Guide Provides guidance, resources and case studies around the use of technologies to support online courses and distance learning programmes. Archived This content was archived in July 2021 About this guide Most institutions use technologies to make their courses more engaging and improve access to learning for students. As new technologies have become more reliable, viable and sometimes more affordable, they’ve brought exciting opportunities to reconsider how we teach, engage with or involve learners in different ways. Online learning offers institutions a way to take advantage of these opportunities, either for large scale distance learning courses or as an element of existing face-to-face courses. This guide considers a range of factors that contribute to ongoing capacity for online learning provision. It offers guidance, resources and case studies to support the development and use of technologies to support online courses and distance learning programmes. We also consider barriers and highlight actions you can take, illustrated with examples from institutions that have developed useful approaches to overcome them. Your institution will need to consider some fundamental questions to assess how they can use and integrate a range of technologies to support online learning. Throughout the guide, we highlight these questions and offer some ideas and examples. Use our checklist (Word docx) which highlights key questions you may be considering for online learning provision. Your institution may be planning to adopt new models of online or distance learning or may be integrating online learning into existing courses. This checklist can be useful for both scenarios. The checklist provides groups of related questions that could be considered by teams, committees or individuals. Some of the questions require institution-wide consideration, whilst others may also need to be considered at a departmental or course team level. The checklist includes strategic and operational aspects as well as more specific questions for individual courses, modules or learning activities. Related guidesThe guide is part of a series around the development and provision of online learning:
Developments in technology have transformed both face-to-face and online learning. In the past, distance learners received weighty workbooks via
post. The Open University for example, often supplemented books with radio and television programmes or video/audio tapes. But now, ‘distance learning’ is primarily delivered as online learning. Specialist learning technologies such as virtual learning environments
(VLEs) or e-portfolios have changed how institutions manage learning materials and resources. However, staff don't always take advantage of their potential to change curriculum
design or delivery. Presenting lectures by video, much as it might seem a technological advance in teaching and learning, is still a traditional way to teach. It’s didactic and uses new technology to simply ‘deliver’ content. New technologies offer exciting opportunities to reconsider how we teach, engage with or involve students in online activities. Social networking technologies are freely available and widely used, and offer accessible tools for online content and classes. But they can also present significant challenges for your institution - how to integrate them and provide
support. Online learners can access learning materials and activities at their own convenience, studying where and when it suits them. However it can be difficult to provide technical support when things go wrong and, despite the presence of mobile devices, not all students own them. Staff and students may not have the necessary skills to use these effectively in a learning context. One of the key issues is building digital capability for staff and students to use technologies and
services effectively and ensuring that this enhances the learning experience. Our guide on using technology to improve curriculum design offers some excellent examples of how technology has inspired teachers to transform the learning experience: Many of these examples support just-in-time, on-demand learning, but they also bring challenges around ownership, licensing, standards, integration, management, support, costing services,
staff roles, staff and student skills, curriculum change and student expectations. All of these need careful consideration. Technological development never stands still, and keeping up with the pace and pressure is challenging, particularly when technologies can disrupt traditional industries and
professions. Institutions need to educate future professionals to embrace and adapt to these ‘disruptive changes’, and that will be more important than teaching them to use one particular technology or another. Teaching to an old industry model will not give learners the skills they need to find employment. At the very least, your institution needs to engage with industry, identify what kinds of professionals they need now, and start a dialogue
about what they anticipate they’ll need in future. Future horizon reports and discussions are interesting to follow, and are popular in technology, but in practice these are difficult to incorporate into course planning, which can take a long time to complete. They can form part of your institution’s market intelligence. Engage senior management and describe the benefits When you’re planning online courses, the first thing you’ll need to consider is the type of technologies your institution can provide. One of the benefits of using institutional technologies is that central services are already set up to help staff and students with training and technical support, although these may need adapting for online learning. Your
institution may have already invested in new technologies because they support a number of functions, including data management, recording student activity and achievement, and compliance with legal requirements. Importantly, these technologies may also have been chosen and implemented to support campus-based courses. Teaching departments may be under some pressure to use them to support online learning too. It may be difficult to use some
institutional technologies in an online context without extending student support activities, for example across time zones or to cover out of office hours. Decisions relating to curriculum design may conflict with existing policies and services that support institutional technologies. For example, online students or industry professionals may not be able to easily access institutional technologies requiring authentication. Institutional technologies for
online learning and any associated content also belong to the institution. This can be a problem because students may not be able to access their work once they have finished their course. This is a particular problem for e-portfolio systems and alumni professional development portfolios. Your institution will need to strike a balance between the potential costs and benefits of adapting existing policies, technical systems and support services. Plymouth University, for example, made
several adaptations to their systems to create a seamless digital learning environment1. When implementing online learning it is important to adopt a strategic approach to IT developments. Enterprise architecture (EA)
offers an approach to help senior managers achieve business and organisational change. EA offers a way to record and understand how the various systems, processes, people and operational mechanisms of an institution work as a whole. Our enterprise architecture guide offers practical tools to help
institutions adopt this kind of technique. Scaling up online learning offers a perfect opportunity for institutions to use EA to identify strengths and gaps. This kind of approach also allows for consideration of resource implications in terms of cost and human resources. Our costing technologies and
services guide offers tools and approaches that can help institutions with this process. For online learning, the “cloud” offers a shared pool of configurable computing resources (eg, networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can offer a range of benefits. Our cloud computing guide highlights the potential benefits of the cloud for
educational institutions. It can support them to: It also considers some of the risks associated with cloud computing. The guide also offers some interesting examples of
UK institutional partnerships, including the Bloomsbury Media Cloud project2. Our report on the future of cloud computing considers
the implications for educational institutions and offers some success stories. There are plenty of web-based and mobile technologies your institution can use to support online learning. This kind of approach has both advantages and disadvantages. We recommend your institution weighs up the risks and benefits and puts systems in place to manage any ongoing risk. Some open source tools for content creation (eg, Xerte toolkits) or management (eg, Moodle) can be internally hosted within the organisation giving enhanced benefits and minimised risks. Supporting staffOne advantage of adopting external software or services is that they are, or appear to be, free for the institution and students to use. In reality, they are likely to require some level of support and staff may even require more support during initial stages. Some start-up services are initially free and then implement a charged service once they are established. Many offer a free basic service but charge for additional elements such as management or tracking features, which educators will want to use. ContingenciesA significant risk associated with using external services is that they cease to operate or exist in the middle of a course. It’s therefore important to have a contingency plan, with alternative services to turn to if you need to preserve and manage any content made in the defunct system. Some students may be better using certain external technologies and services than staff, which can make staff feel insecure, but this isn’t true for all students. Students who use technology extensively for social or leisure purposes may not be able to use it well for learning. Supporting studentsYou will need to support learners in using a course or your institution’s preferred technologies, but could offer clear guidance around which specific technologies it will or won’t support. Including digital literacy skills within the curriculum is one way to ensure that learners develop the skills they need. Establishing a self-help or peer support approach can also be useful, and can even be used to create and share tutorials. But teaching staff will need to relinquish some control of teaching and learning to allow this to work. The digital storytelling course (ds106) in the US1 is a great example of this peer-support approach working well, as it encourages participants to both create their own assignments and develop tutorials to help others do them. Evaluating suitable technologiesIT support services and other central services might object to using external technologies. This reluctance can leave teaching staff having to provide technical as well as teaching support. Some staff and departments may be able to do this, and to test out various technologies to see if they suit their courses. Evaluating these activities and feeding back to senior managers helps to make the case for the institution to accept and support these technologies on a wider scale. Case study - using Wordpress to support online open classesThe University of Coventry’s media department2 used WordPress blogs to support online open classes. The external online platform allowed staff to manage content from both registered and open students, as well as from external contributors. The marketing department was initially concerned about not using the institutional web services, but the media team recorded the level of activity on the WordPress blog and the figures spoke for themselves. The volume of traffic provided tangible evidence that the sites attracted visitors from around the world, raising the profile of the university. Usability and reliabilityAny technology or services your institution uses (or considers) should allow users to achieve their goals quickly with minimum effort or errors, and provide an acceptable ‘user experience’ We recommend testing the usability, reliability and user experience of institutional technologies early on in implementation. Test again once the technology is up and running by assessing ongoing feedback and analysing patterns of use. We recommend central services get involved with this process and take responsibility for assessing externally provided technologies to ensure new systems are usable as they can be. If this responsibility falls to individual teachers or department technical support staff they may need further training.
Footnotes
It can be trickier for institutions to allow staff to use their own technologies to access institutional systems than it is to allow students. After all, staff are likely to have access to
confidential or personal data. Institutions need to have clear staff policies and guidelines, setting out what their staff can access and what support is, or isn’t, available for the various technologies they might want to use. Increasingly, students expect to access learning activities and content from their own devices. The benefits to learners are obvious - it enables them to access these from home, work, placements or field work. This approach also appears
to support flexible learning, and strategies to widen participation. Designing a course or class around students using their own technologies can raise issues of equity and access. Poorer students may not be able to afford up-to-date devices, and students living in areas where mobile signals are very weak or non-existent are potentially at a disadvantage. Institutions need to consider how they can provide an equitable experience, and they may need to
provide alternative routes into either content or learning activities. Online students might well expect that all the information and services available on campus will automatically be available to them online or via their mobile device, including personal information such as grades. This presents a challenge, as institutions do need to keep their systems and information secure. As well as information and guidance about this, students may also
need help to use their own devices. It’s likely that online students will access materials and activities through their own devices, so when designing a curriculum, it’s important to realise that content may be accessed by a range of different technologies. This offers freedom for students to manage their own time, regulate how
and when they access online learning and puts control firmly in their own hands. However it can be difficult for staff, who may have to respond to demands for support, and provide learning content in a variety of formats. The BYOD4L open online course is an example of this kind of initiative. It now has 12 institutional partners and over 20 volunteer
facilitators. Staff and students work collaboratively on problems and scenarios, using existing tools or creating new resources using the hashtag #BYOD4L, and working within a pedagogical framework for social learning (the 5Cs model, Nerantzi and Beckingham, 2014). Emerging technologies have the potential to challenge the existing economic, social and political landscape. New technologies can disrupt existing patterns and models of teaching, assessment and support. Much as ‘disruptive’ has negative connotations; it’s important to note that this disruption can lead to positive change. People in traditional
institutions can find the changes brought about by technological disruption unnerving. They may be concerned about their roles and, ultimately, their jobs. The process of disruption can be painful as society or an organisation going through it attempts to adjust to the change it brings. There are many examples of technologies disrupting existing ways of life. This includes the impact of people using their mobile devices to record events as they
happen on news media. Unless media companies accept and adjust their models to embrace this, by including public records of events in their broadcasts, their existence may be threatened. Another example is the impact of digital photography on professional photographers, which highlights that professionals have had to adapt and change their existing models to continue working. Jonathan also realised that the way
we educate future photographers needs to change accordingly. He persuaded the media department at the University of Coventry to transform some of their classes through the use of open technologies and open educational practice1. The university has since established a research group
around disruptive media. Online learning offers an opportunity to: Carrying out risk assessments can help
institutions balance the risks against the benefits of adopting each new technology. Institutions also need to recognise that staff need space to take risks. Managers may think that some technologies will be too disruptive Traditionally, educators created learning content and the institution managed curation and long-term storage. Ownership was relatively clear: content developed by academic staff often belonged to the institution, as stipulated in staff contracts. Institutions should have policies that set out how to manage, archive, store and access teaching and learning content. Online learning brings specific challenges to
the creation, management and archiving of learning content. To some extent, VLEs and learning content repositories can be used to store and deliver content as long as participants have full access to campus systems. However, delivery of this content may differ for online learning. Teachers should consider how they change their pedagogic approach and
curriculum design to take advantage of online technologies. This may mean that VLEs and formal learning repositories don't work for new types of content. There's also a range of technical issues related to producing learning content including formatting, licensing, sharing and
metadata. Our guidance on how to make your collection available for teaching and learning includes useful information and examples to illustrate good practice. Using external web-based technologies and services means that teachers, students and external peers or mentors can create, share and assess online content without the need for
institutional authentication. This kind of approach can support open access to learning activities and content, which defies traditional boundaries around when classes take place and who can contribute. If your organisation wants to promote content sharing, repurposing and student contributions, it's vital to consider content creation tools. You can provide open source tools to all users with no licence costs and some, like Xerte toolkits, are specifically designed with sharing, collaboration and export feeds in mind. By contrast, proprietary tools tend to have restrictive licensing and are less likely to be optimised for open content agendas. Teachers as content facilitatorsIt also raises a number of questions including:
There may also be situations where students need or demand closed forums, which can also be possible with some external services. This is a good illustration of how much teacher roles may change in online learning contexts; where they are no longer the 'expert' producing content, but act as facilitators and curators of content. They may still provide the structure of the learning activities and assessment and can share this responsibility with students and external contributors. They may also spend quite a bit of time focussing on aggregating and supervising responses. This could compromise their traditional working hours as students can access and take part in learning activities at any time.
Web-based technologies allow educators to make their learning content accessible to learners and other educators outside their own institution. There are various motivations for sharing learning content in an open way - from top-down institution-wide policy, to individual teachers altruistically sharing with colleagues and open learners. Our
guide to open educational resources describes open content or open educational resources (OER) as small individual assets shared on the web, or larger, packaged and structured resources. What makes learning resources truly open is the deliberate application of an open license, which sets out who can use the resource and how. Creative
Commons licences have had a big impact on making learning materials open, although other open licences exist and may be more appropriate. One principle of releasing open content is to help students access learning materials no matter where they are geographically to widen participation. Open content can be useful in online learning, too, although there are potential challenges - how to locate, and then adapt, content to suit each context. Some
open content is packaged for a specific audience and isn’t accessible to a global audience, pedagogically or technically. The marketing and branding potential of open content can present educators with a useful set of benefits to present to senior managers, and may help make the case for online learning. There is great potential to develop exciting learning activities and classes, with students generating, sharing and adapting (or remixing) their own
content such as in the digital storytelling course (ds106)1 at the University of Mary Washington in the US. Our podcast discusses how developing and growing open courses, and particularly Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOCs), have raised the profile of openness. However, not all of these actually use openly licensed content. See the section on open approaches in our curriculum design and support for online learning guide. Our
three year UK open educational resources (OER) programme investigated a range of cultural, legal, institutional and technical issues2 around the development of open content. In addition to producing OER for the UK and wider community to use, the lessons learnt were of
great value for anyone adopting a more open approach to learning content. Incorporate open content into existing strategy and policy Identify examples of this working well within your own institution, or from others. Seek external advice
Online learning wouldn't be possible without the extensive work that’s been done to improve technical standards. This work allows systems to interact, share data and deliver the technologies that underpin learning. The Centre for Educational Technology, Interoperability and Standards (Cetis) are experts on education technology innovation, interoperability and
technology standards. Whilst your IT, learning technology and library services teams need to engage with such standards, most staff and students will benefit from them without having to engage in the detail. Course advertising, open educational resources, assessment, content management, searching and delivery, and student data through learning analytics are all supported by technical standards, without these standards being visible. Our
report on learning analytics identifies that student data generated through learning analytics is increasingly important. It provides important intelligence (link to penetrating the market section) to help institutions improve student success, retention rates and learning experiences. Institutions are having to take a more managed approach to measurement,
collection, analysis and reporting of student data, and need to consider ethical as well as technical issues. Data sources tend to be large institutional administration systems such as student information systems, VLEs, attendance records, library systems or IT systems, with data gleaned from log-ins or student surveys. Online learning presents challenges as student data may no
longer be easily managed by your institution. When students interact with and use non-institutional technologies, you still need to track these activities - this can present technical and ethical problems with permissions. Once you set up systems properly, learning analytics data can provide valuable evidence that a new approach or intervention is having a positive impact on students. There are some notable examples of institutions adopting comprehensive approaches
to learning analytics, including Manchester Metropolitan University1 and the Open University2. Carry out an audit of systems and establish a planned approach to improve data collation, management and sharing You can support online learning using a wide range of technologies. These include specifically designed learning technologies or those adopted for use in learning activities. The same technologies can
often be used for both face-to-face and online learning, but they have a central role in an online context. These include: Technologies can help people with disabilities engage with learning in ways that previously weren't possible. Being able to access learning content and activities online can be liberating for people who are housebound, whether for physical or other reasons. Technology can be a means to broaden and enable equitable access to learning, but isn't necessarily a catch-all solution. Not all students with
disabilities will want to access learning in the same way, or will find different technologies or formats accessible or supportive of their particular needs. If you or your institution develop online courses or classes, you’ll need to take the requirements of students with different needs into account. A good starting point is to consider the content creation tools you currently use with this
accessibility checklist and test how accessible they are. Surprisingly, some of the expensive industry standard tools produce content with significant accessibility barriers whilst open source tools like Xerte toolkits have much higher levels of native accessibility. Ensuring resources are mobile-friendly is one way of potentially increasing accessibility because many mobile devices have inbuilt assistive technologies like text-to-speech. In addition to considering how students with disabilities will access, learn with or use online technologies, think about how specialised assistive technologies can improve student access. There is a wide range of commercial and open-source products available with specific functions
such as screen readers, spelling aids and on-screen keyboards, as well as software with built-in accessibility features. Assistive apps for mobile devices are more commonplace with touch-screens proving valuable for a range of needs. Your institution is likely to have policies on assistive technologies, for both staff and students and there may be financial student support. It's important to assess how accessible these technologies are in
relation to online learning and consider alternatives if non-institutional technologies aren't sufficiently accessible. The Disability Discrimination Act makes it a legal requirement to provide students with disabilities alternative formats of learning content. Producing content in alternative formats, such as text, audio, video, images, and guiding students through content using headings and formatting, can
also help students with different languages or personal preferences. Curriculum development and teaching staff may need support in producing different formats, and there are additional cost and time factors to consider. A central team, with specific expertise in producing a range of formats, and who can make links to the staff with knowledge around disabilities, might be best placed to do this.
A good deal of accessibility however can be achieved by choosing an appropriate content creation tool that outputs to accessible formats like HTML5 or EPUB3. Wherever possible avoid outputs in Flash format because these have very low native accessibility. Teaching staff can also use accessible open content to provide alternative and additional sources to augment their course materials. In online learning contexts, you can use presentation software to deliver lectures, demonstrations, or other support materials. You can record live sessions allowing people the chance to revisit content if they missed the live session, or when they’re revising. You can then place the recording online, for students to interact with at any time. Alternative presentation toolsSome presentation technologies encourage the traditional approach of the 'expert' teacher providing the content and being in control of when and how things are presented. These kinds of tools, such as Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote, do not aim to be collaborative but can, nonetheless, be used by students to work collaboratively. Prezi or emaze are examples of a more dynamic presentation tool. Presentations in different formats can be shared through social networking services like SlideShare and blogs, and you can upload video and audio to YouTube and Vimeo. Some open source products like Xerte toolkits can combine a range of benefits allowing you to create presentational slides alongside quizzes, videos or embedded collaboration tools like Padlet, Google documents or other online services. Presenting live contentWebinar software offers ways to present content in a live context, and incorporate video, chat, interactive whiteboards and webtours. You can record these and give them to non-attendees. Webinars can feel quite intimate and work well for small numbers of people, but can also be open to much larger groups. Your institution may have already invested in webinar software and have guides on how to use it. Graphics and more complex forms of mediaOnline learning can incorporate a range of content, from more traditional material such as text, graphics, screencasts and diagrams which are relatively easy to produce. More complex forms of media such as audio, video, timelines, and animations may help to engage students and get them interacting with the materials. Individual teachers or central services can produce materials in these various formats, but whoever produces the content will need appropriate skills, resources and preparation time. If any materials are made freely available on the web, you must also consider branding and licensing; you will need incorporate this into your institutional policies. Using open softwareThe increasing availability of free open software to develop multimedia content, such as GIMP (image manipulation) and Audacity (digital audio editor) has transformed opportunities for students to present their own content in engaging and imaginative ways. Other open source tools like Xerte toolkits, Mahara and Moodle allow standalone multimedia like images, video and audio to be easily embedded into resources alongside quizzes and explanations. Make sure that staff creating multimedia also summarise the key teaching points that the resources illustrate so they don’t create inadvertent barriers for vision or hearing impaired students. Both staff and students can use these tools to create, share and remix a wide range of formats. Students can also contribute up-to-date tutorials and guidance on these technologies for other students. In an open class on digital storytelling at University of Mary Washington in the US, students contributed a range of tutorials, assignment briefs and guidance for other students on open blogs. The course has built an ongoing collection of these, all of which are given an open licence, such as this example on making videos.1 Creating and sharing multimediaAnimations in particular can present complex information in an engaging way, and are often used in engineering and the natural sciences to demonstrate systems and mechanisms. They can also capture and simulate personal interactions, such as an example from Manchester Metropolitan University, who used GoAnimate with students on social care placements.2 Multimedia content is becoming easier to create and share through a range of presentation methods and is a key component of online learning. We recommend that your institution develops clear policies for staff to explain how to produce content and adopt them during learning activities. Staff need appropriate support and training around the pedagogic benefits, technical capabilities and legal aspects of the technologies that your institution adopts.
Footnotes
Online social networking tools and services support communication, collaboration and sharing in ways that have transformed how people interact with family, friends,
co-workers, commercial and government organisations. It's now ubiquitous and has already had a significant impact on learning and teaching. Connected mobile devices have given people access to, and even some control over these networks, as new ways of sharing information and content have democratised ownership of information and knowledge. Despite all of this, there are still people who are unable to take advantage of these technologies through lack of empowerment, poverty, access or
inclination. Educational institutions have been using web-based technologies and social networking technology such as email for years. Increasingly, they provide students with administrative information, such as timetables, reminders and requests for information. Many educators have already adopted social networking technologies to support learning and teaching through the use of
wikis, blogs and specific services such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, and through content sharing sites such as Flickr and Pinterest. These technologies and services can support face-to-face learning as well as online learning, but their adoption is likely to enhance online learning most. In particular, these tools support a ‘connectivist’ approach to
teaching and learning, where social networking and connecting form an integral part of student interactions. Social networking technologies can be challenging for institutions for all the same reasons as any non-institutionally controlled technology. However, the educational benefits of these technologies may be easier to articulate due to their worldwide acceptance and use, and they can be integrated into existing curricula without major change or re-validation. Our guide to collaborative online tools describes how these can help students develop an online presence and begin to create a professional identity, to start building professional networks and online portfolios, and to understand how social networking supports real professional practice. One example highlights how the University of Oxford used
Facebook and Storify to link theory and practice. 1 These technologies can be used to extend the relationships that students may normally have; they enable input from previous students and external professionals and experts
outside the institution. This does change the role of course teachers somewhat, and can initially be threatening to those staff and students who are more comfortable with closed, safer spaces. Consideration should also be given to online safety, but this can be incorporated into digital literacy elements of the course. An advantage of social networking technologies is that many of them record activity and this can be mapped and
tracked to help educators gather evidence to support their ongoing use or to argue for extended use. The use of hashtags and keywords/tags can help to both build a brand for the course or class [link to marketing section] and help when using aggregation tools such as Storify, scoop.it and Netvibes. Courses
may become known by their hashtag as in the case of '#ds106' the open digital storytelling class which began at the University of Mary Washington and has spread across institutions worldwide. The UK undergraduate photography class #Phonar at Coventry University is similarly known, and inspired the University of East Anglia to use Twitter and a hashtag approach for chemistry
students.2 The same tools can help academic and other professional staff build their own professional identities and profiles and share learning practice, research and content online. Specialist services such as LinkedIn, and academia.edu are also useful. Gather evidence of benefits through small, measurable pilots. Using smartphones, tablets, net books, and laptops can offer extremely flexible access to online learning for students on the move. Although ownership of mobile devices is very widespread, it’s difficult to know how much students will use their devices to access learning, or
whether this really works for them in practice. As mobile device models and software are updated so often, it can be very difficult to estimate what functions students may have access to. In reality, it's likely that students will use a range of devices depending on where they are or what work they’re doing. At the very least, mobile devices offer a way for students to manage their learning with calendars or planning apps. Some institutions use
these to send emails and text notices. Students may download learning content onto mobile devices to engage with while travelling, in work breaks, during leisure time or anywhere they choose. Students can also access web-based content on mobile devices if they have access to a mobile signal and/or wifi. However, a number of areas of the UK still have no, or only intermittent, access to a mobile signal. Older students and disabled users may find it
particularly challenging to use touch screens, small buttons or to navigate on such small screens. Mobile devices present opportunities for new approaches to learning, but not all staff may be aware of this potential. Staff may also feel they don’t have the knowledge or time to create learning content specifically for mobile devices, but good web design will at least make sure that any web-based content they do produce will display properly on
mobile devices. In addition, some tools like Xerte toolkits use a simple template driven system to allow staff or students with limited IT skills to create responsive, media rich web pages optimised for mobile phones. Third-party applications are also available for functions such as mind mapping, simple text entry and assistive technologies. The Higher Education Academy subject centre
for education's mobile learning publication1 offers promising examples of institutions using and creating apps for mobile devices to help students aggregate learning content, personalise their learning experience, and
support students on placements or in fieldwork situations. Mobile devices easily support networking and sharing of learning content through social networking sites, so can offer huge benefits to online courses that encourage student generated content, sharing, collaboration and networking. Our
mobile learning guide offers information on institution-wide strategic approaches to adopting mobile learning, pedagogic aspects, and guidance on implementation. In games, players need to solve problems, practise skills and respond to feedback. Pedagogically, gaming and other immersive technologies can offer exciting opportunities for engagement, allowing students to test hypotheses and actions through simulations and accrue credits and feedback along the way. The term “immersive technologies” often refers to virtual reality, where participants are mentally, emotionally or physically immersed in
an artificial environment. With immersive technologies, users develop a sense of presence. In educational contexts, examples include Second Life, Minecraft and virBela. Some educational institutions have developed their own immersive worlds such as St George’s Advanced Patient Simulator (GAPS), rather than using existing services. Medicine and nursing, in particular, have made good use of simulation technologies to help students practise on virtual patients, minimising the risks associated with practise on real people. Online courses can adopt or incorporate aspects of gaming, for example by emulating points, badges and leader boards through ‘open
badging.’ This is where online courses offer badges as learners progress through a course, and allow them to display these as achievements (see Mozilla open badging and Badging on OpenLearn by the Open University). This guide outlines open badges in more detail in the section about online assessment. Communities and collaborative playDeveloping communities and opportunities for collaborative play is another example of a gaming approach to online learning that can be incorporated into learning through social networking technologies. A key aspect of using gaming and immersive technologies in online learning is to make sure students can access them on their own devices. More and more services and tools are becoming available that enable teachers or learners to create their own games, and they are likely to continue to gain traction as educational devices. For example:
Virtual learning environments (VLE's) are now well established in educational institutions as a means to structure, manage and deliver learning activities and content. They are recognised as having strengths in student tracking and managing online assessments. These
integrated tools may be one product (eg, Blackboard, Moodle) or an integrated set of individual, perhaps open-source, tools with additional functions such as e-portfolios. These centrally managed systems support both campus-based and online courses and have the advantage of: They include communication mechanisms to support student dialogue with staff and peers within courses through email, and on bulletin board discussions. They can also offer shared workspaces to support collaboration. One advantage of using
VLEs is that institutions can train all staff to make the most of their particular system. However, VLEs have been criticised for not inspiring innovative curriculum design, or offering flexible ways for learners to engage with content. Staff can be tempted to simply upload all their
existing content, rather than consider how they could use technology to change the design of the curriculum. In addition to delivering content in a range of formats, students can also submit coursework using VLEs, incorporating assessment and feedback through multiple choice questionnaires. But institutional ownership and control of these platforms can make it
difficult to include participants from outside the institution, and they may not link well with social networking or other external technologies and services. Staff may not easily be able to share their practice outside the institution if it requires authentication, so VLEs can hamper open practice making publicly funded content available. Some content creation tools (for example Xerte toolkits) get round this problem by sitting outside the VLE and including inbuilt export feeds and public/private sharing options. VLEs may also limit student co-creation of content and may discourage
students from taking control of their own learning. For example, students may not be allowed to create their own discussion boards. It’s likely that students and staff will work around the VLE when it fails to be flexible enough for their needs, resulting in content being generated and managed outside the system. The University of Lincoln used open source content creation tools to
overcome this problem by developing student-centred approaches to learning. The idea of ‘personal learning environments’ (PLE) has been around since the early VLE systems (the first recorded use of the term was at the Cetis conference in 2004). The concept acknowledges that learners need to create their
own learning environment, and allows them to control this. This idea is particularly relevant for online learning where students may choose which technologies and services are most appropriate to them; this may, of course, include an institutional VLE. Social networking software, which allows students to take control of their learning experience, offers ways to truly personalise their
learning experience. Our e-portfolios guide defines them as a range of digital artefacts, created and collected by students as a record of their learning experiences and achievements. Both the process and the resulting collection offer opportunities for students to reflect and record their thoughts, and to decide which elements they
might choose to share with tutors, peers, potential employers and the wider public. Ideally, e-portfolios should include both formal and informal learning and be owned and managed by the learner. They are equally appropriate for both campus-based and online students, although support mechanisms and guidance may need to be adapted for online students. Encouraging students to create and maintain e-portfolios can help an institution achieve its aims for lifelong
learning and employability of its learners. E-portfolios can also help students to become reflective learners and support them to develop a professional identity. They can make the administration of records and assessment easier, highlighting which courses students have engaged with. E-portfolios can be a critical tool to maintain and develop relationships with alumni. Institutions can find it difficult to decide how to implement e-portfolios. Students may want
ownership and personalisation, but this needs to be balanced with the need for an institutional system with all of the benefits of central support, security and ongoing storage. An institutional approach can encourage take-up, but may be difficult to adapt for different subject disciplines. Our guidance for senior managers, includes different implementation
approaches, key issues and effective practice, and a summary guide. Diagnostic, formative and summative assessment are all supported by a wide range of different technologies, according to their different needs. The many benefits of electronic management of assessment (EMA) are outlined in our
electronic assessment management guide and include: Social networking tools offer particularly useful ways to provide formative assessment to online students. They facilitate online feedback, and can be used to involve more people, such as other students, online peers and industry or professional experts, in the process. Multiple choice questionnaires (MCQ's) and online quizzes or polls can offer immediate feedback help students assess
specific areas of learning, following small chunks of learning activities. These are used extensively in MOOCs after video presentations to assess how much information students have retained, and may contribute towards final certification. Using online technologies for accreditation raises many issues for institutions around authentication and validation and there can be reluctance to link these to formal accreditation. Online open badging offers a way of
'soft-certification' that takes lessons from gaming. It provides regular feedback and rewards for each level attained and presents the user with a visual symbol (badge) of their attainment. They can then share this achievement with others, either on a personal or institutional dashboard, or by incorporating it into a formal e-portfolio. Our blog post identifies some interesting examples and
highlights places to get more information about implementing open badging. To overcome concerns about incorporating badging, we recommend your institution adopts an institution-wide approach to ensure proper management of the system's operational and technical aspects. The Open University recently went through this process and are now piloting open badging on their informal OpenLearn
courses.1 Using specific centrally managed assessment technologies (such as MCQs and quizzes in a VLE system) provides management information and data that can be linked to wider institutional systems. This is a concern for
educational institutions and many routinely use plagiarism prevention software such as Turnitin, which offers a means for both staff and students to check their assignments. An open online mailing list allows institutions to share and discuss information and issues around plagiarism. Any mechanisms your institution uses
for assessment and feedback need to be both technologically accessible and pedagogically relevant for online students to ensure equity between online and campus-based students. Validation and authentication present the biggest challenge in online learning but there are systems and mechanisms that can validate the identity of people doing assessments. See our guide to making assessments more
accessible. Presenting assessment results raises some potential problems when students are working with e-portfolios, especially as there is an increasing demand to show a student’s development through their course rather than simply stored feedback within each module of learning. This is particularly challenging if they use non-institutional technologies for feedback and assessment. Technologies present opportunities for your
institution to reconsider assessment practices, but these need a clear policy and processes to ensure that you adopt change coherently. Our guide to changing assessment and feedback practice shows how to approach large-scale change in assessment and feedback practice using technology. Staff will need guidance and support to use technologies effectively for assessment. Manchester
Metropolitan University produced ideas for how their staff can use technology to support specific teaching and assessment approaches 2 . You can use a wide range of technologies to support online learning. Your institution needs to consider several factors before deciding which technologies to use and it's advisable to adopt a strategic
approach, linking technology choices to operational and technical considerations, curriculum design and identified student needs. Different technologies offer specific benefits and bring their own constraints and challenges. All of this must be balanced against the preferred pedagogic approaches and levels of support that your institution can offer teaching staff and students. Selecting, adapting and integrating technologies for online learning should not
be done in isolation. We recommend that you look at our accompanying guide, scaling up online learning which offers a strategic view of different models and the implications of implementing online learning at an institutional level. Our accompanying guide on curriculum design and
support for online learning will take you through decisions around pedagogy and help you consider what kinds of support your staff and students will need. Which of the following is a disadvantage of online learning as a training delivery method quizlet?Which of the following is a disadvantage of online learning? Some trainees may not be motivated to learn through technology. Online learning is ineffective for training that emphasizes cognitive outcomes.
Which of the following is an advantage of using e learning as a training method *?eLearning saves time and money.
They don't need to take time out from their jobs to attend classes. eLearning is also cost-effective; companies save a substantial amount on the travel and accommodation costs of both learners and instructors, as well as the venue and materials.
What is one advantage and one disadvantage of online learning?Online learning increases employee participation, engagement, and knowledge retention while cutting down on the costs and inconvenience associated with traditional learning. What are the disadvantages of online learning? Online learning is more impersonal and requires a lot of motivation.
Is online learning as effective as face to face learning?Is online learning as good as face-to-face learning? The answer is yes and it may be even better! Possibility to learn more: Online courses allow students more control over what they are learning. Which means, they can work quickly through areas they understand and spend more time on areas they do not.
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In general, repurposing is considered an advisable strategy for developing online learning.
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