Duologue: a review

An individual perspective

by Dr Robert H. F. Carver

History of participation

When we were discussing strategies at the beginning of the Project, very good arguments were presented for concentrating our energies on developing a small number of modules on duo to a high standard, rather than weakening the impact (and blurring the contours of the pilot study) by trying to activate too many modules at once. My own inclinations were rather more expansionist: I was probably more interested, at that stage, in the practical challenges of getting the system up and running, creating resources, and selling the idea to the Department and to students, than in the meta-discourse of Virtual Learning Environments. To some extent, a final decision on strategy was taken out of the Project's hands, when the Board of Studies committed itself to achieving a basic level of duo support in all modules within two years. This maximalist approach has had advantages and disadvantages. We have managed, in a relatively short time, to get almost all of the Department's modules 'live' in some form or other, and most of the anxieties expressed by colleagues in the first year of the Project seem to have been allayed by the practical experience of using duo even in the most rudimentary way and seeing what one can do (or, perhaps even more importantly, choose NOT to do) with the technology. There remain, however, striking differences between the Department's various duo modules, in terms of quality and quantity of input, and level of maintenance.

I have set up and maintained duo environments for three large undergraduate modules (Classical & Biblical Background to English Literature, Renaissance Literature, and Shakespeare), and three postgraduate modules (the compulsory Research Methods and Resources, and two small MA options, Narrative Transformations: Medieval Romance to Renaissance Epic, and Renaissance Humanism). I am also registered as a participant in three other undergraduate modules (Introduction to Poetry, the English Language and its History, and Chaucer), but my contributions to date have been limited to using the email function to contact tutees and prospective lecture attendees, and establishing web links. I was also involved in the initial stages of setting up the Departmental Administration module and made use of the Postgraduate Training module during my year as Director of Postgraduate Training in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities (2002-03).

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The reception of duo

English academics tend to have a healthy distrust of 'teaching initiatives' and 'learning technologies', and the introduction of a VLE has the potential to generate real distress and division within a department, especially if it is not sensitively handled. Such resistance is not merely the result of technophobia or neo-Ludditism; there may be a pragmatic reluctance to divert already scarce resources to mastering a new field, as well as a deeply-felt hostility towards anything perceived to be threatening the pedagogical process as traditionally defined and practised. I would be among the first to defend the sanctity of viva voce teaching, and I neither foresee nor desiderate the replacement by VLEs of face-to-face teaching and recourse to the physical book. I do, however, regard systems such as Blackboard / duo as valuable ancillary tools, especially for facilitating communication beyond the confines of the seminar room and lecture theatre. I certainly found, when the matter was discussed at departmental meetings, that colleagues were much more receptive to duo when it was presented as a 'Course Management System' rather than a 'Virtual Learning Environment.' The 'Communication' button is the one that I push most frequently on duo, and it is possible for convenors to use duo to good effect as little more than a glorified emailer. This is one of the great strengths of the system: its versatility and robustness, its ability to function at many levels. Such versatility facilitates compromise: at the request of its convenor, for example, one major module (Chaucer) was kept invisible for most of the year (2002-03), but tutors were still able to email their students.

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Implementation of duo

Students on my MA modules (where class numbers are small and texts are often difficult to obtain) have particularly appreciated being able to co-ordinate the sharing of library books via the group email and Discussion Board functions. The other great strength of duo, however, is the opportunity it provides for course-building, for developing resources over a period of years that may be drawn upon by staff and students alike. This is an obvious boon for part-time students and those involved in international exchanges, but it has potential benefit for users of all kinds. Questionnaire responses indicate that students appreciate the sort of resources that we have been making available. In one module (Classical and Biblical Background), for example, I have compiled an extensive bank of questions (culled from past examination papers and grouped under subject-headings) which may be used for essay questions and as a revision aid. Given our increasing reliance on postgraduate teaching assistants for the delivery of first-year tutorials, we may want to consider the possibility of sharing more of our teaching resources, in the interests both of quality-control and work-load. Duo provides an excellent vehicle for this.

Duo has altered some of the ways in which I think about, as well as practise, teaching. I have always believed that a damp sponge absorbs water more easily than a completely dry one. For many students, alas, the formal lecture continues to be the first point of contact with a particular author or text. It has been the practice, for some years, for lecturers on the Introduction to Poetry module, to post on the notice-board a list of the poems that they are going to be discussing in the following week's lecture. Over the past eighteen months, lecturers have begun to circulate these lists on duo via email. I have taken that practice a stage further by circulating electronic copies of the texts themselves (e.g. Marvell's 'Horatian Ode', Marlowe's Hero and Leander). I do not have any statistics or hard feedback as to how many students actually avail themselves of the opportunity, but if emailing ensures that a few more people have read the text before the lecture, the effort seems well spent. I will also sometimes circulate in advance an electronic version of a handout and then provide hard copies in the lecture itself in the hope of increasing absorption levels.

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Practical difficulties

Setting up and adding members to groups remains very labour intensive - especially if one is only teaching the group for one or two terms, and one's co-tutors for that group are not using duo.

One sometimes feels that one has created a monster that needs to be fed - and the more you feed it, the more it demands. Every upload, every modification, correction, or link, requires a small, but appreciable, input of time. WWW-links need to be checked regularly to ensure that they remain live. Banners have an immediate (and lasting) impact, but obsolete announcements or handouts left over from the previous year are noisy witnesses to one's neglect.

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Unresolved issues

Issues remain about access and control, stewardship and ownership, visibility and portability. On the one hand, one wants to encourage one's colleagues to contribute to the duo resources for the module. On the other hand, it is easy to become proprietorial about the structure and content (even the colours and styles!) that one has created, and there remains the fear that an e-neophyte (or - absit omen! - an e-terrorist) may destroy hundreds of hours of work.

Duo has increased the workload of duo-inclined module convenors, but owing to the restrictions on access, that input is generally invisible to one's colleagues. Recognition of input occasionally takes a negative form - in end-of-year questionnaires, students will sometimes ask, 'Why can't Module X have more duo resources like Module Y?'

Duo also raises interesting questions about the boundaries of the pedagogical relationship. It is sometimes tempting, when one sees advertised a radio programme or television documentary relevant to one's module, to dash off a message to students encouraging them to tune in. One wonders, however, whether this could be construed by some as an invasion of privacy, an infringement of their right not to be considered a 'student' all of the time, and whether it would be more appropriate to go to the extra effort of posting the notice as an 'Announcement' even though one knows that the information is less likely to be seen.

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Conclusions

Such anxieties aside, duo has proved its effectiveness. My interest in, and commitment to it, tends to oscillate over the course of the year, but it remains usable and useful at many different levels, and the sky has not fallen in merely because the duo site for, say, the American Fiction module is so much more obviously brilliant than that, say, for Shakespeare. I see duo as a very useful tool - an adjunct to, but never a substitute for, the face-to-face teaching and eye-to-book learning that define the subject. The duologue Project has certainly shown it to be a tool that no-one needs to fear using.

R. H. F. Carver.
Department of English Studies
University of Durham, U.K.