English staff and duo - Home

Staff awareness

At the start of 2001-02, many of us had little or no concept of what a VLE was. Although all departments had been circulated with introductory information about the VLE, the print-outs had not grabbed our attention, and had failed to give us any impression that we were looking at something relevant to English teaching. Those of us who had noticed them at all had taken 'Blackboard' to be purely a tool for administrators, and none of us had felt moved to sign up for one of the early training courses. Our office staff, similarly, had assumed that the system was designed solely for lecturers and had seen nothing particularly useful in it for them.

During the previous year, a few of us had slowly become aware of the existence of duo through students' comments, and through hearing colleagues mention it in other departments; but its possibilities only came alive when one of us saw it demonstrated on a training course. That the university technologies team has been very active in attempting 'outreach' into the more indifferent departments suggests that we were not the only ones slow to respond.

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Responses to initial proposal

Proposals for introducing the VLE stirred up various currents of apprehension in the department. Previous IT ventures had been purely of an individual nature, whereas the proposed project would potentially affect everyone. However, we realised that, as other departments were already fully engaged with the platform, we could not insulate ourselves for ever. During the project, we emphasised the freedom of individuals to use the system at any level, and highlighted its course-management aspects rather than its 'e-learning' elements.

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Survey Summary - Responses to introduction of VLE

Our survey of colleagues in March 2003, some eighteen months after these first debates, shows that apprehensions have not entirely gone away. The survey included some colleagues who had been absent on research fellowships during the introduction of duo, so may also represent the responses of those at an earlier stage of encounter.

Whereas much of the encouragement to use VLEs highlights 'innovation', our responses suggest that the hope of creating more time is of more immediate import. We avoided questions (sometimes seen on more general e-learning questionnaires) that premised a deficit in non-VLE approaches: e.g. 'I hoped it would improve my teaching' or even 'How has the VLE improved your teaching?'. We offered instead '..is giving me ideas for working in new ways' - a question which encompasses course management. Teachers who have always reflected on their teaching and value and imaginative approaches rightly feel offended at implications that using a VLE will be a road-to-Damascus moment in their pedagogical development. They might well feel, besides, that it is the day-to-day pressures (including 'new initiatives') which take time away from teaching and deplete the energies.

Perceptions

These views --positive and negative -- were not confined to single individuals, but were shared by members of the project team and expressed by other staff in informal feedback.

Negative views included the following:

• counter to the model of learning on offer (we are not distance providers and should not imply that a VLE is a substitute for face-to-face learning)
• counter to staff's individual practices - especially the perceived requirement to produce handouts in electronic form - no time!
• health (yet more time spent in front of a monitor and using key-board)

Positive views

Colleagues saw duo as potentially very useful to students, but in perceptions about its value as a teaching support, the following featured strongly:

• prospect of easy use
  
• swift communication with groups
  
• time-management

Signpost: Although many experienced VLE users report that creating electronic resources for students is immensely time-consuming, the message from our survey is more optimistic: that, provided you keep it simple, using a VLE to manage a course can save you time.