Greg Preston

Web-based lecture technologies: blurring the boundaries between face-to-face and distance learning

Web-based lecture technologies (WBLT) have gained popularity amongst universities in Australia as a tool for delivering lecture recordings to students in close to real time. This paper reports on a selection of results from a larger research project investigating the impact of WBLT on teaching and learning. Results show that while staff see the advantages for external students, they question the extent to which these advantages apply to internal students. In contrast both cohorts of students were positive about the benefits of the technologies for their learning and they adopted similar strategies for their use. With the help of other technologies, some external students and staff even found WBLT useful for fostering communication between internal and external students. As such, while the traditional boundary between internal and external students seems to remain for some staff, students seem to find the boundary much less clear. Keywords: web-based lecture technologies; staff perception; student perception; distance education; external students; internal students; Lectopia DOI: 10.1080/09687760802315895

Web-based lecture technologies and learning and teaching: a study of change in four Australian universities

The uptake of web-based lecture technologies for recording and delivering live lectures has increased markedly in recent years. Students have responded positively, and for many their use has transformed learning – freeing them up from rigid timetables by providing choice in lecture attendance and supporting learning by extending the lecture experience and enabling them to revisit key concepts and ideas in their own time. Less transformational has been the impact on teaching. Although changing attendance patterns and disquiet about the quality of learning are of concern to many, lecturers have largely responded by simply modifying lectures. For most, the challenges of catering for the learning needs of a cohort with variable lecture attendance have not been addressed at a whole of the curriculum level. The technologies have been added on, rather than integrated into the curriculum. This paper will review the changes taking place in learning and teaching, explore the reluctance to embrace more wholesale change to the curriculum, and discuss the implications for institutions in the face of ongoing change.

Supporting innovation in teaching: what are the key contextual factors?

New curriculum frameworks commonly refer to new technologies and 21st century learning, requiring teachers to change their practices. This paper investigates the school and teacher level factors that are most strongly related to innovative teacher practices (ITPs). A sample of Australian secondary teachers (n = 683) completed online surveys about current practices and beliefs. The teacher responses enabled the calculation of an ITP index for each teacher which was used as the response variable in a multilevel regression with various explanatory variables: at the teacher level, characteristics (e.g., age, gender) and experiences (e.g., amount of professional development), at the school level, size, region, and other characteristics developed from school leader responses. Several factors were found to be related to ITP including teacher age, the frequency of use of extended learning activities and teacher collaboration. These findings have the potential to inform school leaders about how best to foster teacher change and innovation.