The Digital Turn: staff perceptions of the virtual learning environment and the implications for educational developers

Self Cite

Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are important infrastructure and digital educational spaces that are widely used. The lecturers’ voices on VLEs and their use were not adequately captured in the #VLEIreland project. Therefore, following the development and piloting of a questionnaire consisting of a common set of questions, lecturers were surveyed across seven Irish higher education institutes. There were 580 responses from staff who use the VLE, with the analysis based upon the 521 valid responses. The findings will explore the VLE features or tools used by lecturers, their attitude to the VLE, and barriers to the use of the VLE and related issues, including that of intellectual property ownership. Lecturers are broadly positive about VLEs, with 7 in 10 of those who use the VLE strongly agreeing that it is helpful. However the adoption and use of VLEs is not without difficulties. In particular, time pressures emerged as barriers to use, limiting the use of VLEs and engagement with training. Despite this, 91% of respondents answered Yes to the question “Are you interested in making more use of online tools in your teaching?” Drawing on the issues highlighted in the findings, this paper will explore the attitudes of lecturers to the VLE and the enablers of, and inhibitors to, their greater engagement with the VLE.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring lecturer engagement with the VLE: findings from a multi-college staff survey

Farrelly¹,

Raftery²,

Harding³

2018

Self Cite

“…They lack knowledge of relevant copyright restrictions as well as permissions, they may well be fearful of making mistakes in relation to copyright, and they may also lack time (McAvinia, Ryan & Moloney, 2018) to establish their own professional development needs in these areas. Harding (2018) points to the role that professional identity and an understanding of learning theory play in designing and implementing pedagogic innovation which moves beyond the use of technologies to maintain the status quo, replicate traditional approaches to teaching and/or to support an increasing administrative load. It is important that, if we seek genuinely to pursue open educational practices and the use and sharing of OER in higher education in Ireland, we begin to support staff in learning about these topics and enabling OER to be used both inside and outside the VLE.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The findings presented in this chapter are drawn predominantly from qualitative responses to Questions 15 and 16a of the questionnaire for staff participating in the #VLEIreland research, which has been extensively presented in the initial papers in this issue (Harding, 2018;Farrelly, Raftery & Harding, 2018). Data were collected between autumn 2014 and spring 2015 in seven of the participating institutions.…”

Section: Data and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

The VLE versus Open Education

Rísquez¹,

McAvinia²

2018

In this paper we consider the position of the VLE in the context of the open education movement. This paper gathers data from the #VLEIreland survey in order to explore further whether open education was a concern of the academics involved, and if so, how it shaped their use of the local VLE. We will explore the nature of open education and open educational resources (OER), and whether there are interactions between these resources and the VLE. Open educational resources are materials shared online for educators to use and adapt, including full courses, modules, textbooks, and assets such as video clips, images or teaching methods. Data from our staff survey indicates a range of responses to the sharing and use of OERs and a spectrum of understanding (or lack of understanding) of copyright issues. We explore these findings and discuss their implications for OER in the future, and suggest that the ideals of "openness" are challenged by institutional VLEs and other mechanisms for resource sharing in higher education.

“…This is consistent with Brown's argument that, despite almost universal adoption by institutions in the UK, "VLEs have had only a relatively slight impact on pedagogy in higher education" (2010, p.7). For continual improvements as well as substantial or innovative changes in teaching practice, both national and institutional strategic vision is needed, coupled with a renewed emphasis on fostering digital literacies, academic professional development, and pedagogical and technical support (for further discussion of staff attitudes to, and use of, the VLE see Farrelly, Raftery and Harding (2018) and of the importance of staff development see Harding (2018), both in this Special Issue). Indeed, the National Forum report Building Digital Capacity in Higher Education directly links the under-utilisation of current digital infrastructure with the need for strategic and pedagogical guidance, and the development of digital literacy within the teaching community as follows (2014, p.7):…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engaging students through the VLE: comparing like with like using the #VLEIreland student survey

Raftery¹,

Rísquez²

2018

Virtual learning environments (VLEs) provide the core infrastructure for the digital learning experiences for many students in Irish and international higher education institutions. Hence the student experience and voice offer an important perspective to understand to what extent this proves a strategic choice, and investment of institutional resources and lecturers' time. However, surveys comparing a diversity of institutions at different moments in time offer serious methodological limitations to data analysis. In this paper, results of the #VLEIreland student survey are presented for four Irish higher education institutions, which were surveyed using the common questionnaire with 3,332 student responses in 2011 and 5,170 when the survey was repeated in 2013. To some extent, this allows us to analyse the data while relatively controlling for institutional influences. This snapshot of students' use and perceptions at two points allow for tentative trends to be drawn as to any changing patterns over time. The comparison of results indicate a consistent finding of high frequency of use (with almost half using daily in the more recent findings). The VLE thus provides a stable base for sharing learning resources, managing assignments and student communications. The consistency of the findings indicate a certain maturity of use of the VLE, albeit with a continued emphasis on disseminating notes and other learning resources to students. As the student VLE experience is largely determined by their lecturers' use, a continued emphasis on the development of digital capacity of lecturers (as well as students) is needed.