The reports were produced by UCISA (Oxford univesity based network) representing many major UK universities and higher education colleges and it states to have a growing membership among further education colleges, other educational institutions and commercial organisations interested in information systems and technology in UK education.
The used definition of TELearning is: "Any online facility or system that directly supports learning and teaching. This may include a formal VLE (virtual learning environment), e-assessment or e-portfolio software, or lecture capture system, mobile app or collaborative tool that supports student learning. This includes any system that has been developed in-house, as well as commercial or open source tools."
Both reports provide an interesting (though UK-oriented) read. Here is a short overview of what you can find in them:
The report focusing on the TELearning for HE in UK (based on the TELearning survey), I have put the main conclusions next to the main chapters:
Top 5 challenges facing institutions: Staff Development is the most commonly cited challenge, Electronic Management of Assessment, lecture capture/recording continues to move up, technical infrastructure, legal/policy issues.
Factors encouraging the development of TELearning: Enhancing the quality of learning and teaching, meeting student expectations, improving student satisfaction are most common driver for institutional TEL provision. Availability of TEL support staff, encourages the development of TEL, feedback from students, availability and access to tools, school/departmental senior management support. In terms of barriers for TELearning: lack of time, development & consolidating, culture continues to be a key barrier, with Departmental\school culture, and Institutional culture, internal funding, and lack of internal sources of funding to support development.
Strategic questions to ask when considering or implementing TELearning: with Teaching, Learning and Assessment consolidating, the rise of the Student learning experience/student engagement strategy, corporate strategy and library and Learning Resources.
TELearning currently in use: main institutional VLE remains Blackboard and Moodle.
Moodle remains the most commonly used platform across the sector, but rising alternative systems such as Canvas by Instructure, and new platforms eg. Joule by Moodlerooms. SharePoint has rapidly declined. An increase in the number of institutions using open learning platforms such as FutureLearn and Blackboard’s Open Education system. Evaluation activity in reviewing VLE provision: conducting reviews over the last two years. TEL services such as lecture capture is the second most commonly reviewed service by all over the last two years.
Support for TELearning tools: e-submission tools are the most common centrally supported
software, ahead of text matching tools such as Turnitin, SafeAssign and Urkund. Formative and summative e-assessment tools both feature in the Top 5, along with asynchronous communication
tools. Adoption of document sharing tools across the sector and the steady rise in the use of lecture
capture tools. Podcasting tools continue to decline in popularity and the new response items electronic exams and learning analytics appear not to be well established at all as institutional services, with only a handful of institutions currently supporting services in these areas.
Social networking, document sharing and blog tools are the common non-centrally supported tools. TEL tools are being used to support module delivery. Blended learning delivery based on the provision of supplementary learning resources remains the most common use of TEL. Only a small number of institutions actually require students to engage in active learning online across all of their programmes of study. Increasing institutional engagement in the delivery of fully online courses, with over half of 2016 respondents now involved. Growing adoption of MOOC platforms by institutions, but less than half of respondents are pursuing open course delivery.
Little change in the range of online services that higher education institutions are optimising for access by mobile devices. Access to course announcements, email services and course materials and learning resources remain the three leading services optimised for mobile devices. Library services, are being optimised. Optimising lecture recordings at the same level as 2014. The most common ways in which institutions are promoting the use of mobile devices are through the establishment of a bring your own device (BYOD) policy and by loaning out devices to staff and students. Funding for mobile learning projects has reduced in scale.
Outsourcing of institutional services grows: student email, e-Portfolio systems, VLEs and staff email. The type of outsourcing model is dependent on the platform being outsourced: Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud-based model for email services, and to use an institutionally managed, externally hosted model for TEL related tools, such as e-Portfolios and the VLE for blended and fully online courses.
National conferences/seminars and internal staff development all remain as key development activities. Increase in the promotion of accreditation activities, in particular for HEA and CMALT
accreditation.
Electronic Management of Assessment (EMA) making the most demand on TEL support teams. Lecture capture and Mobile technologies as well. The demand from Learning Analytics and from distance learning/fully online courses continues to increase. A new entry which might be expected to make more demands in the future is Accessibility; in particular, demands made by changes to the Disabled Students’ Allowance in the English higher education sector.
A number of appendixes: full data, a longitudinal analysis of TELearning over the past years (going back to 2001), questions that were used for the longitudinal analysis.
The report focusing on the case studies from TELearning:
These case studies are a companion to the earlier report mentioned above. The idea is that the case studies enable to probe themes in the data and shed light on TEL trends through the eyes of representative institutions, offering context to the findings of the overall report.
In each of the case studies, the institutions provide answers to the following TELearning sections: used TELearning strategy, TEL drivers, TEL provision, TEL governance and structures, TEL-specific policies, Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) strategy, Teaching Excellence Framework, Distance Learning and Open Learning, and Future challenges. The diversity of institutes interviewed give a good perspective of the TEL landscape within Higher Education in the UK.
