Resources

Jim Fanning, Assistant Headteacher, Tideway School

Summary

By the end of 2008 every school in England will have its own learning platform or virtual learning environment (VLE). The application of this technology has the potential to change radically what we do in the classroom. Research and practice in further and higher education along with the DCSF's own publications suggests that teachers can expect flexible, anywhere-anytime, student-centred, personalised, experiential, democratic learning to be just some of the features of teaching with this technology. This may be difficult to achieve. Existing structures, the 'nine-to-five' school day, the 60-minute face-to-face lesson, inflexible staff working practices and a lack of understanding and training will result in at best the technology being used as a repository for learning resources, simply replicating online what we already do in the physical classroom. At worst platforms may be used to extend and enhance a culture of monitoring and control.

Introduction

Jeremy Bentham, the 19th century philosopher, ensured that after his death his clothed skeleton, with a replica wax face mask, would be placed on public display. Best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism (the greatest happiness to the greatest numbers), Bentham also had an interest in prison reform. He created designs for the panopticon, a prison building made up of many cells arranged around a central observation platform, from which one warden could supervise numerous prisoners at the same time. The inmates did not know when the wardens were present. The system relied upon the former regulating their behaviour in the belief that the watchers were always present, akin to the operating philosophy of modern day CCTV in schools.

Despite the potential for learning platforms to herald a paradigm shift in teaching and learning, in the rush to adopt them schools may end up creating their very own digital panopticon, with the technology being used to monitor and control learning, rather than liberate it from the four walls of the classroom.

By the end of 2008 every junior and secondary school in England will have its own learning platform. Research - mainly it should be said in further and higher education - suggests that we could expect to see some of the following developments as platform use becomes embedded in the classroom.

• Anywhere-anytime learning: wherever students use the internet – home, school, library, community centre – they will be able to access online learning. 24/7 student engagement and attainment may improve as they learn at a time and a place of their choosing.
• Personalised flexible learning: online environments enable a flexible approach to the design of learning opportunities; students will be able to follow their own individual learning path, differentiated to personal needs. Student performance will improve, especially amongst those who underachieve, as teaching better meets individual needs.
• Collaborative learning: students will work on collaborative projects, involving external experts and learning partners outside school. Platform applications – message boards, forums, live chat, whiteboards, e-mail – are designed to be used in this way.
• Teacher/facilitator: the teacher becomes less a director and more a facilitator of learning, as students increasingly manage and construct their own learning.

The use of a learning platform at Tideway since 2003 has allowed the school to explore some of these issues.

Students from Key Stage 4 ICT classes have been given the opportunity to complete programmes of study online and attend optional classroom-based lessons. Course completion and exam pass rates have been higher in comparison with those who did not participate in the online lessons, and there was an obvious enthusiasm amongst students for this model of learning. Although these opportunities are being extended across the key stage in 2008/09, platform use has raised some important issues that have been difficult to resolve.

In the most recent survey, 7% of students did not have access to the internet at home; of those who had, about 50% used broadband. This immediately limits any comprehensive attempt to include all students in flexible online learning outside school hours. The school has extended the opening hours of its learning centre, somewhat defeating the philosophy of anywhere-anytime learning. Similarly, as online resources become more media-rich, broadband access is essential and those on landlines are at a disadvantage.

We have grown up in a system where face-to-face learning in the classroom is the norm. Parents and carers expect this and feel comfortable, safe and secure in the knowledge that their children are physically present in school, being monitored by another adult. "We can’t trust them to work without direct adult supervision", is amongst some of the feedback received from parents. It's also a system that teachers have trained for, and a lack of comprehension relating to formal education being delivered at a time and place away from school is understandable. Changing this mindset is difficult.

In the Tideway projects, students wanted online support out of school hours and a speedy response to e-mail and forum posts. There is an expectation that if teachers want to deliver an out-of-hours programme of study then they teach as normal and in their own time support flexible learning. School systems don't support flexible learning. Just as important, the design of online learning opportunities reveals a skills gap. Simply uploading classroom resources for student use is not effective. In the face-to-face classroom the teacher acts as a mediator between these and students. Teachers do not have the design skills required to construct appropriate learning materials for computer-mediated learning. At Tideway we have used part-time contracts to employ business and community partners as design consultants. This in itself represents a cost not initially identified in our adoption of a VLE.

In terms of personalised learning, part of the issue in applying technology is the variety of ways in which the term is interpreted. Tideway projects have taken a very individual approach to this. For example, students who wish to pursue additional GCSE qualifications outside the normal timetable have been allocated their own personal learning space, with mentor support, on the platform. To date results have not lived up to expectations. Staff and students have struggled to adapt to a different way of teaching and learning.

E-learning theories tend to be adaptations of existing theories of face-to face learning. There is no one generally accepted theory or model associated with online learning, although there is a wide recognition that VLEs are best applied in collaborative learning scenarios. In a school system built around individual assessment, how do you assess collaboration? Do we understand how to use applications such as discussion forums - major tools within all learning platforms - to best effect? Or do we play safe, dismissing them as frivolous or fun applications best relegated to the realms of social networking?

Where teaching has involved students accessing the Tideway platform outside school hours, during evenings and weekends, a change in the teacher-student relationship has begun to emerge. Online conversations about classwork very often involve more of a social element, with students involving friends and adult family members in learning. Where platform use is simply limited to a classroom setting (and in the early use of this technology it will be), no such change will take place. If anything, schools will use the platform to post lesson and homework tasks, enlisting parents and carers as monitors and using online assessment to further extend digital control. The teacher is firmly in control, with students having little opportunity to develop as independent learners, managing aspects of their own learning.

Key Stage 4 student interviews reveal a range of different attitudes to learning platform technology. "We want to use Facebook, Flickr, MSN and YouTube. You ban these in school and want us to use your learning platform. It's about teacher control and convenience isn't it?" "Why would I want to use a school platform when social networking sites are more exciting?" "Parental access is about me being checked up on and nothing to do with me being responsible for what I do." "It's not my own personal learning space if I can't control who is able to view it."

Bentham's Panopticon was never physically built, but digitally it may be coming to a classroom near you, with learning platform tools simply being used to track, monitor and assess who is learning what, when and where.

Background

Tideway is an 11-16 school of 650 students which serves the coastal town of Newhaven in East Sussex. The school first piloted the think.com VLE in 2003, before investing in a commercial platform called Fronter in 2004. In 2008 the school is migrating to UniServity, the learning platform adopted by the local authority. The school platform can be accessed at www.tidewayschool.org and examples of school-based pilot projects at www.learningplatforms.info.

Contact

Jim Fanning is an assistant head teacher at Tideway School in Newhaven, East Sussex. He completed an MEd in Technology Enhanced Learning at Stirling University in 2006 and is currently researching the use of learning platforms in the classroom through a professional doctorate programme of study at Sussex University. He can be contacted by e-mail at fanningj [at] tidewayschool [dot] org.

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