Traditional

Arne Vines

In this case study I take a close look at how the introduction of Classfronter, a commonly used Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in Norwegian higher education, has become an integrative part of the radical transformation of the teaching and learning environment in a Norwegian Law Faculty. When a VLE is implemented one would expect that it will have a positive impact on students’ learning and collaboration, but this also raises complex questions about learning, knowledge and authority, and how technology can strengthen the value of student experiences. The main purpose of the case study is to examine how such an influential technology affords and constraints productive learning practices in a specialized blended learning environment. To understand the pedagogical role played by the VLE I believe it is important to analyse it in close relation to the context specific infrastructures for learning and the ongoing change of teaching and learning practices of the academic law community and. Moreover, I claim that the technology must be viewed in light of the core characteristics of the legal discipline itself. Law is an ‘argumentative science’ and the faculty underlines the importance of learning the oral and written genres used by the professional communities. Writing and talking are thus not only tools for acquiring disciplinary knowledge, but crucial to the practice of the discipline. Law students need to learn how to produce knowledge, not just reproduce set opinions from authorities such as textbooks authors, professors, statutory provisions, and legislators.

Influenced by insights from sociocultural theory I am cautious not to make claims about the effectiveness of technology in improving students' learning. The important point about new technologies is rather to what extent they are powerful enough to transform basic features of how people communicate knowledge and skills and how information is organised. In this case, comprehensive VLE-mediated writing and feedback, combined with the opportunity to discuss collaboratively with peers and a more experienced law student on a regular basis, obviously has facilitated law students' learning. But I have also found that the strict learning design at this Law faculty, which greatly depends on the functionality and efficiency of the VLE, facilitates conformity and provides little room for alternative learning routes and identity construction. The danger is over-socialization that can foster reproductive forms of learning, or even counterproductive if students learn to distrust their own abilities to make independent judgements. Further investigations of the student text records, collected from the VLE, will likely shed more light of the dynamics of VLE-mediated written communication between different actors in a traditional university discipline.

Productive E-Feedback in Higher Education – Two Models and Some Critical Issues

Olga Dysthe, Sølvi Lillejord and Barbara Wasson

To appear in Sten Ludvigsen, Andreas Lund and Roger Säljö (Eds.)Learning in social practices. ICT and new artifacts - transformation of social and cultural practices.

EARLI series: Advances in Learning. Pergamon

In this article we investigate one element in the complex web of student learning experiences that has been shown to be a very important part of the learning process, namely feedback or formative assessment . As new technologies are being introduced in education, traditional educational practices are being challenged. Not only must educators learn new ways of communicating with their students; as an artefact, the technology itself challenges educational practice and opens for a re-evaluation of taken for granted structures in learning interactions. In this article we are using a traditional educational activity, namely feedback, to show how different e-feedback practices influence the outcomes differently.

We analyse “productive e-feedback” from a sociocultural perspective with the ambition to show how it ties into a cluster of concepts on activity and transformation. The theoretical basis for our discussion is sociocultural theory in general and dialogue theory in particular. Our first site is the Faculty of Law; the second the Department of Education. These case studies build on interviews, small-scale surveys, evaluation data, student logs and observations . In this article we do not build on micro level studies of feedback processes, but choose to focus on the meso level, that is, the pedagogical design of the feedback systems and how the two sites utilise the potentials of technology. Our analysis of the feedback practices at the two sites generated two analytic models of dealing with the practice of e-feedback: 1) the authoritative model, and 2) the dialogic model.

With reference to Bakhtin (1981; 1986), our conclusion is that students in higher education benefit from being exposed to the divergent voices and conflicting perspectives of the research community. Furthermore, if we are to understand the multiple literacies of the 21st century, electronic response—both the process and its result—are aspects of literacy practice that needs to be better understood. One of the most compelling advantages of e-feedback in a networked environment is the support it provides for the transition from one to many voices, thus enabling conflict and disruption, that is disagreement together with agreement, to be visible for the participants.

Teacher roles - Impact
Stig Mjelstad and Jo Dugstad Wake

These two case studies have investigated different aspects of how the introduction of technology enhanced learning (TEL) have impacted the roles and practices of higher education. Based on a framework designed for capturing and describing this change, developed within the Kaleidoscope Impact project, two case studies were carried out. Using this framework for capturing change, changes in roles and practices are either described as anticipated, ongoing and achieved, each with implications for different role clusters within higher education. Examples of the roles are "policy makers", "staff developers" and "support staff". The two case studies were:

One case study was about identifying possible changes in existing teacher roles as a course of the introduction of TEL, in addition to identification of emerging roles. Through the case study we found that while most aspects of the traditional higher education teacher's or lecturer's role remain stable, although some elements are new, new teacher roles in higher education can be identified. One was the role of "online writing mentor", and another was labelled "orchestrator" - a role with pedagogical foundations, but with a "technologist" tasks. A second case study have focused on the institution-wide implementation of a virtual learning environment at the University of Bergen, with emphasis on how the use of the new system is communicated to staff. A complex implementation process, driven by and dependent on many different types of staff, and organizations within the organization was described. One finding has been that if mandating administrative use of the VLE, and leaving pedagogical use to discression, one runs the risk of implementing an institution-wide VLE that is being lopsidedly used to administrative ends.