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Francine Ryan explains how the Open University law school offers real-world training and fieldwork through digital channels as part of its online courses

How to tackle fieldwork and real-world training online 

Peer-to-peer learning brings major benefits for students and instructors. Here, Zachary Walker explains how to encourage your students to learn from each other and why this can be so effective when teaching online 

The power of peer to peer: how and why to encourage your students to learn from each other 

We developed the Common Framework for Online Education to support all academic staff involved in teaching our students. It was designed as a means to both enhance and assure the quality of our online delivery, after the unexpected and sudden pivot into online teaching and learning.It provides a tool for communicating a coherent model of educational delivery for all our online learning. The framework was designed with three key purposes in mind:to articulate feasible ways in which the University of Southampton could continue to deliver its programmes online in line with the university’s strategies and core valuesto provide enhanced, agile support and guidance for the development of high-quality student-centred online and blended educationto provide assurance of the quality of education for all university stakeholders, including staff, students and external bodies.At the heart of the framework’s development and approach to implementation are principles of purpose, collaboration, evidence and improvement. Drawing from these four principles, the framework is constructed around seven elements of good design – such as structure, assessment and accessibility – and four “lenses” (flexibility, visibility, engagement, clarity) through which the students’ perspective is viewed.Spotlight guide:&nbsp;Tech solutions for the post-Covid campusShow students that the flipped classroom is much more than self-directed learningWritten feedback for students – keep it clear, constructive and to the pointCommunications about the framework need to cater to varied experience levels in online delivery across the university’s 24,000 students and 5,000 staff, at least 1,500 of whom are involved in teaching.We encouraged all teaching staff to use the framework to identify the changes they could feasibly make to their plans, based on the evidence of what works for online education. Some staff were already comfortable using technology and seeking out tools to help them do that effectively. Others had never taught in that medium previously.To ensure the framework was meaningful across the whole range of teaching contexts, we created the “Team of 25” to support its implementation.Comprising nominated representatives from each of the 25 schools across the university, the team’s role is to interpret key messages in the framework into manageable and discipline-appropriate actions that can be rolled out at school and programme level. This is managed through a dedicated Teams website and facilitated by a collaboration between our digital learning team and our Centre for Higher Education Practice (CHEP).CHEP worked closely with the Team of 25 to equip them to, in turn, support their own schools. By providing bespoke one-to-one support, and a range of development webinars and surgeries on topics that included assessment and rapid design implementation, CHEP modelled approaches to implementing the framework, which the Team of 25 members could then take and repurpose, deliver or invite CHEP to deliver within their own school.This model has proved an outstanding success in terms of reach and impact of the framework across the university.Engagement with students was integral to the creation of the framework and the implementation model. Student focus groups helped define and refine the framework, not least in the creation of the four lenses, which offer the student perspective. This key element of the framework encourages staff to reflect on how students will experience their teaching. Students have co-led webinars and are full members of the project board.The aim is for every student to experience high-quality online provision with a distinct University of Southampton flavour. “I absolutely love all the work which is being done, and it’s so great that it’s so student-centred and focused.”Avila Chidume, VP education and democracy, Southampton Students’ UnionLessons learned and takeawaysSince April, when we started to develop our framework, the university has made unprecedented progress in its digital capability for learning and teaching. While we look forward to fully returning to campus, lessons have been learned that we will not want to lose. Through the use of technology, we have found better ways of communicating across traditional organisational silos, to keep in touch with students and to enable them to keep in touch with each other. We have significantly raised the profile of teaching and learning at every level across the university.Key takeaway lessons include:The value of establishing key pipelines of trusted and engaged nominated contacts, who can interpret generic and central messages in ways that are meaningful for their disciplines.The need for close alignment and partnerships among digital learning teams, IT and education development teams. The project is co-led by CHEP and the digital learning team, and the synergy that this provides is key to the successes we have achieved in online teaching and learning. We will continue to work this way as we see the benefit of building confidence in using technologies that are useful to pedagogically driven teaching.The need to place a high priority on communications with staff at all levels and to have mechanisms for feedback and engagement – such as the Team of 25 – which enable timely advice, support and agile responses to quickly developing situations.Helen Carmichael is deputy director at the Centre for Higher Education Practice (CHEP) and Bobbi Moore is a senior learning designer in the digital learning team, both at the University of Southampton. They co-lead the Enhancing Academic Support and Delivery Project.If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week, sign up for the Campus newsletter.

The sudden shift to online forced university staff to rethink and redesign classes often with little experience or knowledge of remote teaching. Helen Carmichael and Bobbi Moore explain how the University of Southampton supported all faculties to ensure high-quality online courses

How to support staff across all departments to design quality online courses 

Universities, like every other part of the economy, are suffering from an acute case of what we might call&nbsp;the&nbsp;pandemic-induced digital pivot.&nbsp;We have been forced to rethink how we operate&nbsp;from the ground up.&nbsp;Finishing the final few weeks of a semester online is one thing, but it is an altogether different proposition to contemplate a new academic year that begins, and&nbsp;might&nbsp;end, online. Over the summer months&nbsp;our days&nbsp;were&nbsp;filled&nbsp;with digital meetings&nbsp;that resembled&nbsp;a low-budget reboot of&nbsp;Celebrity Squares.How,&nbsp;though, do we deliver amazing student experiences online? How do we mimic the immersive, experiential parts of higher education,&nbsp;and how do we support our academic colleagues as we do so?&nbsp;Here are five things we know so far.&nbsp;Don’t&nbsp;hang&nbsp;on to the&nbsp;bank&nbsp;Metaphorically speaking,&nbsp;our educational system has fallen into a&nbsp;swirling&nbsp;digital river. One option is to cling to the bank, hoping against hope that we can clamber out and return to familiar patterns and routines as quickly as a pharmaceutical firm can patent a vaccine. While&nbsp;the traditional format of the wise lecturer addressing serried ranks of eager learners has remained largely unchanged for a surprisingly long time, our learners were changing&nbsp;pre-pandemic. Fewer came to lectures than we might like, and those&nbsp;who&nbsp;did attend spent at least as much time staring at a screen as they did&nbsp;riveted&nbsp;by&nbsp;their lecturer.&nbsp;Having fallen in, don’t cling to the bank. Try letting go and seeing where the&nbsp;digital&nbsp;currents take you.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Think&nbsp;highlights&nbsp;reel&nbsp;Occasionally,&nbsp;live sport throws up the match of the decade.&nbsp;More often than not,&nbsp;though,&nbsp;the edited highlights offer a far more time-efficient way of catching the key moments. The same might&nbsp;apply to your lectures. Just because you would normally fill an hour in the lecture theatre doesn’t mean that the content should fill an hour of digital time. Stripped of what stand-up comedians call crowd work, you might find that the key messages can be condensed to half or even a third of the time.&nbsp;Don’t fill the rest of the available space with repetition&nbsp;and&nbsp;waffle. Deliver an excellent chunk of learning and use the rest of the time for unscripted, live interaction, possibly as a separate activity altogether.&nbsp;&nbsp;Get&nbsp;yourself a&nbsp;teaching&nbsp;buddy&nbsp;We often work in teaching teams, but pre-pandemic very few things&nbsp;would&nbsp;warrant two members of staff in the same lecture theatre at the same time.&nbsp;The&nbsp;digital pivot&nbsp;might bring the need&nbsp;to revisit the idea of the lone scholar. Having someone field the questions in the chat facility while&nbsp;you screen-share&nbsp;a presentation&nbsp;is a practical solution.&nbsp;There&nbsp;is the&nbsp;bonus&nbsp;of a back-up lest one of you suffer the indignity of a&nbsp;wi-fi&nbsp;wipe-out.&nbsp;And if you do team-teach,&nbsp;you can&nbsp;reflect on what seems to be working well and less well in your efforts to engage your students.&nbsp;Yes, some inefficiencies&nbsp;are&nbsp;at play but there are other serious benefits to&nbsp;team-teaching in Teams,&nbsp;or indeed any other digital platform.&nbsp;Take as&nbsp;many&nbsp;takes as it&nbsp;takes&nbsp;Pre-recording your lectures doesn’t seem that difficult,&nbsp;does it? You may have accumulated a few decades of lecturing experience and&nbsp;you&nbsp;know exactly how to hook your audience’s attention. But suddenly, confronted with a tiny camera and no audience, you realise that lecturing is not the same as being a TV news anchor. The relative freedom of live performance is replaced with the terror that your every&nbsp;hesitation&nbsp;and mispronunciation is captured for posterity. Maybe a script will help. Maybe&nbsp;consider using&nbsp;one of those free autocue websites. Or maybe you’re happier&nbsp;improvising. Find what works for you and remember that you can also do another take if the doorbell goes&nbsp;mid-sentence.&nbsp;Rethink the&nbsp;whole,&nbsp;not&nbsp;just the&nbsp;lecture&nbsp;It isn’t sufficient to simply swap out an actual lecture for a digital one. Think of the parts of the learning process that&nbsp;surround&nbsp;lectures. Breaking into smaller groups for discussions during the lecture, following up the lecture with a smaller tutorial group discussion or even the assessment design itself. If you know in advance that traditional in-person, invigilated exams might not be allowed at the end of the semester,&nbsp;aim for something different from the outset. Take-home exams, case studies, essays or digitally proctored exams may be more appropriate,&nbsp;but only if the whole learning experience is aligned to these choices. Think contingency plans.&nbsp;Think assessing the whole suite of learning outcomes. Think academic integrity. But,&nbsp;most of all, think about it before you start.&nbsp;Robert MacIntosh is professor of&nbsp;strategic&nbsp;management and&nbsp;head of&nbsp;the&nbsp;School&nbsp;of&nbsp;Social Sciences&nbsp;at&nbsp;Heriot-Watt University,&nbsp;Edinburgh. He is also chair of the&nbsp;Chartered&nbsp;Association of Business Schools.&nbsp;If you’d like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week,&nbsp;sign up for the Campus newsletter.

Having reopened for a new academic year, universities are looking ahead to how they can deliver the best possible online teaching for the longer term. Here, Robert MacIntosh highlights what has been learned so far in the rapid transition to digital teaching and learning 

Lessons from navigating the digital pivot 

Translating creative assessment styles online

Traditional exams can inhibit students, while more creative assessments provide a forum where their talent and knowledge can shine. Madeleine Davies discusses a technique to offer creative assessments online 

Translating creative assessment styles online: Blackboard learning journals 

When choosing online tools,&nbsp;you need to think carefully about which levels&nbsp;of learning&nbsp;you&nbsp;are&nbsp;trying to&nbsp;address:&nbsp;habits, constructs&nbsp;or&nbsp;abstractions.&nbsp;

Learning new habits involves repetition and reinforcement;&nbsp;learning new constructs involves connecting existing knowledge with new information;&nbsp;and learning&nbsp;new abstractions&nbsp;involves reconceptualising existing understanding to develop new perspectives.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Within higher education,&nbsp;levels of acquired knowledge among learners are high. Most of the teacher’s role,&nbsp;therefore,&nbsp;tends to be&nbsp;about&nbsp;structuring&nbsp;learning to best transmit constructs and abstractions,&nbsp;enabling learners to understand new information in the context of what they already know.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Selecting&nbsp;online tools that&nbsp;help&nbsp;learners&nbsp;build on their&nbsp;existing knowledge&nbsp;will improve the personalisation of your teaching,&nbsp;especially given the challenges in motivation and visibility of learning that can exist in predominantly or entirely online delivery.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Tools to consider&nbsp;


	
	Mind-mapping tools (such as&nbsp;XMind&nbsp;or&nbsp;Visio)&nbsp;provide a useful method both to convey your mental models&nbsp;to learners&nbsp;and to enable learners to convey theirs&nbsp;to each other and to you.&nbsp;
	
	
	Video&nbsp;recording and editing software (such&nbsp;OBS Studio&nbsp;and&nbsp;DaVinci Resolve)&nbsp;can provide an effective&nbsp;way for you to convey a combination of concepts&nbsp;online. You could, for example, combine&nbsp;a video recording of&nbsp;yourself talking with a presentation;&nbsp;or capture demonstrations on screen and discuss these;&nbsp;or include&nbsp;a&nbsp;video within&nbsp;a&nbsp;video to narrate or critique. You can then combine different&nbsp;pieces of&nbsp;learning&nbsp;content together to make&nbsp;it&nbsp;cohesive.&nbsp;Learners&nbsp;could,&nbsp;in turn,&nbsp;do the same&nbsp;as part of their coursework.&nbsp;
	
	
	Collaborative tools (such as&nbsp;Microsoft Teams&nbsp;or&nbsp;Span Workspace)&nbsp;provide&nbsp;options&nbsp;such as&nbsp;file sharing, project planning, notetaking, post-it boards&nbsp;and&nbsp;interactive&nbsp;wikis.&nbsp;These&nbsp;make&nbsp;group&nbsp;work easier&nbsp;to organise,&nbsp;more engaging&nbsp;and rewarding, and&nbsp;support&nbsp;developing&nbsp;rich digital content.&nbsp;&nbsp;
	
	
	Collaborative tools&nbsp;also&nbsp;provide simple interactive components such as surveys, quizzes and polls that make tracking learning progress easier both for teachers and learners, and&nbsp;enable the repetition and reinforcement required to develop new learning habits. These can&nbsp;then&nbsp;be&nbsp;combined&nbsp;with the higher-level tasks&nbsp;expected within higher education.
	
	
	Virtual&nbsp;learning&nbsp;environments also provide many of these opportunities, hence their&nbsp;remaining&nbsp;popular within higher education.&nbsp;&nbsp;
	


Promoting&nbsp;self-regulated&nbsp;learning&nbsp;&nbsp;

Self-regulated learning, while historically&nbsp;central&nbsp;to the learning process,&nbsp;is even more important&nbsp;in remote and online learning environments.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

In&nbsp;self-regulated&nbsp;learning,&nbsp;students’&nbsp;regulation is based on how&nbsp;they&nbsp;perceive current requirements in the context of what&nbsp;they&nbsp;have done previously. So,&nbsp;how&nbsp;students&nbsp;have reviewed previous learning has a direct impact on how&nbsp;they&nbsp;perceive current learning. This&nbsp;in turn affects how&nbsp;they&nbsp;plan and perform&nbsp;in future learning.&nbsp;&nbsp;

The key to effective&nbsp;self-regulated&nbsp;learning,&nbsp;therefore,&nbsp;is to focus on virtuous improvement cycles, incremental gains in learning and achievement through which&nbsp;students&nbsp;gain mastery.&nbsp;As&nbsp;students&nbsp;make these gains,&nbsp;their&nbsp;motivation&nbsp;increases&nbsp;and&nbsp;they&nbsp;persist.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Promoting&nbsp;self-regulated&nbsp;learning can involve a wide range of online tools to meet different learner needs&nbsp;but&nbsp;often simplicity is key as we seek to minimise learning barriers and maximise&nbsp;engagement.&nbsp;

A good starting point for improving persistence and positive achievement&nbsp;is&nbsp;to reflect on and reconceptualise previous&nbsp;unhelpful&nbsp;experiences.&nbsp;This&nbsp;is&nbsp;something&nbsp;students&nbsp;may not wish to share with the public or fellow students, but&nbsp;where&nbsp;the teacher can guide&nbsp;learners in&nbsp;more&nbsp;positive&nbsp;ways of&nbsp;viewing&nbsp;past experiences.&nbsp;

When&nbsp;it comes to&nbsp;planning&nbsp;learning&nbsp;tasks&nbsp;and setting learning goals,&nbsp;project management software (for example,&nbsp;Basecamp&nbsp;and&nbsp;Trello) can be useful,&nbsp;especially for&nbsp;complex tasks such as dissertations&nbsp;and group&nbsp;work.&nbsp;&nbsp;

However, a more important consideration is how to make better learning choices.&nbsp;How long should we spend planning versus implementing? Reflecting versus reporting?&nbsp;How well did we perform in the task that was asked of us?&nbsp;Understanding the impact of learning choices on performance, through monitoring, is a critical self-regulated-learning skill.&nbsp;

Finding&nbsp;the right information to&nbsp;analyse, monitor and review&nbsp;learning&nbsp;choices&nbsp;may be as simple as undertaking a literature search to&nbsp;analyse and&nbsp;understand existing perspectives&nbsp;or&nbsp;monitoring&nbsp;performance through&nbsp;a&nbsp;reflective progress log. Feedback from online focus group meetings and data collection from&nbsp;simple questionnaire software (such as&nbsp;SurveyMonkey)&nbsp;or&nbsp;analysis packages (such as&nbsp;SPSS)&nbsp;can also inform more objective performance reviews.&nbsp;

Transparency and tracking&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

While helping&nbsp;learners make informed planning choices, perhaps the most valuable intervention you can make is simply to share as much&nbsp;learning&nbsp;information with the learner as possible.&nbsp;&nbsp;

The better you structure your course&nbsp;to enable this,&nbsp;the more you will empower the learner to self-regulate their learning and take control over their learning performance.&nbsp;By&nbsp;breaking assessments down into component parts and setting checkpoints to indicate expected progress rates,&nbsp;you enable the learner to plan more effectively.&nbsp;By building in feedback points, ensuring learners reflect as they progress&nbsp;and seek guidance, you enable them to become better learners.&nbsp;&nbsp;

You will also be better informed on their learning progress and better able to make effective and timely learning interventions. These structural changes can usually be easily built into virtual learning, with surveys, quizzes and polls providing easy ways to test progress regularly&nbsp;alongside more traditional assessment submissions.&nbsp;

If learners&nbsp;know they are&nbsp;making&nbsp;good&nbsp;progress they will make&nbsp;further&nbsp;progress.&nbsp;Learning analytics, either institutionally or locally generated,&nbsp;can&nbsp;therefore&nbsp;also&nbsp;play an important&nbsp;role in the efficacy of learning when using online tools, just as sports tracking devices help drive sporting performance improvements.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Again though,&nbsp;where possible,&nbsp;keep&nbsp;things simple and effective. Make learning fun and engaging&nbsp;using online tools such as those outlined above to blend&nbsp;elements of competition, collaboration, personalisation&nbsp;and introspection.&nbsp;Learners&nbsp;should&nbsp;learn as much as possible about themselves within the learning process; by better&nbsp;understanding&nbsp;their&nbsp;own&nbsp;learning progress&nbsp;they can&nbsp;improve their future&nbsp;learning&nbsp;performance.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Rupert Ward is&nbsp;a&nbsp;professor of&nbsp;learning&nbsp;innovation&nbsp;(associate&nbsp;dean,&nbsp;international) in the School of Computing and Engineering at the&nbsp;University of Huddersfield.&nbsp;&nbsp;

There is no one-size-fits-all model for effective online teaching. Rupert Ward offers advice on selecting tools to promote personalised teaching and to encourage more self-regulated learning online 

How to use online tools to offer more personalised teaching

Effective technology is now instrumental to the successful performance of universities at every level. Here, Chris Cobb offers his top tips on what to consider when choosing and implementing new systems

Top tips for selecting and implementing new technologies

New digital teaching methods risk exposing personal and sensitive information among students and staff. Here are best practice tips from Matthew Davis on running safe and secure online meetings and calls

Running safe and secure online meetings and calls

THE Campus Learn, Share, Connect

Europe | THE Campus Learn, Share, Connect

Europe

How to tackle fieldwork and real-world training online

The power of peer to peer: how and why to encourage your students to learn from each other

How to support staff across all departments to design quality online courses

Lessons from navigating the digital pivot

Translating creative assessment styles online: Blackboard learning journals

How to use online tools to offer more personalised teaching

Top tips for selecting and implementing new technologies

Running safe and secure online meetings and calls

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