Enhancement plan for my Aula Learning Environment
Fashion Buying and Brand Management (FBBM) have been using Aula since it was piloted at Ravensbourne. I have personally had a really positive experience enjoying the benefits of streamlining our course content and communication to one place. However, after completing the SWOT analysis and looking into the digital future of the course, it is clear there are challenges and considerations around establishing a VLE that's inclusive to both its users and curators. Taking this into consideration I have decided to use the ‘Walt Disney creative strategy’ (Martin, 2021) as a reflective framework for my enhancement plan for Aula in this assignment.
Introduction:
FBBM was turned upside down a year ago when we moved to emergency online teaching and adopted pandemic pedagogy (Schwartzman, 2020). Previously, Aula had acted as an index and archive for content as well as a basic communication tool with students. Then suddenly, in March 2020 it was forced into becoming the central hub for the whole course. While there were immediate limitations there were also a huge amount of positives to be seen too. During online teaching FBBM saw its best ever attendance and engagement from students throughout units including nearly 100% attendance in PPR’s and none of the traditional wavering of attendance towards the end of units. The flexibility online teaching offers definitely indicates that the course would lend itself successfully to hybrid teaching in the future.
There are a broad range of students in my cohorts including; mature students, parents, commuters, carers, students with jobs (to name only a few) each with other things going on in their lives besides studying such as; financial issues, health issues, relationship problems, neurodiverse needs and so on. I believe to become more inclusive I need to acknowledge this and most importantly support it. Dr. Robert Menzies discusses this as well as the importance of adapting the way we deliver teaching to adapt to our students' lives as well as looking at how we assess students' learning in response to this (KPU Teaching & Learning Common, 2020). With this in mind, the flexibility of hybrid teaching centered around a VLE which students can access, catch up, watch and most important re-watch content at their own convenience and pace is crucial.
Furthermore, it is absolutely crucial that I prepare my students for unknown digital futures. “HE needs to provide opportunities for ‘students to be more creative.’ The world is changing rapidly, and graduates need to be more creative in order to engage with that pace and growth, especially around new technology. We must deliver education not only fit for purpose but also ‘future fit’ to meet the expectations of students and employers alike” (Norton, 2018). By embedding different technologies into teaching through AULA I feel I am naturally encouraging students to be more creative and confident in adopting and using new technologies. Flower Darby discusses how integrating technology into teaching can also be really fun and engaging for students, while mixing up different types of technologies creates enjoyment whilst having the potential to be more inclusive to all learners (Nave, 2021).
The Realist
Having completed the SWOT analysis of Aula within my triad and wider PGCert group, I now have a clearer understanding of the wider limitations of the VLE experiences of other faculty members who have felt forced into using Aula often without any training. I have taken these views and opinions into consideration when analysing how to best make use of Aula in the future for FBBM.
‘It has been known that teacher attitudes are directly related to their effective use of technology in education. For this reason, teachers have to be convinced of the usefulness and benefits of technology in teaching and learning” (Dreamson, 2019). Considering this, it is vital that all lecturers are fully trained and feel fully supported using Aula. New functions and formats are updated rapidly and can feel really daunting to luddites and non digital natives within a single update. Mixing up teaching methods and incorporating external technologies such as mentimeter and padlet and has been proven to be beneficial to students while at the same time keeping them more focused and involved in their learning (James & Brookfield, 2007) [V2]. It is therefore crucial tutors are supported and trained so that they can use these technologies confidently in their teaching and VLE.
While there are a variety of technological functions and plug-ins available on Aula, I feel we should decide as a course which ones are applicable and everyone is comfortable using. Additionally, students are often more competent with technology than their tutors and feel proud to make suggestions and contributions for their course content. As tutors we should use our students as resources seeking feedback and input when experimenting with new technologies (KPU Teaching & learning Common, 2020).
One of the biggest questions when curating Aula is what is the most successful way of setting up spaces to have the maximum impact on learning? At present, each of the FBBM units are led by different tutors, each with a personal preference to the way they organise their Aula space for each unit. I have experienced students finding it difficult to source information in certain units and believe it would be beneficial to streamline the way we all build content on Aula. It is apparent that in the creative arts and design, there is a greater amount of students with dyslexia than in other disciplines (James & Brookfield, 2007). With this in mind it is even more important to keep things simple and streamlined across all units for ease of use and engagement [V1]
I have found that setting up the materials section on the left so there is one section for each day taught with all the content and information from that day organised and archived inside. Each section is titled with the lesson/day number e.g. ‘L1: Briefing - Introduction to Trend Forecasting’ and dated for ease of finding. The titles and dates should also correspond with the information on the timetable so students can also use the timetable as a source for finding past content and information.
It is also apparent from our shared SWOT analysis that building and creating content has been very time consuming for tutors. In order to reduce the amount of time prepping and recording lectures we should try to ensure that recorded content is as timeless as possible. I feel we should try to keep lectures about the subject and leave updates and items specific to that point in time to live content and the Aula feed. While this may not have an immediate impact, when tutors come to re-delivering content in the future there should be lots of pre-recorded archived content that can be re-uploaded.
The Critic/Spoiler
While there are obvious benefits to remote/online teaching and using Aula as a VLE there are also some limitations. The future of FBBM looks to be hybrid with half of our course’s content delivered in class and the other half online with Aula blending the two together. As a tutor I am aware I need to expose my students to challenges allowing them to find the right tools to solve problems and the virtual environment only has a role to play in achieving this (Edinburgh Napier University, 2020). Appreciating that technology doesn't do the teaching but instead acts as a tool to help students learn (Nave, 2019) is also vital to finding the balance between face to face and online teaching. I believe hybrid teaching will be most successful in a flipped learning (Bergmann, 2016) scenario. Theory heavy content lends itself to online delivery with its advantages of allowing students to watch and re-watch content at their own pace. Students should then come together in class to co-construct (Petty, 2015) their learning through problem based activities (Szulevicz and Jensen, 2013) creating the opportunity for spontaneous interaction (Edinburgh Napier University, 2020) at the same time.
In the potential move to hybrid teaching and its increased reliance on Aula, it is important to recognise that not all students are set up for digital learning. During emergency online teaching I found there was a lot of digital inequality and poverty within our cohorts that put a number of our students at an unfair disadvantage. FBBM need to state in the course requirements a minimum internet speed alongside our current laptop specifications. At the same time,, along with the laptop grants there also needs to be the opportunity for financial support or the opportunity to obtain a dongle so students can access the internet at a speed that allows them to interact with online content successfully remotely.
The Dreamer
In order to be truly relevant in the 21st century, universities need to embrace hybrid teaching using face-to-face modes when needed for specific learning outcomes and when pedagogically appropriate to [K1, V4]. When this is coupled with the fact that today’s students have many work and life commitments outside university and tend to be much more time-poor than those of previous eras, weekly attendance at lengthy on-campus lectures has become, for many, a tiresome chore (Bridgstock, 2014). The blending of teaching online and at home also alleviates limitis of physical space and time while issues such as race, sex, nationality, income, family, social strata, become dissolved within online communities (Dreamson, 2019). I believe there is huge opportunity and potential for AULA to develop in the future to support digital and hybrid learning while at the same time creating a fully inclusive community of practise [V1].
Crucial things to consider when blending hybrid teaching on Aula is inclusivity and acknowledging mental health issues that can be associated with working independently at home. With this in mind, I feel there needs to be an online presence perhaps in the form of a virtual classroom where there is a tutor available with a live visual presence within normal classroom hours for students to approach. This would also be good to consider for the library, student services and student union too. As lecturers we need to foster caring relationships with our students so they can connect with us as people - allowing students to see us as real people helps them engage and persist (Nave, 2021).
To further explore the opportunities for inclusivity that a VLE can create I believe there is an opportunity to experiment with virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) to create a social element to Aula and create VR trips. FBBM’s sustainable factory visit to Sri Lanka has been a huge learning opportunity for our students to help understand how a factory works and operates. However, the trip comes at a cost and is only accessible to financially privileged students. While it is great to offer the opportunity for international travel and for students to actually go inside a real life production environment, the same learning outcomes could be achieved by students exploring a factory in VR, through Aula, at no cost. During the pandemic, another core issue that students have experienced is the lack of social interaction and the ability to have student based discussions away from their lecturers. By creating a VR social area on Aula students could go there to meet each other either socially or for subject based conversation and to conduct group work.
While from the shared SWOTs there were a number of threats recorded (especially from non digital natives and luddites) with regards to technologies in education and specifically Aula as a VLE platform, I do strongly believe that as members of the creative community (with the right support) we need to acknowledge that “creativity allows for the development of a positive attitude, to be flexible and adaptable and open to new challenges” (Norton, 2018). For future hybrid course delivery to be truly successful I believe Aula needs to develop to do the job of zoom, social media, UCAS applications, the library, sharepoint, attendance monitoring, VR trips, the pub, and much more so that it becomes a one stop VLE for everything. It may even allow us to understand student behaviour if it can also feedback data on engagement etc. The opportunities are endless and exciting.
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Bibliography
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Triad SWOT Analysis
Our triad SWOT analysis of our shared learning environment Ravensbourne, our virtual learning environment Aula.
Further Examples of Aula Space
An example of how Aula is built throughout the day
