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3.1.7.1. e-Learning
Tools Integration (Technology)
Next to its standard IT services, the School has identified teaching technologies (above all e-learning) as an important new field to improve practices. This trend began in 1999. A temporary task-force-like project was formed jointly by the Teaching and Learning Development Office (TLDO, now the TLC), IT Services and the LSE Library. Its mission was to explore the possibilities and potential of e-learning environments (LSE administration 35, Darking, 2004). Following an operational review at the end of the first three-year funding period, the project became institutionalised as the Centre for Learning Technology in 2002. The unit’s main preoccupation is the introduction and provision of the School’s e-learning platform (at this point WebCT). The Centre’s mission is: to identify opportunities, to improve teaching and learning, and to offer these innovations to LSE’s teachers and learners.
After a classical (semi-structured, semi-objective) screening and assessment process (LSE administration 36), LSE’s learning technology task force selected one of the market leaders for e-learning platforms – WebCT. The platform had been piloted with a single course and then subsequently expanded to four courses in its second phase. After technological functioning could be guaranteed and the first pedagogical experiences had been gathered, the e-learning complement was offered to all courses and has now been thoroughly embraced by practitioners (LSE administration 37). Today 50% of the courses have an e-learning environment.
Besides WebCT, CLT is engaging in a number of innovation projects dealing with the use of blogs, wikis or the use of IT in Anthropology. Furthermore, CLT is organizing presentations of innovative tools and practices where teachers can experiment and give feedback regarding the usefulness of digital whiteboard technology etc. As LSE does not have tight budget restraints, positively assessed tools are acquired in small quantities in order to allow for wider experimentation in the classroom.
Current Practices (Use Cases)
Offered as a free-to-use service to add value to courses, the e-learning platform was piloted with IT enthusiasts and then spread rather quickly, and today more than 400 courses (50% of the total) take advantage of the e-learning system. The key functionality that professors and students value is the feature to make available course reading lists (LSE students 38, Darking, 2004). As most journal articles are available through the Library’s e-subscription portfolio these can be accessed directly from the virtual learning environment. Additionally, some courses also invest in the digitisation of book chapters. This innovation not only makes it more convenient but actually ensures the availability of the course materials, which in the traditional practice were often not available simply because of the lack of sufficient multiple copies of the materials in the Library to meet student demand.
All other functionalities of the VLE are only used sporadically or not at all, even though the CLT offers training sessions to spread a more full-fledged use of the tool’s possibilities (LSE administration 39). As one professor put it: “We are reaping 85% of the benefits of WebCT by using 10% of its functionality” (LSE faculty 40).
Other innovative e-learning projects, like the constitution of a pilot wiki-based research and social network community for PhD students, were not continued because the early adopters already had a blog or wiki at a public provider or they were not aware and attracted because the practice was still alien (LSE administration 55). As said one responsible remembers: “They simply did not come back” (LSE administration 41). In fact, many innovations the CLT experiments with do not spread to the wider community, but are either abandoned altogether or are used by a few enthusiasts, who have made the effort to learn the practice and are now exploiting the benefits [i].
One PhD student with a background in knowledge systems has setup a PhD student mailing list, which is used for occasional community activities and instances of networking e.g. for housing.
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