A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

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Teaching, supervising, learning
for synchronous (live) or asynchronous (over time) activities, for arts or sciences, for
assessment, reflection, blended or distance learning, course administration, individual
and group work, for discussion or for provision of web-based materials, whether
these are documents, web pages, interactive simulations, or use video or sound. Your
challenge as a teacher is to examine closely your course, its learning outcomes, your
students, the assessment structures and your own pedagogical ethos, and then to choose
how to use these tools in a way that is going to be effective and will make best use of
your time and skills. Once you start to do this, you may find yourself asking some
fundamental questions about the ways in which your students learn, and about your role
as a teacher.
First steps: a question of support
Interrogating practice
If you are new to your institution you may wish to find out the following:
• Is there any e-learning support in your department (as distinct from
general IT support)?
• Is there an e-learning unit or team in your institution that can offer
pedagogical and practical advice about getting started?
• Does your department and/or institution have an e-learning strategy?
• What software is available for use (e.g. a VLE, an e-assessment system, or
blogging)?
• What facilities are available for your students to use as e-learners, and do
the IT infrastructure and IT-enabled learning spaces encourage or hinder
different types of study (e.g. computer-aided group study, multimedia
playback)?
• If you are going to be involved in a course which already uses e-learning,
how is it used and what will your role be?
E-LEARNING IN PRACTICE
Table 7.1 offers some possible e-learning activities which might usefully be integrated
into a course. These combine things you could do within a VLE and tasks which might
involve other tools. They are mapped to hypothetical educational challenges of a kind
which a lecturer may encounter.
The activities suggested in Table 7.1 vary in scope and scale, and some require more
technical skills than others. You may, if you are a new lecturer or a teaching assistant, not
be able to re-engineer aspects of the course’s teaching or assessment structure. However,
with the assistance of experienced peers, or of any dedicated learning or educational