Digital Learning Dispatches

In early January work commenced on two development projects aimed at building digital capacity funded by the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning.

The first project focuses on the research and development of a Toolbox for Flexible Learners in order to promote student success at early stages of the study lifecycle. This project is being led by Dr James Brunton in the NIDL and involves three partner institutions. A dedicated project website will be launched in the next couple of months and the project team is currently busy starting a comprehensive literature review that will help to inform the selection of the digital tools to be developed over the course of the year. A number of national and international presentations are also planned over the next six months to share various aspects of this work. We have just submitted our first paper for the EDEN conference in June.

The second National Forum funded project we are actively contributing to involves the important area of digitally mediated assessment/feedback, which is known in the literature to significantly influence the nature of the student learning experience. This Project, led by Lisa O’Regan at Maynooth University, has made excellent progress after a full-day meeting in early January to get the work underway. Each partner institution is now working on obtaining ethical approval for our baseline survey of current practice. Elaine Walsh and Mark Brown in the NIDL are leading the DCU part of this study. This is a two-year externally funded project that will lead to a number of case studies which we hope will highlight key lessons for other institutions. Again a dedicated project website will be launched in the next few months and several presentations of our work are planned, including a poster at the UK Assessment in Higher Education Conference.

Last year, Colum Foley from the NIDL was awarded a scholarship by the Shanghai Open University to visit as part of an international delegation. He took up this scholarship just before Christmas in joining ten other people from a variety of online/distance learning institutions around the world on a study tour. The aim was to spend two weeks at the Shanghai Open University discussing various aspects of online/distance learning. Other scholarship recipients making up the delegation included:

• Humaira Jamshed from the Virtual Institute of Pakistan

• Muhammad Ajmal Chaudhry from Allama Iqbal Open University, Pakistan

• Lina Gurung from Kathmandu University, Nepal

• Saumya Pandey from Indira Gandhi National Open University, India

• Aniban Ghosh from Netaji Subhas Open University, Kolkata, India

• Imre Mátyás from University of Miskolc, Hungary

• Zlatko Kovacic from the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, New Zealand

• Yasir Riady from Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia

• Irsanti Widuri Asih from Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia

The delegation had the opportunity to hear how the Shanghai Open University supported a very large number of online/distance students and then shared their own country experiences. As Colum wrote in his report on the experience, “The participants were a lively, witty, challenging and entertaining group of individuals, all with an interesting story to tell with a wide and varied experience of distance learning. At the end I think we have far more in common than what separates us”. We would like to particularly thank the Shanghai Open University for supporting this invaluable experience and look forward to further visits in future years.