Page 151 - Innovative Professional Development Methods and Strategies for STEM Education

Introducing Educational Technology into the Higher Education Environment

the areas that they still lacked experience. They also stayed in contact with each other during the time
between contact sessions by means web-based technologies. They interacted using the e-mail and bulletin
facilities available in Blackboard (the learning management system), as well as instant messaging facili-
ties such as Yahoo Messenger and Skype, and as such become part of an online support community. The
instant messaging feature in particular was extremely popular due to the immediacy of the interpersonal
contact that it managed to facilitate. The lecturers reported that they experienced these interactions as
their lifeline when they sat struggling, for example, with a particular piece of software in the late hours of
the night. Moral and technical support was easily available from others who were synchronously online.
The lecturers on the programme were required to schedule stakeholder meetings to which they invited
all people with a direct interest in what they were doing. Stakeholders such as the Dean, HOD, fellow
lecturers, a student representative, the subject librarian, and the computer laboratory technician all joint
the lecturer in these meetings. The Partners@Work lecturers presented their progress and defended
their instructional design decisions at these meeting. They also got the opportunity to discuss and plan
for the logistics of the implementation phase. For example, if their design included regular continuous
electronic assessments, they had to schedule weekly contact sessions in a computer laboratory. This
aspect had to be booked into the laboratory schedule for which the IT technician had to prepare specific
settings (for example, loading Java-enabled scripts). These contact sessions also had to be incorporated
into the students’ time table for which the Faculty’s scheduling officer had taken responsibility. Fellow
educators had the opportunity to question learning programme-specific issues, whilst the librarian had
to take note of the sections where specific library resources would be required (for example, if an as-
signment required students to watch a copy of a particular video clip, the library’s multimedia section
had to be informed and consulted).
The research activities that took place in this phase culminated in a mini-conference as described
below. At this event, the lecturers showcased the technology-enhanced materials that they designed.
For example, they demonstrated their interactive multimedia and specialised animations and graph-
ics, shown their video clips, explained their electronic assessment strategies, explained their learning
activities, and talked the audience through examples of other resources and facilities available in their
online classrooms. The audience typically included their peers and other interested educators, but all
stakeholders were invited.

The Implementation Component

Following the last 6 months on the programme, lecturers piloted their new technology-enhanced learning
programmes, with actual students in an authentic learning environment. This phase provided formative
feedback for refinement purposes. Lecturers monitored students’ reactions and analysed what was hap-
pening as they implemented their technology-enhanced teaching and learning materials. In the light of
this analysis and the associated reflection, they subsequently refined their thinking and made changes
where needed. Some lecturers shared their newly created materials with colleagues presenting the same
subjects, and in doing so they started the required mentorship relationships in their departments.
This phase turned out to be the most difficult one, from the perspective of the Directorate for Teach-
ing and Learning with Technology. Since many influencing factors were out of the management control
of the instructional designers, contingency plans often had to be made on the fly, for example when
technical problems hampered progress in the computer laboratories.

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