Student-initiated Use of eLearning Environments:

A Case Study of Student Use of Sakai at UCT

Stephen Marquard

Dick Ng’ambi

Centre for Educational Technology, University of Cape Town

stephen.marquard@uct.ac.zadick.ngambi@uct.ac.za

Overview

• Definition and scope• Global context: students and online services• Local context: Sakai and Vula at UCT• High-level view of student-initiated use of Vula• Case 1: 3rd-year Economics course• Case 2: 1st-year Computer Science course• Learning impact• Followup research questions

What is student-initiated use ?

For our purposes, “student-initiated use" refers to uses made of the elearning environment by students acting on their own initiative to further their own objectives, outside or beyond specific mandates or requirements from lecturers or tutors.

includes activity that takes place within the context of a course or learning situation, and may also include purely social applications.

Evolution of online environments

• From Wikipedia’s “History of virtual learning environments”

"Computer Assisted Instruction" (CAI)

"Computer Based Training" (CBT)

"Computer Managed Instruction" (CMI)

"Course Management System" (CMS)

"Integrated Learning Systems" (ILS)

"Interactive Multimedia Instruction" (IMI)

"Learning Management System" (LMS)

"Technology Based Learning" (TBL)

"Technology Enhanced Learning" (TEL)

"Web Based Training" (WBT)

• Systems have become naturalized to environments (which have affordances):

Online Learning Environments

Virtual Learning Environments (and Virtual Research Environments)

Collaboration and Learning Environments

wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virtual_learning_environments

What are students using?

Campus-based services …but also Internet-based services.

and bandwidth permitting …

Video sharing

Virtual worlds

MMORGsMassive Multi-player Online Role Playing Games

UCT Facebook users

Update:

15 Nov 2007:8,767 members

Around 30%-40% of active campus population

What’s the future of campus-based systems?

• None?

“Let’s use all those wonderful Web 2.0 tools for learning, not schooling. Blackboard spent a lot of time and money filing for this patent and they can have it, because it has no value. It’s no longer about online courses, it’s about learning and performing.”Harold Jarche, http://www.jarche.com/?m=200607

• As part of an ecosystem which students interact with via their Personal Learning Environment and mobile devices

• Campus-based systems may still be preferred over Internet-based services when they:– are significally faster to use when on-campus for bandwidth reasons

– have adequate functionality (can achieve the task at hand)

– present lower initial barriers to use (for example because everyone else on campus already has a user account)

– have a critical mass of users (network effect)

Sakai is “Vula” at UCT

• Vula is local branding for Sakai at UCT: Vula means “open!”

• Our primary mandate in the Centre for Educational Technology is to support the delivery of blended courses at UCT (a medium-sized residential university)

• Supporting ad-hoc student and staff use and research collaboration was therefore an ‘unmandated extra’ (though turns out to support our primary mandate)

Vula design decisions

• To support a wide range of possible uses:– ‘Open’ branding (not specific to courses or even

learning)– 'Open' system: ability to add guest accounts (e.g.

colleagues at other universities, guest lecturers, just friends)

– Few constraints: rights and permissions of students almost identical to those of staff (though constrained in specific sites by role)

– Symmetric course/collaboration site types and roles(e.g. course site / project site, Student / Participant)

Vula’s vital statistics

• In use since Feb 2006, replacing 2 legacy systems (connect and WebCT)• 72% of students use Vula (16,861 of 23,472 total students)• 7500+ distinct users per day.• 25% of use is off-campus, 25% outside daytime hours, 30% from personal

computers vs university-owned computers. • Previous research showed different daily usage patterns for different types

of activity (e.g. content vs chat):

Vula sites, Feb 06 to May 07 (1295 total)

Course sites, 830, 64%

Staff project sites, 287,

22%Student

project sites, 178, 14% We are looking at

student-initiated activity in both student project sites and course sites.

Identifying student-initiated activity

• By site:– Project sites created by students– Project sites created by staff with significant student participation– Course sites

• By tool:– Dependent on nature of the tool and permissions:

examples Announcements, Resources, Forums, Wiki.

• Does the site design and configuration permit students to initiate activity in a shared context?

• Possible indicators are creation of structure, ongoing communication, shared artifacts and convergence of activity towards one or more goals.

Student project sites

Surveyed active student-

created project sites from

Feb 06 to May 07 (site

title, description, content /

tools) to categorise by

intention, purpose or

activity.

Almost half of all student-

created sites have an

explicitly academic

purpose.

Academic

Course project 35

Peer Support: Academic 16

Tutor/Student interaction 7

Postgrad research 4

Total 62

Social / personal

Student Society 34

Social interaction 14

Student Governance 7

Student Activism 5

Residence Life 4

Personal Development 1

Total 65

Case 1: 3rd year Economics course (2006)

• International Trade Bargaining course, which uses a simulation game as the structure for activity.

• Teams are divided into country groups, and interact in formalized negotiation sessions.

• The main course site runs on WebCT.• A group of 18 participants from Small and Vulnerable

Economies (SVEs) -- islands and landlocked states -- formed a negotiating bloc on their own initiative.

• The group created a Vula site to facilitate information sharing and decision-making as a negotiating bloc.

• Analysis based on an interview with the student who created the “SVEs Forum” site.

Observations

• Students were comfortable operating across 2 different environments (WebCT and Vula)

• Main tool use was of Announcements, Resources and Forums to “overcome information assymetry”.

• Motivations for creating the Vula site were described in terms of convenience: the ability to share information and resources easily and overcome logistical problems in co-ordinating the participation of 18 people (such as finding meeting times or places).

• The use of the Vula site to effectively share information and quickly reach consensus on actions between ‘game events’ created a competitive advantage for the group, enabling the SVE bloc to attain substantial power in the simulation game (disproportionate to the influence of SVE’s in real life).

Key factors

• Vula was an effective solution because the site was easy and fast to set up, and directly in the control of students.

• Other groups who only used WebCT had to wait longer for spaces in WebCT to be established for them. In this context, time was of the essence.

• The use of the Vula site deepened the engagement of students in the simulation game and allowed students to create and share a broader set of resources with which to make decisions and write final strategy reports.

• The student who created the site reported that students in the SVEs Forum scored some of the highest marks for the course.

Case 2: 1st year Computer Science course (2006)

• Alternate 1st year Computer Science semester course focusing on Python programming

• 18 students, Lecturer, TA (Senior Tutor) and 3 Tutors• One major project: client/server application (Galactic

Battleship Challenge)• Case study examines student-initiated activity which took

place in the official course site, through analysis of tool use and the resulting artifacts.

• Tools of specific interest are Chat and Wiki.• Other tools were also used (Assignments, Resources,

Forums) but in a more conventional way.

Chat participation

• High participation (17 out of 18 students in course) and activity (2082 messages over 95 days)

• 3 distinct groups shown by distribution of messages: low usage (7 students), moderate usage (5 students), highly active (6 students)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

2 - 18 34 - 59 69-103 169 - 408

Chat messages posted

Stu

den

ts

Characterising wiki use in course sites

• When used in course contexts, wikis are often highly scaffolded, i.e. a structure is pre-created with index pages and page templates, and students are directed to create or update specific pages to achieve an individual or collaborative task.

• By contrast, the wiki used in this course site is an example of an organic wiki: pages are created as and when needed, by multiple participants. Structure evolves over time.

Wiki use in the site

• Examining the wiki at the end of the course shows it was used for multiple purposes, including:– providing learning resources (supporting material)– organizing comment and feedback about the learning

environment (Vula) itself– feedback from tutors / lecturer to students– iterative discussion and negotiation about the

technical definition of the major project

Extent of wiki use

• 22 pages and 170 page revisionsin total.

• 5 students were responsible for 85% of the student page revisions.

• Of interest as evidence of collaborative activity are 4 pages with a high revision count and high number of editors.

Wiki page changes by students

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

0 1-2 3-4 7-27

Number of revisions

Stu

den

ts

Wiki map

[] = number of revisions, red = high number of editors

Use of the wiki for negotiating the project

1. Student AAA creates a new wiki page to discuss the protocol

2. Discussion page linked to Wiki Home page

Use of the wiki for negotiating the project

3. Student BBB creates a new page for an improved protocol specification

4. New protocol page link appears on Home page with invitation to contribute (by consensus)

Observations

• Students used chat to interact continuously throughout the course (both social and task-related communication)

• The course site became a shared space where all course participants were ‘present’ (not necessarily at the same time).

• 60% overlap between the top 5 high-chat-use and high-wiki-use students (i.e. 2/5 highly active chatters were not highly active in the wiki and vice-versa)

• When some students became frustrated with the initial definition of the project, they used the course site wiki to iteratively define an alternate protocol for the client/server application, which was accepted by the Lecturer and tutors for the purposes of the project (and therefore assessment).

Key factors

• The site design and site and course management by the Lecturer and tutors created space for students to interact informally and then initiate more structured activities, which successfully influenced the course delivery.

• Although the highly active users were a relatively small group, the whole cohort benefitted.

• The process of rewriting the assignment protocol deepened the level of engagement of some students from implementation to reflection, analysis and design.

Learning impact of student-initiated use

• Direct benefits– In course contexts– In social contexts

• Secondary benefits– Network effect (the more people use it, the more

useful it becomes)– Acquisition of large-group (>5) collaboration skills in

an online context.

• Scope of impact:– Small group of active students, but possible benefits

for the whole cohort

Followup research questions

• What are the drivers and motivation for student-initiated use?

• What are the diffusion patterns for the adoption of new technology-mediated practices?

“Build it and they will come” or grassroots change agents?

• To what extent are practices and behaviours that students learn when interacting online outside the university influencing expectations of and behaviours in elearning systems?

Contact details

Stephen Marquard

Dick Ng’ambi

Centre for Educational Technology

University of Cape Town

stephen.marquard@uct.ac.za

dick.ngambi@uct.ac.za

http://www.cet.uct.ac.za