Teacher training through eLearning technology
Enrico Cavalli, Agostino Lorenzi* enrico@unibg.it alorenzi@unibg.it Abstract The Universities of Bergamo and Brescia, like many other Italian universities, are running a post-degree school called SILSIS (Lombard Interuniversity School specialising in high school teaching). This two-year school of specialisation is for graduates who wish to teach in high schools. Among the courses of the SILSIS school there is also an “Elements of Information Technology” course, where graduates learn the use of ICT in the teaching of mathematics. This course is supported by an eLearning environment: lectures and practical sessions are developed both in the classroom and on line. All these aspects become a background for the future teachers, because they use an eLearning environment as "learners" for the first year, while in the second year they use it as teachers, developing schedules and contents for online learning in mathematics. The use of an eLearning environment for teaching is a basic ICT skill for the future teachers. The first two-year course is now over, so we can evaluate the experience, having also collected students’ ideas about learning through ICT and the use of an eLearning environment.
Presentation of the project
The Universities of Bergamo and Brescia, like many other Italian universities, are running a post-graduate school of specialisation for graduates who wish to teach in high schools. The school is called SILSIS (Lombard Interuniversity School specialising in high school teaching), and its courses last for two years. At Bergamo University courses have been set up in particular for future foreign language and maths teachers in technical high schools. Among the courses for the latter group there is one called "Elements of Information Technology", to teach graduates the use of ICT in maths didactics. The main subjects of the course are: the use of electronic spreadsheets, algorithms and the basics of programming (using Excel's VBA), the use of software for maths (Derive, Cabrì). The course on " Elements of Information Technology " has the following general objectives: • • •
•
to link new technology with didactic and subject competence to teach the students to use software products intelligently to lead to planning training courses using ICT and multimedia.
Enrico Cavalli - Agostino Lorenzi, Faculty of Economics – Bergamo University– via dei Caniana, 2 – 24100 Bergamo - Italy
In addition there is online support using Lotus Learning Space. The experience the students gain as "learners" becomes the basis on which the future teachers can develop other experiences; in fact they use eLearning as pupils during the first year of the two-year course, then in the second year they have to develop projects for online didactics in the teaching of maths. The first two-year cycle has been completed and we therefore have enough elements to evaluate the experience, as well as data about participation in online activities. At the end of the course (end of the first and second years), the students are invited to complete a questionnaire on the course, and we can therefore present some points for discussion on what the students think of learning through ICT and their opinions about the use of an eLearning environment. Why eLearning? The use of eLearning seems to be interesting because this approach potentially offers several advantages: • • • The student becomes used to interacting with the teacher, something which is unusual in traditional didactics or indeed absent in courses with a particularly high number of students. The student acquires a collaborative mentality, he receives positive contributions from the teacher and from the other students, and in his turn he joins in and makes his own contributions to the course. Online teaching reduces distances: the distance between teacher and student, and among students. The class exists in a virtual sense, that is, there is online communication between participants; this element of communication is often missing in traditional courses. The virtual class implies several important aspects: knowing the participants by name and surname, asking questions, learning from other people's questions and from the information or solutions given to other people. The learning processes and teaching methods also change; active participation by the students affects the teacher's methodology and personalises the way the student learns.
• •
Organisational aspects
The project began almost by chance, as a natural result of a more general project on the development of online teaching methods at the Faculty of Economics, Bergamo University (elearning.unibg.it), to solve some of the problems which arose when organising lessons. Since almost all the students were already working as teachers in high schools in the morning, either as supply teachers or in any case on temporary contracts, it was extremely difficult to organise the timetable for lessons and practical sessions only in the afternoons. Therefore with the cooperation of the Director of the School the ICT course was reformulated as a "blended learning" course for the first year of the school of specialisation (30 hours over 10 weeks): • a part of the course in the classroom for 22 hours (about 2/3 of the course) • a part of the course as distance learning (8 hours - about 1/3 of the course).
For distance learning the Lotus Learning Space system was used. LLS is a Learning Management System to manage a network of active and collaborative teaching, and is based on the platform Domino Web Server. It allows the management of the "virtual class", activities can be catalogued, multimedial supports can be used, users can be profiled and evaluation can be organised. Teachers enter the course development environment using Lotus Notes Client while the students use a browser to enter the didactic environment. LLS allows lessons to be accessed asynchronously, or synchronously using the supplementary module "Sametime". Our experience only concerns asynchronous access. After a short period of training students were able to log on (through Internet) from home, or from any available laboratory asychronously to suit their convenience. The course included theoretical information, presentation of the characteristics of products and didactic applications. The lessons and the practical sessions took place in a university laboratory. At the end of the first year of the course the students carried out a project based on the use of software for teaching maths which was used as the basis for the discussion in the final exam of the course. The exam at the end of the course evaluated both the abilities acquired by the students in the use of ICT applied to maths teaching and their participation in collaborative online work using eLearning. The course was completed in the second year with an additional 10-hour module in which the students developed a project for online teaching with mathematical applications, using the LLS environment as a teacher. Compiling data on course attendance A secondary, but important aspect of the project concerns the signature for the "virtual" attendance of the students during the online part of the course, an analogy to the "physical signature" which students have to place for the hours of the course they attend. The problem was solved as follows: the teacher gave a task which was to be completed outside the lessons and which had to be sent over the web. The teacher estimated the time necessary for its completion and fixed a deadline. If the student sent his work within the deadline set, this meant he attended the course for the number of hours specified (which was then accredited as a forfeit) for the online part. As a formal act at the end of the course, the students also handed in a signed declaration regarding the number of hours they in fact followed as distance learning. In any case it is interesting to note that the students followed the course diligently and reacted very positively to online teaching; in reality they put in far more hours than the eight specified. Evaluating participation and performances A very important issue of an online course concerns the criteria and the instruments used to evaluate the students' participation and performance. The students were required to do three types of activity: carry out assignments, take part in discussions, and complete an individual project at the end of the course. During the course the assignments could be at one of three different stages: in progress (not yet completed), request for review (the student asks for help from the teacher or from the other students), submitted (completed and handed in to the
teacher). When deciding the final score only submitted assignments were valid. The discussions could be about different solutions submitted for the same exercise, observations on the technology used, comments on general professional questions concerning the modern high school teacher. Table 1 shows the items expressed as a percentage which were added together to determine the final score Table 1: Criteria for final evaluation
Item For Evaluation Percentage Weight In Final Score How Attributed
1XPEHU RI H[HUFLVHV VXEPLWWHG IRU HYDOXDWLRQ $YHUDJH PDUN IRU H[HUFLVHV GRQH 3DUWLFLSDWLRQ LQ GLVFXVVLRQV 5HVSHFWLQJ GHDGOLQHV 4XDOLW\ RI LQGLYLGXDO SURMHFW )LQDO RUDO H[DP
7RWDO
20% 20% 10% 10% 20% 20%
100%
Proportional to the number of exercises submitted
Proportional to the number of interventions See below Teacher's evaluation Teacher's evaluation
To evaluate the respect shown for deadlines the following algorithm was used: -establish time specified to complete assignments expressed in days DD; -establish basic points for this item, BP = VMAX / 10; (the basic points are 10% of the maximum score) -calculate the average time in days between the deadline and the day of consignment (average delay) AD. The value AD can even be negative if the student normally hands in assignments ahead of the deadline. AD is cut off above the value DD. It therefore follows that AD ∈ [-DD, +DD] -calculate the points given P as: P = BP (1 - AD / DD) . The three extremes are: - student who hands in assignment immediately AD= -DD, points given: BP * 2 (the student gets a bonus) - student who hands in assignment at deadline AD=0, points given: BP - student who hands in assignment late AD ≥ DD, points given: 0. The weights given were chosen to show the importance of collaborative online activity (which was worth 60% of the overall score), while the individual project and the final
oral exam had a combined weight of 40%. Furthermore, all the activities of the course contributed significantly to the calculation of the final score. In this way the students were stimulated on the one hand to take part in an active continuous way, while on the other hand each student's individual abilities were correctly evaluated through the project and the final oral exam which took place in the traditional way. Table 2 gives an example (from our observations) of how the model was applied to three types of student - below average, average and above average. Table 2: How evaluation model was applied
Student ([HUFLVHV 6XEPLWWHG )RU (YDOXDWLRQ $YHUDJH 0DUN ,Q ([HUFLVHV 3DUWLFLSDWLRQ ,Q 5HVSHFWLQJ 4XDOLW\ 2I 'LVFXVVLRQV 'HDGOLQHV ,QGLYLGXDO 2I &RXUVH )LQDO 2UDO 7RWDO 6FRUH
:RUN :RUN $W (QG ([DP
+LJK OHYHO $YHUDJH OHYHO /RZ OHYHO
6 5 5
6 4 3
3 2 2
3 2 2
6 5 3
6 5 3
30 23 18
Quantitative data on participation The quantitative data on the course was obtained from an analysis of log files on the server. The data refers to a 10-week period. The most significant data is then illustrated. Table 3: Number of visits to online course (per student) Average number of visits Maximum number of visits Minimum number of visits Average number of visits/week Average number of pages visited per visit Fig.1 Visits by week 34.86 71 17 3.49 38.31
120 100 80 60 40 20 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Table 4: Connections from laboratory and from home University network External Fig. 2 Type of connections 29% 71%
29%
University network
External 71%
Table 5: Students' activities Viewing teacher's material Viewing materials produced by class Creating new documents Other supports for class 40.9% 20.5% 37.5% 1.2%
Fig. 3 - Types of activities
1% 37%
Viewing teacher's m aterial
42%
Viewing m aterials by class Creation of new docum ents Other supports for course
20%
Qualitative considerations on the course by the teacher The eLearning environment allowed effective interaction between teacher and students and among students, making the activities clear to all the participants, with a constant check on the real use of the hours specified (accredited as a forfeit) for the online part of the course. The students were also given the chance to experiment personally with a type of active didactics which could improve their professional approach to teaching and which they themselves could use in the future with their pupils. In the second year of the course the students could immediately test the materials they produced on their own pupils, since they were already teaching in high schools or were doing periods of teaching practice in the work experience part of their specialised course. The students often complained about difficulties with Internet access from home due to low band efficiency or to the lack of suitable personal equipment. Data on access, taken from log files (as shown in Table 4) shows, however, that about 70% of all connections took place via modem from outside the university. Some participants therefore preferred to use the laboratory in the university; but this does not detract from the validity of the project of online teaching, in that the advantages of access to asynchronous practice sessions to suit different needs are still maintained. The activity proposed was generally more demanding than traditional courses, in particular when completing assignments within given deadlines, which was an element for evaluation. A course of this kind is also very demanding for the teacher who has to continuously follow on-line work whilst checking the students' activities. The result is continuous interaction which is more personalised compared with traditional teaching; on the basis of practical experience we can report an excellent ratio of 1 tutor to 15 students. As regards the students' level of participation, on the whole we can evaluate positively both their diligence in completing assignments and the commitment they showed. But few students joined in to comment on other students' work, perhaps because they were afraid to do so or because they were reluctant to express their opinion. In an open and collaborative environment like the one used there is obviously a risk of work and solutions which are alike or similar to others. To solve this problem we could consider other structures for the assignments: for example, one student proposes a solution to an exercise, the others join in starting from this point. Or the students could do group work, competing against the other groups. What the students think At the end of the course the students were invited to take part in a discussion on the experience of online teaching, on the basis of the following title given by the course teacher: "The course on 'Elements of Information Technlogy' was supported with the use of the eLearning environment, which allowed us to complete part of the course as distance learning. In this way you were given the chance to experiment personally with a type of active didactics
which can enrich your professional approach to teaching and which you yourselves can use in the future with your pupils. In fact the course programming includes a consideration of questions on the improvement of learning and teaching methods using new technologies and exploiting the potential offered by multimedial tools. Through this experience I think that these questions were handled in a more concrete way. The discussion should allow your personal considerations to emerge regarding your experience of the use of an eLearning environment, pointing out its strengths and weaknesses." A summary of the students' answers is presented below, grouping them around the following main topics.
• Innovation in didactic organisation
- With eLearning each of us could choose our own times to take part in the course from home without being limited by time, place and distance. We therefore had the chance to follow the lessons at any time of day, which allowed us to organise our other work better (useful for people who study and work at the same time). - eLearning gave us the advantage of working in a peaceful atmosphere (in our own home), we could contact, and communicate with, our course teacher any day at any time without an appointment, we could receive answers in real time, we could organise our time to suit us best. - In school we can improve our teaching of disabled students, students confined to bed due to infective illnesses or students who are absent for long periods. - eLearning is a different way to produce knowledge, with indirect communication, where the teaching is exploited asynchronously and in different places, and the educational contents can be learnt at times which do not coincide with their distribution.
• Innovations in learning methods
- This is an active type of teaching that gave me the chance to learn by using new technologies offered by multimedial tools. - Online teaching, clear and open for the whole class to take part in, allows students to be helped to overcome the rigidity of school time. -. It is a basic tool to develop and personalise the learning process. - Learning is based on integration between traditional lessons and online lessons. - Everything takes place in the virtual classroom without the need to find a place to compare ideas. - The question of classroom tyranny can be eliminated; this is the situation where the pupil prefers to keep quiet rather than say he has not understood, or he does not ask the teacher questions to avoid losing face with his classmates.
• eLearning as a collaborative environment
- It is an tool that allows you to learn not only through the teacher's input but also by comparing your work with your colleagues. - The chance to see colleagues' work gave me a direct comparison which was certainly positive.
- I was able to share my experiences and my work with my colleagues on the course; as well as guaranteeing a comparison, it helped me to feel part of a group. - The spirit of collaboration that is created by sharing a project of this kind leads to the right conditions for methodological and didactic comparisons. - It is easy to exchange information and ideas. -. It is not possible to learn without an element of socialisation. - There is a chance to interact and be the object of interaction, which means that we ourselves become a resource. - The teacher is seen as a component of a learning group rather than an absolute point of reference in the classroom. - Online teaching is an essential instrument in "cognitive democracy". - The space dedicated to the discussion was one of the most positive points; being able to dialogue with colleagues and teachers on a particular subject improved our culture and allowed us to express our knowledge and opinions.
• The future teacher's professional preparation
- The level proposed in the course is very close to the techniques which will be the basis of new teaching systems in the future; multimedial support offers the school the chance to redefine its cultural sense, discover new methods and new types of interaction. - Many of us did not see the network as an instrument for didactic activity but only as a tool for deeper analysis. - Via the network it is possible to create cooperation among teachers with the aim of planning activities together. - Knowledge of, and competence in, the use of interactive tools modifies teaching styles which can become more flexible and can be adapted to more operative needs, placing "skill" on the same level as "knowledge". - Using online teaching, the teacher is obliged to develop lessons and assignments clearly using the computer, which has several advantages: it is easier to read the work done, it is possible to be concise and present the lessons clearly for everyone's benefit; it also allows the teacher to draw immediately on past experience, both his own and the students', to review, redevelop and re-evaluate it. - Suitable times must be kept in mind: comparison and collaboration take time if they are to lead to real learning results. If the lessons and practical sessions are squeezed into too short a time, it forces the students and the teacher to work individually and mechanically (it also encourages copying) and leads to hurried evaluations. - The experience of eLearning gave me an idea of how I can work in the future with my pupils, interacting with them, making the best use of our time and overcoming structural limits. - It is a work method which can be used with pupils at school. - It is a new way of teaching that in future can be used with our pupils at school.
Conclusions The experiment which we carried out allowed us to see the validity of the use of eLearning in teacher training; in particular these are the advantages offered potentially by this approach: • Acquisition of the habit of interacting with the teacher. • Acquisition of a collaborative mentality by everyone in the group (teacher and students). • Reduction of the distances between the teacher and the students and among the students themselves, and the creation of the virtual class. • Change in learning processes and in teaching methods, with personalised learning for the student. These advantages were shown and reported both by the teachers and by the students. All these aspects will be handed on to future teachers in that during the first year of the course the participants used LLS as "learners". In the second year they worked with the eLearning environment as teachers, developing didactic units in an eLearning format. We therefore wish to conclude by restating our conviction, supported by the results of the experiment described above, that the use of an eLearning environment to develop online teaching must become a basic ICT skill for future teachers. Bibliography
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