New tools for a new age: An evolution or revolution in higher education?

Communicating on-line

Student work is centred on the learning management system (LMS), beginning with Blackboard in 2005, and moved to Moodle in 2010. LMSs, including ours, have traditionally functioned as a kind of information clearance house rather than educational space (see Gleadow et al., 2015). There are discussion groups but these tend to be simple question and answer sites, where the teacher responds to specific questions. Such officially sanctioned forums are important, and their use can dramatically reduce the number of emails, but much of the discussion now takes place on social media, currently Facebook – there is one exception to this, the blogging that takes place in the advanced cohort (to be discussed later). Initially Facebook use was limited to students creating their own groups for working on joint assignments, but then in 2013, a proactive student created a group for the whole class and invited others to join via LMS. It was not until 2014, however, that students started approving membership of the group by lecturers and staff members, and since then Facebook has become an important medium for teaching and learning, further reducing the reliance on email. In the semester when we first used Facebook, 27 questions were posted on the LMS during the pre-examination study week and 148 questions were asked on Facebook. In the most recent semester there were over 300 posts over the whole semester on Facebook. Students answering each other’s questions is not only good for student learning (Driver et al., 1994), but also reduces the number of personal emails to the teachers.

Students are mostly highly connected and comfortable on social media platforms. Informal surveys of students indicate that students consider Facebook “a given”. A show of hands in class indicated that over 90% of students are registered to use it. One attraction is that they can access it easily from a smart phone or other mobile device, and so the reach is much greater than with dedicated learning management systems – particularly when the LMS is not optimised for use on a variety of devices. This lowers the barriers to communication, and promotes informal language (Figure 1). This switch to informal language has been a great help to our many international students who have been reluctant to post questions on the official forums because they report feeling embarrassed about making grammatical and spelling errors: over a third of students within the cohort do not speak English as their home language. Indeed, Yu et al. (2010) reported that students felt an enhanced social acceptance, and speedy adaptation to university culture through the use of social media in educational units.

Figure 1. Examples screen grabs of the class Facebook page.

(a) Students here show engagement with the subject matter (pseudoscience) and extend beyond and apply what was presented in lectures. (b) Discussion of examinable material from the lectures (on research ethics). Not only do students answer each other’s questions but go beyond, to express their own position on this ethical dilemma.

Platforms such as the Facebook group give the students some control over the content and the way in which it is delivered. Educationally, this level of autonomy is a good thing, as it allows students to drive their own learning (Gleadow et al., 1994). Students are also very good at answering each other’s questions using examples relevant to their cohort and/or sourcing relevant and entertaining videos that explain a point covered in lectures such as a video by Gentleman Thinker on critical thinking on the ‘Philosophy’ Youtube channel.

Benefits of social media

Many students appreciate the almost instantaneous nature of receiving the answer to a query via Facebook because often one or two of the tutors are online too and it is simple for us to write a quick response. We are not advocating that teaching become a 24-hour day activity, but it certainly is convenient to deal with enquiries as they arise.

Disadvantages and problems in using social media

There are some drawbacks to using a public forum such as Facebook rather than relying on the functionality and accessibility built into the LMS. Not all students (or teachers) want to use mainstream social media platforms, nor should they be forced to. There may be privacy concerns, or philosophical opposition to them. Students may want their social spaces to remain separate from their online study resources, and make deliberate choices to disconnect from their studies when engaged in other activities. In our unit, we attempt to ensure that such students are not disadvantaged if they are not Facebook users by making all official announcements via LMS, and cross post on social media.

There is the danger, common to all social media platforms, that some students will use public forums inappropriately. It is important to bring the Facebook group under the umbrella of the University’s code of conduct. The administrator must set ground rules for the scope of the Facebook group in the group description, stating what topics are appropriate, defining what unacceptable behaviour is, and linking it to university policies regarding appropriate use of social media and IT. In our unit, these policies are discussed further as part of the ethics and communication components of workshops. Importantly, the course coordinator and the teaching team need to monitor the site, and have the power to remove posts that are not consistent with university policy. In the four semesters that this program has been operating we have only needed to remove posts by one student that could have been interpreted as derogatory. We have also observed a small number of cases of religious and political advocacy. Our strategies for dealing with these issues have so far been effective – the perpetrator is counselled via email and invited to a face-to-face meeting. At this point a simple reminder that they can be expelled from the course or even from the university for unacceptable behaviour is all that has been needed to ensure compliance. Thus, while using Facebook has numerous strengths, we need to learn from it, rather than rely on it. It is important to carefully consider the reasons students like and use specific platforms, so that we can incorporate these preferences into other things we do.

Tablet PCs

In 2010 and 2011, we participated in a limited trial of tablet PCs run by the university (Lindsay, 2012). Tablet PCs are normal laptop computers with screens that can be written on with a stylus, allowing annotation of existing documents, as well as creation of new ones. At this time, many students did not bring their personal computers to university, and collaborative software was not commonplace. The university was also developing its own collaborative software that allowed students (and their teachers) to work on the same document at the same time. Prior to this trial, any use of PCs required pre-booking of computer labs elsewhere on campus. The labs were available to the whole of our faculty, so it was often difficult to access them at the most appropriate times for specific course activities. When the tablet trial took place, we were able to access computers in our tutorial rooms every week for the first time. We made a deliberate choice to have one tablet PC per two students (rather than one each), to encourage collaboration.

The trial allowed us to make significant changes to our workshop structure and activities, for example students could search academic databases in class, rather than just watching a tutor demonstrate the process and then needing to try to remember it later. Shared brainstorming activities, collectively annotating journal articles and posters, and sharing appropriate items that each pair had found on the internet were new activities that added depth, and importantly 21^st century skills, to the existing curriculum. In one particular activity, working together to identify grammatical and stylistic errors in writing samples, students were enjoying themselves so much that they had to be asked to leave so the next class could begin; never before have we had to kick students out of a lesson on academic English.

Informal feedback from the students covered a number of themes. Many reported that the use of computers in their classes added more fun. Others liked that they could participate or look up information, as they needed it, rather than having to wait until they could get to the library. An important message came from some of the students from backgrounds other than English: they felt that they had a voice in the classroom. Some came from cultures where interrupting or contradicting someone else was rude. Many were concerned about their level of spoken English, or found that by the time they had worked out how to express their ideas in English, activities had moved on. Because of the change of pace brought about by the tablets, as students needed to research or develop ideas more, and the option to contribute in writing, these students reported feeling more confident, and more involved in their classes. This is consistent with the recommendations of Tanner (2013) for engaging students in learning. Gradually the tablet trial wound up, as other collaborative hardware and software began to appear on the market, so we took the lessons (and activities) from the small screen to larger screens.

Electronic whiteboards

The use of electronic interactive whiteboards has revolutionised the way that we educate students within the workshop setting. These screens, incorporating both electronic displays and traditional whiteboard capabilities allow for a more blended mode of teaching. Used appropriately, they can foster collaborative exchanges of ideas in small group work, and allows the students to become the teachers. Typically up to six students share a table and whiteboard, and we have four electronic interactive whiteboards in each tutorial room (Figure 2). This setting creates an environment where anecdotally it seems to be easier for students to alternate between whole class activities with up to 25 students, and discussions with their smaller groups. It is often in these small groups where students are more confident to voice opinions and work effectively to develop content together.

Figure 2. Tutorial rooms showing arrangement of electronic white boards in the tutorial rooms and layout of the furniture.

Here students are accessing on-line databases to search for primary literature. There are approximately 600 students enrolled at this campus, with students broken into tutorial groups of 20–25. There are two rooms side-by-side to accommodate the large number of students.

Electronic whiteboards are highly versatile for use in a dynamic student-driven classroom environment. Collaborative small-group tasks range from interactive brainstorming of a concept relevant to lecture material, through to proof reading and editing a scientific poster before presenting it to the class, and even to the collaborative preparation of written documents, such as a cover letter addressing key selection criteria for a real science job. If necessary, the work can then be saved for future reference and emailed directly to group members from the classroom. Where students are given an open-ended group task, they use the technology available to them in a variety of ways that suit their learning style and expertise. For example, a small cohort of advanced students can quickly and collaboratively create visuals to communicate ideas for impromptu talks. They are able to conduct research and access materials from a variety of online sources and used the whiteboards in a variety of other ways as a platform to showcase the results of their work to the rest of the class. Each student brings with them knowledge of different tools, so that together their power to create and innovate is far greater than them working alone.

Access to a range of online resources, including the LMS and other suitable websites, is also easy from the electronic whiteboards. We encourage students to work together to develop skills in searching online databases, as well as identifying and effectively reading primary articles. Because the members of each group share a screen, rather than working on their own individual devices, there is increased transparency, collaboration and discussion. Teaching staff are also better able to observe how the group approaches each activity, monitor progress, and offer timely guidance and feedback, rather than needing to wait for students to self-identify difficulties or concerns. Teachers, thus, move from didactic teaching and the dispensing information to working alongside students and facilitating learning, similar to that described by Gleadow et al. (1993).

Interactive mind maps

An important breakthrough for education is in the development of new tools that when used online allow collaboration across time and space. Our university moved to using Google-administered email accounts for all students and staff in 2010, fundamentally changing the way we were able to work with these collaborative tools. As part of a module on conceptualisation, we introduced brainstorming strategies, and as an example of this, mind-mapping. To facilitate discussion and exploration and to highlight the power of this method we built a tool to allow collaborative brainstorming both in real-time in classrooms and later via the unit’s LMS. The tool is a simple template built in Google Drawings, as shown in Figure 3. The workshop effectively introduces the student to the idea and benefit of mind mapping and also allows students to gain familiarity with the tool itself. Links to copies of the template are made available for the tutors to share with their class via the LMS. During the workshop the students use both electronic whiteboards and their personal laptops to access the template via their university Google account. Each student in the class then has an opportunity to collaborate in real-time simultaneously. (A video showing how this looks in practice can be viewed in the supplementary information.) This fast-paced activity has proven to be highly successful across the entire cohort with strong engagement from students and reports from tutors that the tool was easy set up and use in class. After the workshop, students are then able to access, again via the LMS, a copy of the mind-mapping template for their own use. Examination of the LMS records suggests that the majority of the students take advantage of this tool. This demonstrates the power and flexibility of adapting emerging tools in the rapidly changing digital space to enhance our students’ learning experience.

Figure 3. Mind mapping tool developed for students to refine and develop a research question.

Here students have worked on a practice, plus topic about insects. Student can download a clean copy for personal use. A video showing how the ideas develop and the map builds is given in the supplementary information.

Blogs as a tool for reflective learning

Reflective learning has always been an important part of the program for off-campus students helping the tutor to identify gaps in understanding and promote discussion within the group. This was done by using threaded discussion boards on the LMS, and while extremely valuable, the threads could become very unwieldy as people commented in posts within posts, and so on. As blogging had previously been reported to be an effective way to promote learning and understanding (Farmer et al., 2008), we explored this as an alternative to the discussion boards. Fortunately, the LMS that we use contains a blogging module that we could implement simply to both to encourage reflection on the lecture content, and to allow students to create their own knowledge platform. We now incorporate the blogging activity into the assessment of small group of students (typically 40 per semester) who are enrolled in an advanced version of the unit (by this stage we were phasing out our off-campus program). This activity requires students to make blog posts about aspects of the theoretical content of interest to them, and to comment on other students’ posts and discussions. When the blog was first implemented, the students were asked to make four posts during the semester and at least one comment.

Initially not all students could see the value of the blogs, as demonstrated by the following comments in the feedback from the 2013 cohort:

This year, to encourage discussion, and to thereby assist the students in seeing the “point” of blogging, comments were also rewarded with marks. This led to much greater engagement with the blog, and many students seemed to not only understand the purpose of the blog, but to enjoy the lively discussions online. The students have had extensive discussions on lecture content ranging from logic to pseudoscience, to ethics in research. The students initiate these discussions themselves, commenting on posts to add information, ask questions or challenge points. The blog posts themselves, and the discussions that followed, gave many students an opportunity to identify concepts they were interested in, share their enthusiasm for a topic with an audience, develop their critical thinking and research skills in order to make meaningful comments, find points to challenge or logical responses and practice their scientific writing skills at the same time. The discussions have had an added benefit: content which would not normally be covered in the unit (through lack of time or lack of knowledge about specific examples) has been presented, by the students themselves, drawing on a wide range of sources.

Feedback continues to show that students find it hard to navigate around the blogs. The most important request made by students is for notification when a peer comments on a post they have made. This feature, common in most social media applications, suggests that these digital resident students expect their LMS experience to match that of other platforms, and also that they value comments on their posts – although whether this is out of a desire to further the discussions, or merely as trigger for reward mechanisms is not clear as there is an addictive element to the desire to endlessly check comments on Facebook (Holmes et al., 2014).

Reflective learning has been important for many years, often through writing reflective journal entries or diaries, or specific reflective essays. The difference between these activities and blogs is the openness of the latter, in terms of the posts being accessible by someone other than the student and their teacher. Whereas in an individual reflection, the focus is on the learner producing something that shows the teacher they have developed new knowledge or understanding, with blogging, there is a stronger emphasis on sharing; ideas written in a blog are meant to be seen by others, and this awareness of audience can be enough to encourage deeper learning because the final result will be on display and open to ‘public’ critique. The blogs also share some benefits with the tablet computer trial mentioned above: students from culturally and diverse linguistic backgrounds, and those who are less confident to speak up in a group, have the time and access to resources they need to understand material, and to express themselves with some degree of anonymity.