ALT Open Access Repository

Wright, Clayton R.

'Teacher Education via ODL From Reflections to Action' and 'The Significance of Education, ODL & ICTs to the People of Developing Nations'

Schmoller, Seb

English

ALT response to the Higher Education Academy’s Consultation on the UK Professional Standards Framework for Higher Education.

This is a recording of the webinar made in Elluminate. Due to technical difficulties at the start of the webinar, Donald Clark, the presenter of the session, starts his presentation at time index 28.52

Clark, Donald

Don't Lecture Me webinar recording made in Elluminate (presentation from time index 28.52)

Malamed, Connie

Visual language for designers webinar presentation: Connie Malamed

Sclater, Niall

Feldstein, Michael

What's New in Digital Learning Environments webinar recording (made in Elluminate)

Somiah, Andrew

Clarke, Robert

Practical Strategies for Evaluation (Webinar recording made in Elluminate)

Presentation used on 14 April 2011 in a session about the future of the lecture that Donald Clark ran with Stephen Downes Follow the Sun, a 2 day "non-stop global e-learning conference" - http://www.webcitation.org/5xxdkJLxw - run jointly by the University of Southern Queensland (Australia) and the University of Leicester (UK). Stephen's talk is here: http://www.slideshare.net/Downes/the-lecture-must-stand

Don’t lecture me!

“Now, I cannot see that
lectures can do so much
as reading the books from
which the  lectures are
taken. 
I know nothing that can be 
best taught by lectures”
Samuel Johnson
Double standards
Little changed: dominant 
use
Plural of anecdote is not data!
1. Tyranny of location
•Costs too high
•Need maintenance
•Mostly empty
2. Tyranny of time
•Babylonian hour
•Travel time to & from
•Padded out
3. Attention problems
•Student attention falls (Johnstone 1976, 
Macmanaway 1970, Trenaman 1968 etc)
•Lecturer performance falls (Lloyd 1992)
•Heart rates fall (Bligh 2000)
•Take less notes (Scorba 1992)
•<25 mins (Cowan 1981)
•20-30 mins (Bligh 2000)
•Breaks beneficial (Wilkinson 1959, Weaver 
1985, Ruhl 1995)
4. Do lectures inspire & motivate?
•Bligh: 15 studies show lectures less 
effective than other methods for 
encouraging positive attitudes, 
only 1 found the reverse
•Hale Report: of 7 teaching methods. 
‘lectures’ ranked 7th for efficiency, 
5th for enjoyment, 1st for frequency 
•McLeish reported distaste for lectures in 
students from 10 Colleges of Education 
and several Universities
5. Do lectures aid critical thinking? 
•Bligh: 21 studies found lecturing to be less effective 
than: discussion, reading, individual work in class 
and so on. He could not find a single study to show 
lecturing to be more effective than another method 
for the promotion of thought. 
•Bloom: during lectures students' solve problems, 
synthesise or inter-relate information only 1% of the 
time, mostly "passive or irrelevant thoughts about 
subject"
•CLA longitudinal study on 2,322 students for 4 years 
from 2005-09 across broad range of 24 U.S. colleges 
and universities
6. Do lectures teach values/attitudes?
•Bligh: Dozens of studies show that 
lectures are less effective than other 
teaching methods
•Kochan (2003), Dobbin (2006), and Kalev
(2011) show that diversity training made 
no measurable difference, sometimes a 
backlash
7. Do lectures teach knowledge?
•Bligh: ‘no significant difference’
Buildings & staff expensive
Go for cheaper options!
•Bloom: The 2 sigma problem
Group 1: Lecture
Group 2: Formative feedback
Group 3: One to one

8. Is student attendance a problem?
www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/italics/vol5iss2/burd-att-italics-06-
9.   20 ‘terrible’ reasons for lecturing 
Graham Gibbs (1981)
http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsd/2_learntch/20reasons.html
Does it give students a 
rich and rewarding 
educational experience? 
NO
Gibbs 9 defensive arguments:
1. Should be 1 hr. If I can do 1 hour, so can they
2. Only way to make sure ground is covered
3. Best way to get facts across
4. Best way to get students to think
5. Inspirational: improve students' attitudes towards 
subject, & students like them
6. Makes sure that students have proper set of notes
7. Students incapable of working alone
8. Criticisms only apply to bad lecturing
9. Value can only be judged in context of other 
teaching & learning activities
Gibbs 11 ‘real’ reasons for lecturing
1.  Ignorant of evidence on effectiveness of lectures
2.  Ignorant of alternatives to lectures
3.  Alternatives involve more work
4.  Changes take time
5.  Shortage of books
6.  Shortage of learning resources
7.  Attitudes stop change: lectures a coping strategy
8.  Institutionalised in way teaching hours counted
9.  Institutionalised relationship between courses
10  Course validation & external forces
11. We don't know how to design courses
10. Institutional inertia
Cathy Ellis 
(Lecturer English Univ Huddersfield)
“Default” or “Normative discourse”
“This is evident in our job titles, our institutional   
architecture, our workload models, our quality
assurance strategies, our timetabling software and
countless other systems and principles that define 
and demarcate our working lives.”
http://tinyurl.com/6xgle43
Recording lectures
Recording lectures
Student survey of 5 Diploma courses
All but one watched recordings & found useful 
Advantages noted by students :
1. Original lecture went too fast
2. Review lecture
3. Revision for exams
4. Clarification of difficult handwriting
5. English was student’s second language
6. Avoid writing notes (focus on lecture)
7. See lecture after missing it through illness
8. Relax when tired of reading
Students watching 13 hours a week on average
Completely revolutionising the traditional teaching & learning model
"One year of ICTP diploma courses on-line using the automated EyA recording system" -
Computers & Education 53 (2009) 183-188. 
http://sdu.ictp.it/eya/about.html
YouTube EDU
“Data is not the plural of anecdote”

http://fm.schmoller.net/2010/05/data-is-not-the-plural-of-
anecdote-eric-mazur-talks-about-how-to-improve-large-
group-learning.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v425/n6955/full/42
5234a.html
POLICTHEORY
Conclusion
•”one serious difficulty…wasn’t any 
feedback from the students to lecturer”
•“My own pint of view is pessimistic. I 
don’t think I did very well by the 
students…. the system was a failure.”
•“It’s impossible to learn very much by 
sitting through a lecture”
Email
donald.clark@hotmail.co.uk
Blog
http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/
Twitter
@donaldclark
Facebook
DonaldClark


Don't lecture me (Donald Clark) / The lecture must stand (Stephen Downes)

Slater, John

 
Registered Charity No: 1063519  Chief Executive: Seb Schmoller 
Central Executive Committee: Liz Bennett, Haydn Blackey, Alastair Clark, John Cook, Claire Donlan,  Registered address:  
David Dyet, Matt Lyngard, , Liz Masterman, Dick Moore, Martin Oliver, Fred Pickering, Vanessa Pittard,  Gipsy Lane   
Gilly Salmon. Headington 
   Oxford OX3 0BP, UK 
ALT Ambassadors*: Dame Wendy Hall DBE FREng FRS, Professor of Computer Science at the  Phone: + 44 (0)1865 484125        
University of Southampton; Terry Mayes, Emeritus Professor at Glasgow Caledonian University; Jane Williams,  Fax: + 44 (0)1865 484165  
past Principal of City of Wolverhampton College and Executive Director for FE, Skills and Regeneration of Becta.  Email: admin@alt.ac.uk 
* Ambassadors provide informal advice to ALT on matters within their area of interest, and act as advocates for ALT.  http://www.alt.ac.uk 
Kate McAlister 
Chief Executive’s Adviser 
HEFCE 
Northavon House 
Coldharbour Lane 
Bristol BS16 1QD 
 
cc Heather Fry, Director (Education and Participation) 
 
27 October 2011 
 
 
Dear Kate, 
 
Opportunity, choice and excellence in higher education 
 
1. We are grateful to be invited to comment on your strategy statement Opportunity, choice and 
excellence in higher education. Our comment stems from an exchange between ALT and HEFCE 
over the summer in which we offered to summarise briefly ALT’s perspectives on “the 
effective utilisation of learning technologies” (the 5th learning and teaching objective in the 
strategy statement p8/para23) for consideration by HEFCE as it develops the longer term 
business plan1. 
 
2. The Association for Learning Technology (ALT) is a professional and scholarly membership 
based association. Our charitable object is “to advance education through increasing, exploring 
and disseminating knowledge in the field of learning technology for the benefit of the general 
public”. We are the UK's leading membership organisation in the learning technology field. 
Our purpose is to ensure that use of learning technology is effective and efficient, informed by 
research and practice, and grounded in an understanding of the underlying technologies, their 
capabilities and the situations into which they are placed. We do this by improving practice, 
promoting research, and influencing policy, through bringing together practitioners, 
researchers, and policy makers. We have over 200 organisational members including most of 
the UK’s universities and many FE colleges including those delivering HE.  
 
3. We did not respond to the White Paper Higher Education: Students at the heart of the system2, 
from which the HEFCE strategy statement flows because the White Paper was essentially 
devoted to finance and related issues. Subsequently most of the resulting discussion has been 
about how the financial system will work in detail and some possible consequences (intended 
and unintended) of implementation. There is little about how to achieve efficiency and 
                                                     
1 This document was written by Seb Schmoller and John Slater (of ALT), and was informally reviewed before 
submission by Martin Hall of the University of Salford and John Raftery of Oxford Brookes University. 
Responsibility for the contents of the document rests with ALT. 
2 http://discuss.bis.gov.uk/hereform/white-paper/ (last accessed 1/9/2011) 
 
 
 
 
effectiveness in the learning and teaching processes, possibly in part because that is viewed as 
the task of institutions rather than of government.  
 
4. This is in contrast to the Schools sector where Michael Gove’s address at the Royal Society 
about the National Curriculum included a significant section on using technology for 
successful delivery and especially in promoting access (in his case to “hard science”)3. 
 
5. We argue that, as a result of the White Paper and of Opportunity, choice and excellence in 
higher education, there are strategic additions that need to be made in the area of the use of 
Learning Technology (LT)4, necessary as part of addressing the role of HEFCE as a “key player 
in promoting innovation” with consequent important contributions to “supporting widening 
participation” and “protecting vulnerable disciplines”. There are also important consequences 
for HEFCE in its role as “lead regulator”. In future for many English learners (as well as for 
other learners with English institutions), LT is likely to be crucial in offering opportunity and 
choice about where, what, how and when to study, as well as in helping to provide openness 
and objectivity. 
 
6. Thus we see LT as having been worthy of more mention at the strategic policy level rather than 
principally as an enabling mechanism. The only reference to it in the strategy statement in the 
former strategic sense is in a general point about new technology (page 3/para 4th bullet)5. The 
contrast with the view taken over ten years ago in “Higher Education for the 21st Century”, the 
Government’s response to the Dearing National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education6 
is stark, not least because over the last decade the impact of ICT on the knowledge creation, 
acquisition, and distribution that lie at the heart of the work of universities and colleges has 
been more profound than most people in the HE policy world anticipated at that time. As a 
result the NUS (a body that has traditionally been relatively conservative with respect to 
technology) has developed a charter which shows an appreciation of the central issues 
involved. (See the NUS’s recently published Charter on Technology in Higher Education7.) 
 
7. HEFCE’s Online Learning Task Force (OLTF) produced its final report Collaborate to Compete 
- Seizing the opportunity of online learning for UK higher education in Jan 20118. The absence 
of even a mention of OLTF seems symptomatic of seizure rather than seizing!  
 
                                                     
3 http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/speeches/a00191729/michael-gove-speaks-to-the-royal-
society-on-maths-and-science (last accessed 14/10/2011) 
4 ALT defines Learning Technology as the broad range of communication, information and related 
technologies that can be used to support learning, teaching, and assessment. See also 
http://www.alt.ac.uk/about-alt/what-learning-technology (last accessed 16/10/2011). 
5 There is also a later reference to the BIS Technology Strategy Board but this is an area where it has as yet 
nothing in train although maybe private HE providers may be able to tap into its mechanisms for HEI LT 
work. 
6 http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/dearing/index.htm (last accessed 14/10/2011) 
7 http://goo.gl/XMmXs (last accessed 14/10/2011) 
8 http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2011/11_01/11_01.pdf (last accessed 14/10/2011) 
 
 
 
 
8. The OLTF report discusses many of the ways in which LT should be used in: making 
information available to students, assisting with recruitment and retention, and serving as a 
cornerstone component for delivery and assessment. Its recommendations include: 
• Technology needs to enhance student choice and meet or exceed learners’ expectations  
• More and better market intelligence about international demand and competition is 
required  
• Institutions need to take a strategic approach to realign structures and processes in order to 
embed online learning 
• Investment is needed for the development and exploitation of open educational resources 
to enhance efficiency and quality. 
 
9. We believe that these recommendations remain highly relevant and apposite for a strategy 
statement where the theme of competition and collaboration is used if not acknowledged. New 
technology is seen as a “big challenge” but is not highlighted as a solution subsequently. It 
needs to be. 
 
10. Similarly, HEFCE is silent in the statement about its own excellent investments in JISC, and in 
the services, activities, outputs and outcomes that have been funded by HEFCE through JISC. 
This gives the impression that these investments were unimportant, when in fact they 
contributed very greatly to the HE sector’s leadership in this field internationally. Certainly if 
UK HE had relied on private investment the sector would now be far behind. 
 
11. Using LT effectively will be a central part of the future for English HE provision. It is a key 
element in allowing flexibility in delivery as to timing, mode, place and cost. It will allow 
English HE to remain competitive internationally as markets become more crowded.  With 
moves in hand to give private and external providers access to the English HE market, it is 
pertinent to look at the steps that Stanford University is taking, following others such as MIT. 
Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun (leading figures in the Artificial Intelligence branch of 
Computer Science) are offering a version of the Stanford Introduction to Artificial Intelligence 
course on line and (in this first iteration) free of charge9. Currently over 100,000 learners are 
enrolled to the course, from over 150 countries. In a parallel development, Stanford is offering, 
free of charge, online versions of its Introduction to Databases10 and its Introduction to 
Machine Learning11, in each case with over 50,000 students enrolled.12  
 
12. The OU foundation course T171 (Your Computer, the Internet and You) saw record enrolment 
for the UK at its inception in the late 1990s (over 30,000 students). It was also based on novel 
use (at the time) of LT (the assignments involved website construction – then a ground 
breaking idea worldwide).   
 
13. The message overall is clear - learners, and not just adult and flexible learners, are looking for 
innovative technology based learning opportunities, well managed and well executed.  
 
                                                     
9 http://www.webcitation.org/62QrF0F0h (last acessed 14/10/2011)  
10 http://www.webcitation.org/62QrI5uX5 (last accessed 14/10/2011) 
11 http://www.webcitation.org/62QrKliSG (last accessed 14/10/2011) 
12 Naturally it is too early to know the proportion of these enrolments that are from committed students with 
the tenacity to complete these demanding courses, but an indication is given by the fact that over 46,000 
students submitting the first assignment in the Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course.  
 
 
 
 
14. Once a sensible accreditation environment is in place, the brands now involved in US remote 
delivery are such as to command considerable respect. There is a danger of the English market 
being cherry-picked – not by the medium cost private lowish brand providers frequently 
predicted, but by high brand low cost offerings from outside England. To combat this and be 
sustainable, we need to do all the things set out in the table in para 23 of the strategy statement, 
but to so do sufficiently efficiently, through collaboration and technology, as to be able to 
withstand the threats. HEFCE has a clear role in supporting the infrastructure that helps its 
institutions to survive. LT is a key part of this, and the strategy needs to make this point with 
clarity.  
 
15. Accordingly investing in infrastructure and encouragement for collaboration, to provide 
opportunities for all and ensure openness and fairness belongs firmly in the section paras 36-
38. A mention of JISC and its activities and its activities in a new model would be wholly 
appropriate at this point in the document. 
 
16. Subjects which are high cost because of their small scale may be best protected by a scheme 
which inter alia involves creation and/or maintenance of distributed critical mass, allowing 
universities with small student numbers in key subjects to offset costs on a shared service basis, 
supported by LT, rather than by what might with hindsight be viewed as unsustainable 
support from the centre.  
 
17. In addition, the LT work of HE, often in collaboration and supported centrally, is itself a 
strength of HE in England (and in the UK as a whole) and has helped with international 
recruitment. Specifically: 
• LT enhances the student experience and skill sets.  
• LT will be a key support for building collaboration between providers while retaining 
competition and is essential in supporting education partnerships in the UK and with those 
elsewhere, often in fast-developing countries. 
• There are many examples of LT helping with improving opportunity and choice, especially 
for learners from non standard backgrounds (see, for example, the case studies 
commissioned to inform the work of the Online Learning Task Force13). 
 
18. The open agenda is only briefly mentioned in the bullet point 5 of the para 23/page 8 table and 
refers only to open educational resources (OERs). This is a much larger area for policy. Much 
software is open. Repositories of documents are more openly available and supported by open 
software that makes them easier to use and link. Journals are increasingly used as part of 
undergraduate study and the increasing moves to new models of academic publishing will 
have a profound effect on finance and on methods of academic working. While traditional 
publishers will continue to make a case for their continued existence and lobby policy makers 
etc., a future that involves their disintermediation is clear; and the sooner this is brought about 
the less public monies will be wasted in the interim.  
 
19. Worthy of special note are the access opportunities that LT affords through the ability to 
personalise and address characteristics of an individual. Personalisation of education is another 
theme missing from the current strategy. Using technology in learning and teaching is one of 
the ways in which the disadvantaged of all types can access learning without significant 
                                                     
13 http://www.hefce.ac.uk/learning/enhance/case/ (last accessed 14/10/2011) 
 
 
 
 
penalty. This varies from the person who has difficulty keeping a steady hand being able to use 
technology to replace conventional microscopes to demonstrate achieving outcomes in 
recognising specimens, through allowing those with childcare problems to learn when they 
can, through to the administrative advantages of having more accurate information on such 
things as learning activities, contact hours and characteristics of the input cohort, which can 
then be shared with the public and applicants. A rich dataset could result which could in 
course also be available to HEFCE to use as part of its regulatory function. For instance data on 
feedback volumes and timings, which seem to concern many learners, could be available 
routinely. 
 
20. To summarise: LT (and other infrastructure) has a major role to play in helping HEFCE achieve 
many key aspects of the strategy in the statement. It is currently given insufficient emphasis in 
Opportunity, choice and excellence in higher education. This needs to be addressed at the next 
stage.  
 
ALT would be happy to contribute to HEFCE’s work to develop its policy on these issues. 
 
 
 
 
Seb Schmoller 
Chief Executive 
 
 
 
 
  
 


ALT comment on the Higher Education Funding Council for England's Strategy Statement "Opportunity, choice and excellence in higher education"

Jennings, Charles

Making The Most Of Informal Learning (webinar presentation)

Prepared by Dr Rachel A Harris, Inspire Research Ltd with input from Seb Schmoller, Association for Learning Technology (ALT) December 2011 for The Learning Design Support Environment Project

Harris, Rachel A

Insight Report: Contexts of use of Learning Design 

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