September 2009 — Volume 3, Issue 5

Taking the distance out of off-campus learning

ALTC Associate Fellow Professor Ron Oliver looks at how the design and implementation of learning settings influences student engagement.

In July this year I had the privilege of addressing the delegates at the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia 2009 conference on one of my pet topics, the way teachers in higher education design and implement learning settings for their students. The topic of the presentation was “taking the distance out of off-campus learning” and in my presentation I encouraged delegates to reflect on the causes of the distance that can (and often does) exist in off-campus learning settings and potential strategies for addressing these.

At the conference, all delegates had access to a Keepad response clicker and in opening the presentation I asked the delegates to use the clickers to indicate their roles in learning and teaching. Table 1 shows that the majority of delegates were university teachers and academic developers accompanied by a number of learning and teaching leaders.

The concept of distance in off-campus learning is well described in the literature. Michael Moore and Greg Kearsley introduced us to the notion of “transactional distance” in 1996 in arguing that the geographic separation in distance education was not the sole cause of the distance perceived by learners. They proposed that there was a transactional distance involved which was greatly influenced by the nature of the learning activities. The focus of my presentation concerned the ways teachers design and implement learning settings in off-campus (and on-campus) settings to engage students in the learning process.

Delegates were asked what they thought was the prime cause of the distance that students often feel in off-campus learning settings. The responses revealed three elements were considered to be the main influences: a lack of learning engagement, a lack of interaction with other students, and a lack of interaction with the teacher. These responses were in accord with my own perceptions, and those of
most studies and all three seem removable from the equation through appropriate technologysupported
learning activities.

The underlying theme in my presentation was that there are still off-campus settings which appear to pay scant regard to any form of learning design. Many settings simply focus on material to be covered, books to be read and questions to be answered. But some settings do provide very strong supports and contexts for learning.

Learning Design
I have had an interest for many years now in the concept of learning design. Learning design is a term
that describes both a process and a product. The process of learning design is something which all
teachers (should) do when faced with a course or unit which they seek to teach. The process of learning design involves the development of deliberate instructional strategies to provide learners with the experiences that will bring about the intended learning outcomes. To use a planning metaphor, learning design as a process is akin to the process an architect uses when designing a building. It involves a high degree of
pre-planning and consideration of the context and also involves iteration and refinement of the design in the actual process of building. Different architects will likely create different plans for the same building project, with some plans clearly better than others. Similarly, depending on their skills and abilities, different teachers
will design quite different learning settings given exactly the same conditions.

Learning design as a product describes the actual plan developed to guide learning and teaching interactions and activities in a learning setting. Once an architect has drawn a plan, it is readily sharable (with builders) and reusable by others. In contrast, learning designs are an entirely different matter. There are relatively few detailed learning design plans around for teachers to view. There are few common approaches to describing learning designs and most teachers employ their own methods for planning and documenting their plans for teaching. In fact many teachers do not actually document their learning designs at all.

I have been involved in a number of projects that have sought to explore the concept of describing and representing learning designs in ways that support and encourage their sharing and reuse. The AUTC project developed a web site to showcase a number of exemplary technology-based learning designs (products) and this site continues to be used by teachers and researchers exploring learning designs for classroom use. More recently in a fellowship project funded by the ALTC, I sought to explore the use of a database to store and disseminate learning designs (products) to support and encourage sharing and reuse. These projects provided resources and exemplars for classroom use but there are few learning designs (products) that have
been developed for sharing and reuse in online settings. There are some well-known exceptions to this statement. For example, Professor Sandra Wills from the University of Wollongong has been working for many years to develop sharable learning designs for role-playing activities culminating in the EnRole project. And Professor James Dalziel and his colleagues from Macquarie University have developed the Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) which strongly supports the sharing and reuse of online learning designs.

Designing for learning
In face-to-face teaching, designing for learning typically involves several elements:

• The selection of the learning resources, for example a textbook, case study materials, online resources etc.
• The development of a process to immerse learners in the domain of the subject to be covered,
  for example, creation of a lecture/presentation
• The design and development of workshop, tutorial or laboratory tasks where students are
  actively and practically engaged in activities intended to support conceptual development
• The development of assessment activities to assess student learning
   

In the delivery of face-to-face teaching, the physical presence of lecturers and tutors in the classroom means that some, if not all, of the detail of planning can occur at the point of delivery. Teachers can plan in general ways before a class and then fill in gaps on the day as the lesson progresses. It is often very difficult to glean a particular learning design from settings developed in this way. Typically, the place where teachers give thought to learning activities is in the design of the workshops and the assessment processes.

In planning for off-campus teaching, everything really needs to be pre-prepared and students provided with instructions and materials that are in essence, teacher-independent. The resources usually need to be stand-alone and to provide the necessary guidance for learners to undertake the learning activities without further input from the teacher. The role of the teacher can vary considerably across off-campus settings.

Off-campus learning is typically designed around course materials which are written to carry the teacher’s voice. The course content and information is conveyed to the students in a discursive fashion often interspersed with questions and comments to facilitate and encourage learner reflection. It is possible to see a form of a learning design in this approach. The learning design involves students reading and reflecting. Most teachers recognise that learning settings of this form are not overly engaging for students and can generate that sense of distance to which Moore and Kearsley (1996) refer. In contemporary off-campus settings, the reading and reflecting learning design is sometimes modified to include compulsory participation in online discussions. Whilst this can be seen to offer a way to reduce transactional distance, the outcome often sees students further discomforted by a learning setting which relies heavily on students’ self-motivation and interest for learning success.

Learning designs for off-campus settings
If this form of learning setting is not well suited to off-campus learning, the question is, what is? Our previous research into authentic learning has identified a number of attributes that could and should be included in online learning designs6. Authentic learning involves learning based on tasks which provide meaningful contexts for the students. Authentic learning is premised on the notion that learning is best supported when learners are actively engaged in learning tasks that are relevant and authentic. The tasks need to develop a product or artifact that is useful in its own right. The process of developing the product needs to involve students in ways that foster collaboration and inquiry. Assessment of learning outcomes is achieved by evaluating the quality of the product and the processes by which it was developed.

Knowing what attributes one would like to see in a learning setting does not constitute having a learning design. Teachers need substantial guidance and support if they are to design an authentic learning setting from the bottom up. It is hard enough for on-campus teaching where students come to class and can be organised and led directly. In an off-campus setting, the learning design needs to be very carefully planned to cater for contingencies and diversity in the cohort. As mentioned before, there are very few learning designs (products) that teachers can use and apply when designing learning settings for off-campus delivery apart from the standard forms, which create the transactional distance we are trying to avoid.

This problem provided the context for a recent project I was involved in which sought to provide designers of online settings with some effective and reusable learning designs to guide their design activities. This learning design project, sponsored by the Australian Flexible Learning Advisory Group and coordinated by Eworks in Victoria developed a set of discrete learning designs that could be applied to the design of online
courses. The three learning designs that were developed, were distinguished by the level of learning outcomes that each sought to support. The three learning designs all drew on the notion of effective learning requiring authentic tasks to contextualise the learning. The learning designs differed in the forms of tasks provided and the forms of support accompanying them. Table 3 demonstrates differences in the learning
outcomes and learning approaches characteristic of each learning design.

Figure 1 shows the task-directed learning design that was developed. From Table 3, it can be seen that this learning design was developed for learning settings seeking to develop learners’ knowledge acquisition in instances where the content was primarily information whose application was quite procedural.

Applying the learning design represented in Figure 1 into an actual setting involves planning an authentic setting for the learner. The learner is cast as a worker, or an employee in a workplace setting with a task to undertake. The task is broken into various stages or parts and the learner is directed through the steps needed to complete each stage. Information is presented and practice activities provided. Once the learner has demonstrated proficiency in the various steps, a final task is undertaken so that the learner can demonstrate the full extent of the capabilities developed in a consolidated form.

If one compares and contrasts this learning design to conventional forms, the value of the taskbased approach can readily be seen. In a more conventional online form, the setting would typically involve pages of description and imagery of the content accompanied by consolidating activities. The focus would be the content and the information and students’ ability to commit it to memory.

Learning Tasks
A context is set for the learning. eg. learner cast as an employee needing to complete a task.
- Learners are led and directed through a sequence of information and ideas expositions/presentations which describe the knowledge/process steps and provide practice tasks.
- A final large practice activity enables the learners to practice the process in its entirety in a simulated workplace setting.

Learning Resources
- A sequence of tutorial settings describing and practising the discrete steps in the process.
- A simulated workplace supporting a consolidating practice activity.

Learning Supports
- Tutorials provide structured learning setting for understanding the process.
- Learners provided with online tutor who plays strong role in directing and providing feedback and support.


The project has developed flowcharts for the three learning designs with accompanying examples of online settings. The learning designs themselves represent quite broad frameworks and there is still a high degree of teacher input required in the actual design process.

For example, in the design of collaborative activities and the inclusion of networking and interactive opportunities. The project has now developed an online support tool which is intended to guide designers in their choice and application of the learning designs and to encourage the use of meaningful interactions to further engage learners. As these resources are more fully developed and trialled, we hope that they will become useful tools to assist designers seeking to create engaging and distance-free learning designs for online learning settings.

It can be argued that the most effective way to take the distance out of off-campus learning is to provide learning opportunities that are more effective and engaging. This needs deliberate planning for learning
and informed use of technology. Whilst much is known about the conditions which best foster learning, there are many opportunities in universities to improve our capacity to share and reuse strong learning designs. Apart from discovering learning designs (products) to share, we also need to better understand how teachers can effectively design for learning (the process) which includes reusing existing models. Professor Peter Goodyear is leading research at the University of Sydney in teachers as designers of learning, and
contributing significantly to our knowledge and understanding in this area.

It is interesting to reflect on how different people often hear things differently and at the end of the presentation, the delegates used their clickers to indicate the message they were taking from the session (Table 4). The good news was that as many people were awake at the end as were awake at the start. As well the responses indicated that most delegates had heard what I was saying and understood the need for
designing and planning for learning and the importance of engaging learning tasks.

We now have new tools to support learning and teaching and new capabilities. The future holds many opportunities for improvements in this area and there are many academics and academic leaders who are very interested in progressing these ideas. The idea of sharing and reusing effective technology-supported learning designs has strong potential to reduce the distance in both on and off-campus settings by
providing strong opportunities for the forms of engagement that best support learning.

*Professor Oliver is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning) and Chair of the Academic Board at Edith Cowan University. He has been involved in the fields of e-learning, multimedia and instructional technologies since 1977 and is a recipient of a 2007 ALTC Award for Teaching Excellence.