SCROLLA Symposium 3: IT Policy and Strategy

SCROLLA held a one-day symposium at the Faculty of Education in Edinburgh on 7 May 2002, the third in a series organised by the centre. Delegates representing the schools, further and higher education sectors discussed policy and strategy issues surrounding the implementation of online learning and assessment in their sectors, and the day concluded with views from the government side.

Delegates initially broke into sectoral groups and were asked to consider where they would like their sectors to be in five years' time in terms of IT in education, and how they would measure progress over that time. Some of the responses are summarised here.

Schools

The schools group focussed on generating a vision for schools that would give teachers some ownership of the direction of change, but also take account of and involve other stakeholders, such as parents.

Inevitably, the barriers to change and progress emerged. Those facing teachers as individuals included:

  • The time needed to look at software;
  • The lack of criteria for evaluating software;
  • Lack of communities of teachers (e.g. subject-related) to share information on uses of software;
  • Teachers taking on more and more, and being unwilling to let anyone but a fully qualified permanent teacher perform fairly peripheral school duties;
  • Teachers feeling professionally compromised when their students know more about IT than they do;
  • The current 'mindset' of teachers, who tend to model their own learning experience in their teaching.

The barriers at the institutional and sectoral level included:

  • The rigidity of the curriculum;
  • The current SQA system of final assessments in schools;
  • Not having models of learning and professionally generated criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of teaching and learning;
  • The difficulty of using IT as it currently stands to assess higher order skills;
  • Fears of a huge discrepancy in IT skills between teachers and students;
  • Difficulty in identifying good creative writers for developing online content;
  • Poor systems of getting new information into professional thinking - online communities of teachers have not been successful so far.

In discussing a vision for schools, the group asked what the characteristics would be of:

  • The curriculum;
  • The assessment system;
  • Personnel in schools;
  • Learning experiences;
  • The final outcomes for learners leaving school?

In the ensuing discussion the term 'flexibility' kept arising. The group identified the following ideal characteristics of the teacher:

  • Creativity;
  • Willingness to innovate;
  • Willingness to communicate (i.e. not keep their practices to themselves);
  • Autonomy in decision-taking on educational matters;
  • A role model of the problem-solving, continuously learning person.

The need was seen to encourage in teachers a perception that IT is a useful and flexible aid to the profession - many still see it as dictated from above, by central government. The responsibility of SEED is to provide the tools and create conditions for change, but to be sufficiently relaxed to allow teachers to use them as they see fit.

Pupils are one of the key drivers in this process of change. Teachers need to value the skills pupils have, and to harness their skills. The role of teacher should be to focus on understanding the learning process and act as a facilitator rather than a font of knowledge.

Schools should be loosened from the rigidities of a national system of curriculum and assessment. This would involve breaking down the closed nature of schools, making them more permeable to the outside world of employment, parental views and community needs. The flexibility of assessment was discussed: the SQA contribution might be to 'test when ready', which would loosen off the age-related lock-step.

In the national system of 46 teaching competencies, one or two relate to IT. This has the effect of isolating IT skills, and forcing IT into becoming a subject in its own right in primary schools, not embedded in others. Much more credence should be given to a model where professionals themselves develop curricula.

Schools have proved difficult institutions to change. Governments have tried various means of persuasion and even coercion. Teacher training institutions equip probationers with thinking skills and views about the importance of discussions about learning; but research on the views of School Mentors about placement students reveals a general belief that the focus on theories of learning in teacher training comes at the expense of 'the basics'. Over the next ten years, 50% of present school teacher population will retire, so it's important to look at the training of new teachers.

There seems to be a vacuum in professional leadership among teachers' ranks. How can we help strengthen this in a profession which prides itself on individual autonomy?

Ultimately, the sector has to determine the ideal qualities of the curriculum, qualities of assessment, and qualities of the teacher. Schools need to be more permeable, and teachers involved more in vision generation.

Further Education

In the further education group, there was much discussion of the effort and cost involved in colleges independently trying to assess the best Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) for their needs, and about whether a common policy was required. The concensus was that it was important for colleges to adopt a VLE, any VLE, to use as a basis for further progress.

A need was seen for a drive in IT awareness and implementation from the bottom up. Too many colleges implement IT policy from above without staff being involved in its development or being aware of the uses and advantages of IT. A stronger staff development approach to IT was seen as a necessary part of this culture change among learners, teachers, and management. Having the SQA National Assessment system online was also seen as an important step forward.

Technology should be seen simply as a powerful tool in a whole toolkit. There has to be some clarity about what the technology should be doing for us, but no consensus emerged in the group of where technology sits in relation to learning.

Progress could measured, it was suggested, by requiring colleges to demonstrate their IT strategy, department by department. This would lead to a global impression of where the norm lies, which could then be used as a measure of a college's progress towards a coherent and justifiable IT policy.

Higher Education

The two higher education groups discussed a wide range of technological and pedagogical issues. In contrast to the schools and FE sectors, staff in universities are relatively free to do what they like with IT, which has triggered an enormous upswell in its use throughout the sector.

The less-regulated nature of higher education also made attempts to predict where the sector will be more difficult. Futurism always gets it wrong, it was argued, particularly when its focus is technology; we should instead look at educational technology as a process. We should look at teaching and learning first and then roll out the technology to support that.

There are considerable differences between learners' and educators' use of IT, and how it affects their lives. Few university teachers have actually learnt in the way they are asking their students to learn; they don't see the extent to which they're not connecting with young students. Younger students are totally comfortable with technology, not even seeing it as unusual, while older students are often still scared off by it. Universities must bridge that initial gap, when mature students are feeling scared of IT, while not alienating younger students.

Learners come from a diversity of backgrounds that are impossible to second-guess. Distance educators noted that while distance students who have no other option than online learning will use it, students in the bigger centres resist online teaching: they say they'll use it, and then won't. Others gave counter examples of students using discussion boards heavily, to engage in a different style of conversation spread out over time, when they could and did also meet face to face.

Younger students expect IT to play a role, but while they can tell us what they want in terms of technology, they don't necessarily know what they need in terms of education. Educators should stop being reactive and start being proactive. Rather than focussing on the technology, we must resolve the educational issues: we're embarrassed to tell our students that learning is hard, and that nothing we do in terms of changing technologies is going to change that.

Teachers must keep in mind how the technology changes their teaching. Increased access to information makes the amassing of structured knowledge less relevant. We should therefore sell the process: spending four years learning psychology is not about learning facts of psychology, it's about becoming a psychologist.

The overall objective is a staff and student community with a better idea of how to use technology; a critical awareness of its impact; and so at ease with technology that it has become invisible. We need interoperability at the technological level, and interoperability of pedagogies. The result will be an acceptably flexible education system, and an escape from the timetable.

We must get staff to recognise that IT is an aid to professional activity - the profession needs to generate its own criteria for change. Educators should look at ways of doing what they do well, and pick and choose technologies that support that activity.

How, in any given institution, would we know that we were making progress? We need to measure:

  • Diversity of usage of IT;
  • Familiarity with IT;
  • Flexibility;
  • Critical awareness;
  • Re-use and sharing;
  • Pedagogical change.

But doing so is difficult. It's important that teachers themselves are part of that measuring process. We should also keep in touch on a longitudinal basis with students and alumni to see what they have found most useful from their studies. There may be a significant mismatch between institutional strategies and 'what people on the ground do'.

Universities will have to run two different systems, face-to-face and online. All learning will be somehow blended; we have to decide from an institutional position what blend is appropriate - to find the right solution, put it in place, and properly resource it.

Online teaching is more public and accessible than teaching in a classroom, and therefore more readily studied. But pockets of good practice can be frustratingly unhelpful if they fail to become part of the wider educational culture. If there is good research about what does and does not work, how do we complete the chain linking it back into mainstream teaching practice?

Any shift to online teaching raises awkward political questions, such as "What are your buildings for?" Experimentation in teaching is good, but doesn't sell to ministers. We have to be able to say precisely what educational value is being delivered by IT.

The sectors must find ways to chip away at the forces holding back online teaching. It's not just about capital investment, which brings high expectations and often comes with strings attached; it's about individual teachers' decisions about what they will teach next week. The wind has blown against top-sliced money and towards institutions investing in themselves.

Delegates in Attendance

  • Wilma Alexander, Edinburgh SELLIC
  • Wilf Allison, Central College of Commerce
  • Cliff Beevers, SCROLLA, Heriot-Watt University
  • John Bruce, Highland Council Education Service
  • Fionnualla Cassidy, JISC Regional Support Centre for Scotland South & West
  • Helen Chappel-Hayios, SCROLLA, University of Glasgow
  • Tom Conlon, Faculty of Education, University of Edinburgh
  • Calum Crosbie, Senior Lecturer, Flexible Study, Coatbridge College
  • Christine de Luca, Scottish Qualifications Authority
  • Maire Dougan, Learning and Teaching Scotland
  • Charles Duncan, University of Edinburgh
  • Rachel Ellaway, University of Edinburgh
  • Rory Ewins, SCROLLA, University of Edinburgh
  • Richard Field, VP Academic Services, Uni Edinburgh
  • Claire Gill, BECTA
  • Maria Hann, Open University, Scotland
  • Rachel Harris, SCROLLA, University of Glasgow
  • Tom Harris, University of the Highlands and Islands Millennium Institute
  • Bill Harvey, SFC
  • Jeff Haywood, SCROLLA, University of Edinburgh
  • Simon Heath, University of Aberdeen
  • Marcella Kean, Core Skills and Learning Centre Manager, Cumbernauld College
  • Susan Kozicki, Learning and Teaching Scotland
  • John Laird, Scottish Further Education Unit
  • Allison Littlejohn, University of Strathclyde
  • Janet Macdonald, e-learning coordinator for the OU in Scotland
  • Mary Macdonald, Colleges Open Learning Exchange Group (COLEG)
  • Neil MacFarlane, Scottish Executive
  • Hamish Macleod, Faculty of Education, University of Edinburgh
  • Erica McAteer, SCROLLA, University of Glasgow
  • Ian McCracken, Govan High School
  • Mary McCulloch, Faculty of Education, University of Edinburgh
  • Nora Mogey, MALTS, University of Edinburgh
  • Jane Paterson, SCROLLA, Heriot-Watt University
  • Susi Peacock, Queen Margaret University College
  • Sarah Price, Manager, JISC Regional Support Centre for Scotland North & East, Telford College
  • Jean Ritchie, Napier EDS, formerly Scotcit Programme Co-ordinator
  • Stuart Robertson, Scottish Executive
  • Susan Rodrigues, University of Stirling
  • Ginny Saich, Stirling DAICE
  • Mary Simpson, Faculty of Education, University of Edinburgh
  • Bruce Sinclair, University of St Andrews
  • Andrew Tolmie, Strathclyde University
  • Dorothy Williams, The Robert Gordon University
  • Pam Wilson, UHIMI
  • Tony Sellars, Learning and Teaching Scotland
  • Shuyu Zhang, Anhui Normal University

Powerpoint Presentations

Posted by Rory Ewins on 21 June 2002