Yet, computer-based delivery is expanding the continuum of learning environments, especially the “blended” courses. Since many campus-based instructors are sceptical of wholesale shifts, this short paper suggests gradual and simple changes to lighten the new instructor’s ICT learning load and improve student learning. The article is based in the Online Education and Training (OET) course from the Institute of Education, University of London.

A gradual change

Technology, and especially Information and Communications Technology [ICT], has often been hailed as a catalyst for change, but that change need not be radical. You can incorporate some helpful ICT in easy, well planned ways, drawing on practices and strategies known to be effective. I suggest using widely available technologies combined with familiar teaching and learning approaches - not alarmingly sophisticated tools. Taking small exploratory steps in common sense ways is the safest and easiest. If you are on a campus and have not yet made a significant use of ICT then this paper may spur you to try out a varying level of online activities along side your normal face-to-face teaching, and thus use "blended" learning methods.

There are many typical teaching and learning activities that might usefully be transferred from the classroom to online mode. These are listed below, with brief advice about each.

1. Information/Knowledge Dissemination: Classroom exposition/Lectures/slide shows; handouts.

Often, but not always, initial considerations tend to focus on the presentation of information or knowledge. It is still common today for this to be the starting point of a face-to-face course since you as teacher are instigating the students’ process of learning by conveying something to them: e.g. facts, a problem, a history of other people’s experiences, a challenge or an opportunity for them to design their own learning activities.

· How: The simplest transition from the live class to use of the computer is placing supporting text for a lecture, or slides or accompanying handouts, on a public web page for all students to find. This is now routinely done for many campus courses, either to help students who have missed the lecture or lost their handouts, or as a preliminary or follow-up support to learning. The uploading of such materials is facilitated in numerous commercial Virtual Learning Environments [VLE] such as Blackboard, WebCT and many others. We have found that 100s of people on our Online Education and Training course confirm that they started by just doing something simple like this.

Web page or Word processed file accessible via the web (text + images); Powerpoint presentation saved as a web page; streaming video files (videotape, CD-Rom or on the web); audio files/audio recordings (audiotape, CD-Rom or on the web). On the OET course I send out CDs with PointPoint slides alongside videos or audios of lectures, because streaming video is still not suitable for all but the fastest computers and internet connections. We prepare them very simply indeed with the free Microsoft Producer software and a cheapish digital camera. Also, an alternative or supplement to direct tutor support it is useful and relatively easy to provide some self-support for your students in the form of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) or short answer quizzes.

· Why: Flexibility; different approaches in class; distance options. The use of audio or audio/video can lead to significant changes because they free up the teacher leaving more time for interaction with the students, they provide information that is hard to bring into a classroom, and they can act as a stimulus for student-student interactions online as well as in class. Some examples of uses are: Historical speeches/presentations, Showing real life activity relevant to the subject area, Demonstrations of laboratory/workshop experiments and equipment, Recordings of disasters or experiments gone wrong, Illustration of processes impossible to re-create on campus, Client/human case studies, Fieldwork and field trips, To help in development of student presentation skills.

2. Discussion/Debate: One to one talk/chat; small group discussion; whole class debate; problem solving.

Human interaction and collaboration can be stimulated by either traditional or video’d lectures or text based resources. On blended courses, online discussions that are linked to classes are often a very useful supplement, or indeed alternative, to live workshops, especially since the students will have seen each other, but may be too busy to meet very often. Just as practical work frequently precedes or follows lectures, so can online discussions.

· How: E-mail or bulletin/discussion boards or synchronous chat or videoconferencing, or mobile texting. On the OET course, our key method for learning is group discussions and debate, and they work very well indeed on campus since students are likely to have met, possibly already text each other by mobile phones, and enjoy the added comfort of communicating at times that suit them rather than having to meet at fixed times.

There is still an important role for email, but remember that it is important to tell students what they can expect. Will they get an answer to every email? It can be a good idea to allocate a fixed amount of time each week for answering emails and stick to it.

There are specific ways of managing online discussions, that are beyond the scope of this short paper, but suffice to say that a very important feature of successful online discussion is clear rules. As in a game, the better the rules, and the more closely they are adhered to, the more smoothly the game can be played. The rules will include good use of subject headers, defining everyone’s roles, including the teacher’s, and politeness online, ie "netiquette".

· Why: Group work; for shy students; variety of approaches; time to think; flexibility.

It is fairly usual for a teaching event to be linked with group activity, perhaps designed to allow students to apply what they have learned and in so doing stretch and examine their level of understanding of a topic, often largely unsupported by the tutor. A lot of these can be conducted online with clear advantages for on-campus students. Communication online gives everyone more time to reflect and research, keeps a useful record of the discussions and can involve everyone in a way that is often difficult with timetabled classes. For example, if project work involves collaboration and exchange of necessary information, but students are not able to meet frequently, then online interactions are very useful indeed. An obvious instance would be if a group needs to find solutions to a problem but individual students have to research separate aspects of the problem and let the others know.

3. Practical/Fieldwork: Laboratory/workshop exercise; field trip.

We believe that there are three main types of learning activity that can be engaged in with a computer (either online or off-line, e.g. by running software off a CD rather than the web). As described in detail in Pincas and Saunders (2003), these are interactive exercises, modelling, human interaction, and collaboration (described above).

In interactive exercises, users interact with a computer, but have some control over how they deal with what is presented to them. They can use hypertext or other resources to move or select items on a page, e.g. lines to join up a picture, or to link a word with its definition, or to see small differences in drawings, and so on.

In modelling, learners try out their solutions to a task, possibly attempting to achieve a specific goal. Most often a student will use a computer based model written by someone else that provides easy point and click opportunities for them to alter the model by changing input parameters and observing the effect, as with Microsoft Excel. Using models in this way essentially facilitates a ‘What if’? approach to learning. Such simulations can mimic real life or the real world or alternatively the model can be presented as a game where the student or group are given a specific target to achieve. Thus a group of students in a management course may simulate a sales presentation, or a job interview or those on a biology course may simulate a public debate on genetic engineering, without calling this modelling, though it is.

· How: Often needs well prepared films, but is feasible with free software as well. You might not expect that the internet would be suitable for this kind of thing, but simulations can be challenging and informative. Instead of real vidoes, Flash software can be quickly learned for very simple active visuals.

· Why: Saving money/space; combat problems in fieldwork (weather), lack of materials, etc.

4. Assessment: Essays; short answer tests; case study problems; presentations etc.

· How: You can consider: email, multiple choice methods,, asking students to post case studies on the WWW, or presentations in PowerPoint, by audio, video (especially for art, design, media studies) for both formative and summative feedback to learners.

· Why: Timely feedback; efficiency; easing teachers’ burden.

5. Out of class work: Reading; research work.

· How: Web text, though students are likely to print out longer texts.

· Why: Broaden range of resources; easy access.

The role of the tutor

We would emphasise that the function of online methods is definitely not to increase the tutor’s work. Therefore, if the tutor needs to come online frequently to answer questions, sort out roles, settle disputes, provide information, keep the discussion on track, and so forth, little will have been gained, and much student independence will have been lost. A quick rule of procedure might be to arrange for one student [perhaps on a rota] always to have the responsibility of communicating with you as tutor if, and only when, the group is not able to solve its problems without you.

Students always value social contact, especially without the presence of the tutor. It is now almost universal for some kind of online forum called ’Social Chat’, ’Cafe’, ’Bar’ or ’Common Room’ to be available to students, where lecturers cannot or do not normally enter, and students feel they genuinely have their own space. In our online trainer course, the evidence of 12 years clearly shows that such online communications develop into rich and personal interactions among strangers from many countries who have never met (and are not even likely to).

I recommend such a virtual space for campus?based students in the current climate where we cannot always take it for granted that they know each other very well, since there may be a high percentage of part?time students, or of full-time students with jobs, so that even full-time students can find themselves in modules with others they barely know.

In the kind of mixed mode approach we have advocated, ICT is but a part, albeit a significant one, of the overall delivery of a course. With reasonable planning and realistic expectations, it should be possible for everyone to benefit in some way from the networked learning software that is increasingly available on campuses. I hope that this brief overview has given you the confidence to explore more widely the potential that ICT has to enhance the quality of teaching and learning and in fact lighten your load rather than increase it. Finally, I would emphasise the importance of teachers themselves taking part as learners in courses that use ICT - there is nothing as good as having tried it yourself.