Online Learning and Teaching in Architectural Education Symposium and Workshop Friday 29 September 2017 AASA | Association of Architectural Schools of Australasia | Contact: martha_liew@yahoo.com.au Host Institution | School of Architectural Design and Planning University of Sydney Coordinator and Chair | Glen Hill glen.hill@sydney.edu.au Delegates Dijana Alic University of NSW Katherine Bartsch University of Adelaide Alysia Bennett Monash University Paola Boarin University of Auckland Martin Bryant University of Technology Sydney Michael Dudding Victoria University of Wellington Karine Dupre Griffith University Steve Feast Curtin University Sophie Giles University of Western Australia Morten Gjerde Victoria University of Wellington Cletus Gonduan PNG University of Technology Glen Hill University of Sydney Renata Jadresin Unitec Chris Knapp Bond University Ivana Kuzmanovska University of Sydney Martha Liew AASA Paul Loh Melbourne University Alexandra McRobert University of Sydney Peter McPherson Unitec Milica Muminovic University of Canberra Boon Ong Curtin University Ceridwen Owen University of Tasmania Jacqueline Power University Tasmania Annabell Pretty Unitec Amit Srivastava University of Adelaide Dean Utian University of NSW Stephen Ward University of South Australia

Program Friday 29 September 2017

Arrival - Coffee/Tea

8.40 onward

Session 1 (9.00-10.20)

9.00-9.10

Housekeeping Glen Hill

9.10-9.40 Presentation 1 Steven Feast + Boon Ong (Curtin University)

9.40-10.20 Discussion Topic 1 ‘Geographic Freedom’ (Syncronous e-Learning)

Discussion Issues: Students work remotely and join ‘live’ at timetabled ‘class’ times

Morning Tea

Session 2 (10.30-11.40) 10.30-11.00 Presentation 2

Paul Loh (University of Melbourne)

11.00-11.40 Discussion Topic 2 ‘Temporal Freedom’ (Asynchronous e-Learning)

Discussion Issues: Online learning where the pace, place and path of learning may be determined by the student

+ e-Learning in discipline specific areas (Communication/software, Technologies, History/Theory)

Break

Session 3 (11.50-1.00) 11.50-12.20

Presentation 3 Milica Muminovic (University of Canberra)

12.20-1.00

Discussion Topic 3 ‘A Bridge Too Far’ (e-Learning in Design)

Discussion Issues: e-Learning in the Design Studio

+ e-Learning in discipline specific areas (Communication/software, Technologies, History/Theory)

Lunch (1.00-2.00) Lunch

Session 4 (2.00-3.20) 2.00-2.30 Presentation 4 Annabel Pretty + Renata Jadresin Milic (Unitec)

2.30-3.20 Discussion Topic 4

‘e-Measures of Success’ (student assessment/ information/ feedback management)

Discussion Issues: Academic support for e-Learning

+ Learning tools for student feedback/assessment/information management

Break

Session 5 (3.35-4.15) 3.35-4.15 Presentation 5.1 Presentation 5.2

Amit Srivastava (University of Adelaide) Michael Dudding (Victoria University of Wellington)

4.15-5.00 Discussion Topic 5 ‘Flippin’ Classrooms for Flippin’ Students’

Discussion Issues: e-Learning strategies (flipped classroom, gamification etc)

+ Research Opportunities

5.00 Drinks

SESSION 1 Theme: ‘Geographic Freedom’ (Syncronous e-Learning) Presenters: Steven Feast + Boon Ong (Curtin University)

Discussion Issues:

1. Synchronous e-Learning: Students work remotely and join ‘live’ at timetabled ‘class’ times 2. Strategies for Effective learning/teaching through e-Learning

SESSION 2 Theme: ‘Temporal Freedom’(Asynchronous e-Learning) Presenter: Paul Loh (University of Melbourne)

Discussion Issues:

1. Asynchronous e-Learning where the place and path of learning may be determined by the student 2. e-Learning in discipline specific areas (Communication/software, Technologies, History/Theory)

Summary of the Group Discussion: SESSIONS 1+ 2 DISCUSSION GROUP 1 Influences on Adoption of eLearning

• Space requirements are a significant motivation to adopt online learning, and a strong push from the universities to cut down on physical numbers on campus

• On-line learning may be a resilience measure for universities following disaster or loss of facilities (ie Christchurch)

Concerns over Student Attendance

• Attendance is considered an issue both online and on campus. There is a worry recordings could affect live classes, and also that people are not attending the fully online courses at the same level.

• Universities that have both live and recorded lectures didn’t note a significant change in attendance of the physical lectures following the advent of online recordings.

Relationship between online learning/teaching and traditional on-campus learning/teaching

• The quality of traditional on-campus learning/teaching content is being improved as a result of the rigour involved with producing online content.

• Most people are using online tools as supplementary tools rather than going fully online, playing to the strengths and weaknesses of each.

• There is no correlation between the academic workload involved in the online and traditional on-campus teaching methods. More needs to be understood to ensure online course coordinators aren’t disadvantaged. Equity could be achieved through supplementary support or through additional hours allocated to online learning/teaching methods.

• There is no consistency in the adoption of online learning/teaching among universities. Some universities are resisting adopting online learning, choosing to only use supplementary methods or flipped classrooms, while others are pushing for up to 25% of all courses to be fully offline.

• Students tended to relate more positively to online courses following previous interactions with either the material or the lecturer/tutor.

DISCUSSION GROUP 2 The flexible contact hours offered by online synchronous teaching have advantages and disadvantages:

• Advantages: The flexible hours make it easier to find professionals (as opposed to academics) who are able to teach into the course.

• Disadvantages: Technical problems are not uncommon, and if the sessions are run after hours or on weekend, technical support is not available.

• The online platform makes it difficult to moderate copyright and referencing issues with tutor sessions being recorded and available for later viewing/listening.

Issues with (typically older) legacy staff who are incredibly skilled but perhaps not completely comfortable with e-Learning technology.

Possible solutions might include:

• Mandatory technology focused professional development modules

• Collaborative face-to-face sessions as a model for co-teaching – to match people with different skill sets.

How do we make students more resilient in an isolated online learning environment?

• Developing a sense of community in an online is achievable but much harder than in a traditional on-campus context. Dividing the cohort of students out into teams may help build a sense of community.

• Students working online have been found to be very sensitive the sort of design criticism that is considered a normal part of a traditional on-campus architectural design education.

• It may help to be more explicit about what a ‘crit’ is in the context of design studios and be more communicative about the role of constructive criticism.

• Students could be led gently into a critical mode of engagement with their designs. They could for example be asked to critically evaluate their own work first, and then each other’s work, finally followed by receiving tutor feedback.

• Chat boxes available during online sessions have been found to be conducive to peer contribution. It allows students to participate in the conversation without necessarily being the centre of attention.

SESSION 3

Theme: ‘A Bridge Too Far’ (e-Learning in Design) Presenter: Milica Muminovic (University of Canberra)

Discussion Issues:

1. e-Learning in the Design Studio 2. e-Learning in discipline specific areas (Communication/software, Technologies, History/Theory)

Summary of the Group Discussion:

GROUP 1 E-Learning and the design studio

• While most universities have found some success using e-Learning in history and technology subjects, the introduction of e-Learning to the design studio has met more resistance.

• Online learning should be leveraging its own strengths, rather than trying to exactly mimic traditional on-campus studio learning/teaching.

• As some students have been found to work better with digital technology, e-Learning could benefit them in a different manner than traditional teaching modes.

• Online learning offers a great tool for documenting the design process, and is therefore a good way for students to reflect on their own design process.

Can the design process and physicality of drawing be replicated through technological practices?

• Some universities are recording the process of drawing and the articulation of the accompanying thought process, and putting these online to replicate the process of watching tutors draw in class.

• While the technology actually already exists to replicate real drawings, the lack of uptake is mostly due to human resistance.

Social Interaction and online learning

• Online courses were most successful in situations where some form of social interaction could be established such as through a social media platform, physical meet-ups or directed group discussion. If this social interaction was not mandated, it often sprung up naturally between the students.

• Some universities are successfully using face-to-face lectures in conjunction with online tutorials.

Feedback

• Student expectations are difficult to manage in online learning, with students often expecting feedback immediately.

• Some universities try to provide feedback is both qualitative and quantitative: they use a rubric to provide quantitative feedback, but also ensure there is significant written feedback as well.

• Some universities are using audio recordings of crit/jury sessions as feedback, to capture tone and personal give connection to the comments.

• Some universities have found Turnitin comments are useful: students know there is a repository of potential feedback, but they are only given the specific comments for their project. This also allows tutors to take note of the most common feedback issues, allowing them to focus on this area in their teaching practices.

Interdisciplinary Student Cohorts

• Opening courses up to students from different disciplines provided diversity within the cohort, but also raised problems regarding consistency and a level of rigour in obtaining qualification.

GROUP 2 Feedback in Design Studio:

• Knowing the students makes it easier to write useful, personalised feedback– online teaching makes it harder to do this.

• Online feedback could make it easier for students with English as a second language, as they are able to Google translate the feedback. However, in architecture we use certain words in a very particular way, which could potentially create confusion.

• Could online teaching platforms be designed with specifically designed integrated translators that allow more effective international communication?

Design Teaching:

• Simply replicating traditional design teaching methods in 100% online learning formats can be problematic. We need instead to focus on how we can shift the way of teaching design to suit an online platform.

• Should we analyse and break down the different components of design teaching? Within the design studio there are some things that can’t effectively be taught online such as delicate issues like cultural sensitivity and designing for diversity.

• Design studio is the peak learning format: it provides a huge learning curve which rapidly exposes students to a large variety of skill sets. The format of traditional studio teaching attempts to introduce all of the competencies together. Perhaps online teaching should not try to replicate this, but instead find a more compartmentalised approach.

• We should recognise the values of the spatial studio versus the virtual studio. Perhaps we need to start compartmentalizing the knowledge out and packaging it into separate modules like history/theory, structures, construction etc. (This is something that is currently being done anyway to accredit courses.)

• Teaching design involves teaching students how to weave all these compartments/skills together and think holistically. Could this be achieved by work experience in practice once the students have completed the online compartmentalized modules (considering that design studio is modelled on practice anyway?)

• Experimentation into in the future of design teaching offers the possibility of harnessing such things as the power of technology, social media and virtual reality.

SESSION 4 Theme: ‘e-Measures of Success’ (student assessment/ information/ feedback management) Presenters: Annabel Pretty + Renata Jadresin Milic (Unitec)

Discussion Issues: 1. Academic support for e-Learning 2. Learning tools for student feedback/assessment/information management

Summary of the Group Discussion:

GROUP 1 Academic Professional Development

• The process of transferring the courses to online learning has the double effect of upskilling teachers, who may become champions of e-learning, as well as future proofing their teaching methods and courses.

• In addition to support for transferring existing courses to online learning, academics would benefit from academic professional development as well to enhance the courses and at the same time to achieve a holistic approach.

Transferring to online platforms

• Often even though an online presence may be mandated by the School or University, it isn’t clearly defined and there is no consistency between units of study.

• The chosen platforms all have their advantages and disadvantages, but there needs to be a string archiving procedure in place to track changes to teaching method and course outlines.

• Remote desktops and servers can be used for software licencing for students.

Using the online learning platforms

• The new online platforms need to be attractive and simple to use to ensure the best uptake from students, as well for teachers creating the courses. When the online platform is too restrictive or complicated it hinders the student’s ability to learn.

• There needs to be an overarching program coordinator who monitors the cumulative amount of work being asked of the students to ensure there isn’t an overload, particularly as our field is prone to mental health issues.

• Because it is available 24/7 online learning runs a health risk for students who are prone to overwork. However it can also be used to moderate hand-in times for studio work to ensure students rest before presentations.

• Moodle and similar platforms can be utilised not only for units of study, but for overall course outlines which can have their own pages so that parallel information can be more easily dispersed.

Assessment

• Due to the open nature of online learning, exams and quizzes are open to plagiarism and are better used as a learning rather than assessment tool. While the online submissions are very well suited to assignments. This has a benefit as studies that show exams result in lower retention than project based work.

• Another assessment option which is applicable to online learning is a verbal exam. As an example this is used in some universities for assessing structural understanding in relation to a student’s design studio.

GROUP 2 Blended eLearning Approaches

• A purely online approach is rarely appropriate.

• A blended approach has been shown to produce very good results. The blend is not one-size-fits-all for design, technology, history etc? The proportion of online content should vary depending upon the subject matter being taught.

Support for academic staff:

• Example 1: Te Waka at Unitec offers both technical and education specialist support (see video presentation by Annabel Pretty + Renata Jadresin Milic).

• Example 2: ‘Inspired Learning’ initiative at UNSW – helps with developing course content for online platforms (similar to Te Waka). This is now usually only applied to very large 1st and 2nd year courses (but is yet to be used in architecture). UNSW delegate recounted that while the questions asked by the technical assistants in the beginning were very frustrating (“Do you have a picture of yourself for the website?”) their point of view, in retrospect, was useful.

• Example 3: ‘Carpe Diem’ was a similar program at University of Western Australia that offered 2 days of 1-on-1 support for academics to reshape their unit through pedagogical and learning techniques workshops. It was useful but the 2-day time frame was considered too tight.

Online teaching interfaces:

• Should academics be able to fully customize their Moodle pages: in other words is visual consistency important? The group agreed that website interface consistency makes it easier for students to find important information when needed but disagreed on the extent to which academics should be able to put their own spin on the delivery mode that is not directly related to critical information access (like course outline, class schedule, assessment tasks etc.)

• There is an issue around defining the template because disciplinary specific consistency makes sense but this is hard to enforce if all coordinators are required to build their own websites.

• Taking away the freedom to choose a framework for content delivery is “a slap across the face” to the course coordinator, who should be given some space to give their own flavour to the delivery of the content.

• The template itself implies/suggests/influences a particular mode of delivery, so if there is a framework which is applied consistently across courses, then coordinators are forced to adhere to it even though it may not be appropriate to the course or fully understood.

• Open question from the group: Can an educational institutions move fast enough to keep up with technology? Can these online platforms keep up with the rate at which social media platforms and other online networks are evolving?

• Getting students to upload their work on their own websites helps to foster a sense of pride in their work. They invest time into getting their own websites to look good and they learn graphic skills from one another.

Online exams:

• Interestingly, online exams still produce a bell curve in results that is roughly the same as on-campus invigilised (there is a time stamp and it is generally obvious if people are cheating). As an additional deterrent to cheating it is possible to do remote monitoring with a webcam.

• Are there alternative ways of delivering an examination? There is a system currently under development which blocks all extraneous software on the students’ computer while in examination mode.

• What about equity issues with access to smart devices for in class exams/quizzes? University might anonymously provide paper versions.

Software licensing issues:

• A virtual desktop provides software licensing to student laptops, but not all software offers virtual desktop licensing. Also the bandwidth required for 400 students to be running heavy software simultaneously is problematic.

Attendance and participation:

• One delegate noted that from their experience the availability of online lectures for on-campus classes mean that students are far less likely to show up to lectures unless there are incentives such as in-lecture quizzes (85%+ attendance on the days of quizzes).

• The system currently only checks whether students log in to watch the lectures but not whether they are engaging with it.

• An interesting aspect of video consumption to consider when creating online video content: 90% of videos watched on Facebook are watched without sound – so if the videos don’t have captions students may be less likely to watch.

SESSION 5

Theme: ‘Flippin’ Classrooms for Flippin’ Students’

Presenter: Michael Dudding (Victoria University of Wellington)

Presenter: Amit Srivastava (University of Adelaide)

Discussion Issues: 1. e-Learning strategies (flipped classroom, gamification etc) 2. Research Opportunities

Summary of the Group Discussion:

GROUP 1 Collaborating across universities

• Collaboration between universities poses some extreme challenges but the AASA website could be used as a platform for content creation and sharing.

• Suggestion: sharing cross cultural information like multi-lingual construction dictionaries and indigenous design guidelines.

• The loss of the OLT grants as a funding source has reduced funding opportunities for research in this area. Having something like the AASA supporting research through promotion or funding would be beneficial.

Drones, VR and Cameras in e-learning

• With expanding class sizes, taking students on visit to construction sites etc is becoming more and more difficult New opportunities come from technological applications like VR, drone mapping and 3D cameras that are placed on site to allow students to access such site specific information from anywhere.

Gamification

• Gamification can be engaged for things from social cohesion amongst deprived communities through to passive solar design with real time feedback.

• Things like leader boards and incentive based learning has the ability to further engage students and breed healthy competition. This seems to work well with the top students, but are unsure of the success in lower achieving students

• Gamification can be an effective way to transfer knowledge from research and postgraduates students through to undergraduates.

• Production of apps and games involves the input of a great deal of time and money, and needs to be constantly updated to maintain relevance with course structure as well as technology (operating system updates, etc). A cost benefit analysis might show that the costs may outweigh the benefits of these programs.

GROUP 2 Gamification is not about games, but more about how people like to engage:

• We are used to a traditional way of teaching. To what extent can gamification teach the content taught by a traditional model? It may be just about diversifying the delivery method.

• Perhaps the game doesn’t make the students more interested but it eliminates the initial anxiety with getting exposed to the content.

• One difficulty is that the students’ expectation of gamification is high (as they have had a great deal of exposure already) so it’s important not to be competing with this.

• Video games work to keep you engaged in such a way that it motivates you to keep trying despite failure. It creates lures that keep you going. Because it’s safe to fail in this context and this might therefore be useful in building up student resilience.

• Typically, schools do not expect students to undertake more than 3 tasks in a 12 week course. Delegate Amit Srivastava has included 24 tasks in one course, but students are able to choose which ones they do. Some are compulsory and some are optional, but undertaking them translates to some sort of benefit to the student (like marks, or more feedback, or more time with the tutor). Using gamification principles for assessment in this context can be productive (e.g. saying you need 1742 points to collect in this game rather than this assessment is worth 20%)

• This could translate into changing scales or levels of engagement – all of which has to do with good teaching principles and don’t have to be in an electronic environment.

Different schools are getting onto e-learning in interesting ways:

• There’s so much we can learn from each other. AASA would be really useful in facilitating this learning.

• AASA LinkedIn group could be useful in helping to create networks to share learning.

• There needs to be a way to provide assistance to people who are doing interesting work in this area to be able to publish and disseminate it.

• It’s far more useful to be investing in teaching teachers how to teach better rather than focusing on e-learning techniques. Good teaching translates across all platforms.

• We need to make a case for the shift to online, e-Learning which actually harnesses the unique power of technology rather than simply trying to mimic current courses in an online mode.