when the student clicks on the "submit" button. They can be used for formal assessments, or simply for students to test themselves.

Although online assessment tools cannot (yet!) mark essay questions, they can cope with questions of the following types:

  • true/false and yes/no
  • multiple choice and multiple answer
  • ranking
  • matching
  • fill-in-the-blank
  • calculations.

So, if you can easily create questions of these types, you may want to consider using an online assessment tool in your module.

Questions can include images, and there is support for scripts from foreign languages.

Graphic production

The IS Learning Team have dedicated graphic artists, illustrators and animators. Exploiting tools such as Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator and Freehand, we are able to provide e-learning with "visual punch" ensuring that our courses both have the appropriate impact and are memorable.

Podcasting

A podcast is a media file (e.g mp3) that is distributed by subscription (paid or unpaid) over the internet using syndication feeds, for playback on mobile devices and personal computers (source Wikipedia).

To support the use of recorded audio (mp3) to enhance teaching and learning, centrally bookable portable recordings kits are available from the podcasting team. The kits are set up automatically to record to the correct mp3 format and there is a simple user's guide distributed with each one.

Financial Support

Funding is available through the Learning and Teaching Development Fund (LTDF), to encourage the development and dissemination of creative and effective approaches to supporting student learning. Further information can be found on the "Learning & Teaching Development Fund: guidelines for applicants" pages of the SEDU website.

Pedagogic Support

Institute for Research into Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (IRLTHE)

The institute has been created to match its commitment to excellence in both teaching and research.

Learning Science Research Institute (LSRI)

Learning sciences seek to advance scientific understanding of how psychological, educational and technological processes can support human learning, knowledge and intelligence.

Staff and Educational Development Unit

SEDU is responsible for developing and implementing the University's Learning and Teaching strategy.

e-learning @ Nottingham

Read the E-learning strategy.

Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education

The PGCHE is an entry-level, professional qualification for lecturers at the University.