Contact and acknowledgements

Contact

The duologue project team

Co-ordinator and report by:Dr Pam Knights.

Contact: pam.knights@durham.ac.uk

Department of English Studies
University of Durham
Hallgarth House,
77 Hallgarth Street,
Durham City, DH1 3AY

Team members: Dr Robert Carver, Dr Robin Dix, Dr Simon James, of the Department of English Studies, at the address above.

For citations, please use:

Knights, P., Report on the duologue project, English Subject Centre: 2004.

If citing the personal perspectives by Robin Dix and Robert Carver, please use:

Dix, R., 'A Worm's Eye View of the Blackboard System', in Knights, P., Report...;

Carver, R. H. F., 'Duologue: A Review', in Knights, P. Report ...

If citing the questions or the raw statistical data from the Durham University Learning Technologies teams surveys, please credit the team directly (full details and reports at the LTT pages at this link). If citing the duologue project's comments on English students' responses, please cite Knights, P. Report . . (as above). The general results for the whole university have been published as: Pavey, J., 'A C&IT skills audit of staff and students', in Martin, E. (ed.) Information and IT Literacy: Enabling learning in the 21st century, London: Facet, 2003.

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Acknowledgements

We owe a tremendous debt to large numbers of people:

The students and staff of the Department of English Studies, University of Durham, for submitting themselves to a 'development project', working with often alien technology, and for filling in surveys, giving interviews, and generally being uncomplaining guinea-pigs. Among the staff, especial thanks go to Miss Catherine Davidson, our administrative officer; and to Mrs Marie Caygill, our departmental secretary, and to her assistant, Mrs Audrey Bowron, for the extra work the project created; to our Heads of Department, first Professor David Fuller and, later, Professor Michael O'Neill, for approving the project and helping to smooth out all the various entanglements en route; and to Mr Dave Angus of REDDS for managing our invoices.

The English Subject Centre, at Royal Holloway, not only for the project-funding but for endless support and wise advice throughout. Particularly huge thanks go to Mr Brett Lucas for his indefatigable enthusiasm, expertise and enlightenment, luminous emails, tireless encouragement and for introducing us to his wide circle of fellow web-pioneers; in the latter stages, he took on the heroic work of making Pam Knights's web efforts fit for uploading - a task for which mere expressions of gratitude are inadequate. Enormous thanks go, too, to Mrs Jane Gawthrope for her calm 'long-distance' administration of the project, and her helpful explanations to initially baffled university finance-officers of what an 'LTSN project' was and why it needed book-tokens. Dr Michael Hanrahan and Dr Christie Carson were interested project-officers at different stages of the project; Mrs Carol Eckersley provided instant replies to numerous questions; and directors Professor Philip Martin and Professor Ben Knights remained patient and interested. A wide variety of English Subject Centre events helped us to broaden out the project and have brought us new colleagues from all over the country.

The University of Durham, Learning Technologies Team and University IT helpdesk; above all to Miss Kate Boardman, for training us in the first place, and for her interest and encouragement, her encyclopaedic knowledge of every module and her detailed, instant emails untangling all our numerous problems throughout. Our technical incompetence aside, the project created considerable extra work for Kate, who uncomplainingly made sure that duo was in action during our dissemination days, and that vital examples survived the annual roll-over clean-out. We also owe a large debt to Mrs Juliette Pavey for her keen interest in evaluating the project, and particularly for helping us create a scannable survey, and for extracting and allowing us to use English students' submissions in the LTT annual duo surveys. Dr Malcolm Murray has given warm support, and his revelation of the 'media' link feature was one of the 'Eureka' moments of the project. The energies of the LTT in setting up conferences and show-cases generated invigorating contacts with colleagues throughout the university and beyond - one of the chief pleasures of the project.

The Durham University Excellence in Teaching Award scheme, for enabling the co-ordinator to find time for her initial duo and 'Dreamweaver' training; and the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme for opportunities to extend 'duologue' into a 'widening horizons' project with schools in the North-East region.

English colleagues in other universities, for inspiration, help and encouragement (through presentations at English Subject Centre events and/or discussion and/or 'virtual' visits). Special appreciation goes to Dr Lesley Coote (University of Hull), Dr Duco Van Oostrum (University of Sheffield), Dr Christina Lee (University of Nottingham), Professor Clare Bradford (Deakin University, Australia), Dr Robb Watt (University of Dundee), Professor Susan Gannon (Pace University), and colleagues at the University of Teesside - especially Ms Jan Hewitt, Mr Mark Dooley, Dr Cris Yelland, Dr Chris Thurgar-Dawson and Dr Rachel Carroll. Nearer home, Dr Mike Fleming, of the School of Education, University of Durham, for his typical blend of insight, humour and practical help (not least, the loan of his laptop and digital projector for our early dissemination events).

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Reading and links

More generally, over the course of the project, we have read, heard, clicked on, and learned from numerous sites of expertise and experience. The resources, case-studies, guides and ever-burgeoning numbers of books and articles can be overwhelming. These are places we found useful starting-points, but they represent only a sample of the wealth available:

Links and case-studies on the English Subject Centre web-site, particularly from the Centre's own C&IT pages.

ASTER:

Guides by the former LTSN Generic Centre (available online at the Higher Education Academy, and in printed form). These cover a huge range of case-studies and specialised aspects of online teaching and learning.

Secondary education - in many ways far ahead of HE in finding innovative and purposeful uses for electronic media. NATE's [National Association of Teachers of English] Secondary English Magazine remains a wonderful source-book and forum, and regularly features detailed and precise accounts of teachers' and students' experiences transforming standard practices for IT and innovating new approaches. (Pam Knights's early work on using texts interactively, for instance, drew on issues about using the WORD highlight feature, Vol.4.4, April 2001; ICT and Media Work, Vol.5.1, October, 2001; Computers v. Conventional Learning, Vol.6, 2, December 2002).

Books:

Laurillard, Diana, Rethinking University Teaching: a conversational framework for the effective use of learning technologies. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge/Falmer, 2002.

Snyder, Ilana (ed.), Silicon Literacies: Communication, innovation and education in the electronic age. London and New York: Routledge/Falmer, 2002.