With thanks to our critical friend Betty for the summary of this phone call with Liz Dunne, our Project Lead
Liz updated Betty on the current activities in the project, many of which relate to gathering baseline data based on what the different faculties want to know.
There will be an emphasis on collecting data from students, some by questionnaire but most by face-to-face contacts with students. Other current tasks relate to gathering the information about when VC will take place within courses (semester starts in October), and also developing training for the instructor participants. Liz noted that the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, a joint initiative of Exeter and Plymouth universities, has considerable experience with VC over their different campuses and is willing to join forces in terms of developing training packages as well as sharing student data.
Much of the telephone conversation focused on models for the use of VC within courses. Betty noted that using VC to transmit a lecture was an obvious model but based on other research, this can be the moment to look at the overall balance of a courses and decide on where VC can support other aspects besides instructor content transmission. Liz noted that Geography students at Exeter were already using VC for group work outside of lectures; Betty supported that idea and suggested several other ways that shifted the use of VC to a channel for students to report on their collaborative work.
The VLE is an important tool to enable students to study lecture materials before a real-time session, do something (perhaps collaboratively) and post results in the VLE, and then the instructor uses the real-time session and VC to guide students on reporting on their submissions. Liz noted that these sorts of ideas were very good, but it would be a change process for instructors who generally think of the lecture as the time and place when they deliver content. Liz did note that Exeter stresses inquiry-led learning and active learning, which lead themselves well to a different balance in contact time.
Betty and Liz also discussed the upcoming literature review of the project. Betty noting that more than 5 million hits are available via Google for the key words: video conferencing, teaching and learning. Betty indicated she would like to see a concept map or some other cluster of main lines of all this literature.
Action points: During August/early September:
- Rachel to produce a concept map or other overview of clusters of relevant literature and send to Betty
- Jane to collect the teaching ideas being discussed so far in the project and send to Betty
- All the project team will look at the expected and possible outcomes for the project given in the project plan to identify indicators for those outcomes and send the ideas to Betty
- The project team will send its interim report for HEA (due early September) also to Betty
- With this input, Betty will arrange a phone meeting with the Exeter team in early September before the CAMEL meeting in Kingston on 13 September.
Upcoming visits: Betty will come to Exeter on 16 October and meet with the team on 17 October. She will also come to the Steering committee meeting on 9 January 2008. After that, a time for another visit will be arranged.
