Problems and challenges

In the summer of 2019, I had set myself the task of overhauling the Language and Study Skills module of the Foundation Certificate Programme at the IPC. I wanted to look for a new way of presenting teaching materials, both in the way they are stored and used within the teaching team and in the way they are presented to students. Previously, the Language and Study Skills module had used a traditional course text book, Oxford EAP (de Chazal and Rogers, 2013), which was supplemented by additional materials in the form of slides, documents, audio and video files and third-party websites. These additional materials comprised explanations of language points, controlled practice activities, language input through written articles and excerpts as well as talks and lectures, and some interactive activities and tasks. While much of this teaching material was of a good quality and highly relevant to the learning outcomes of the module, the resource bank as a whole had become fragmented. Documents were stored in Google Drive, and would proliferate as teachers saved their own versions, causing confusion for other teachers. In addition, the document approach in itself required a time-consuming amount of uploading to Blackboard and Google Classroom, and frequently raised issues of accessibility, with each individual PowerPoint, Word Document and PDF needing to be manually checked and modified.

What was needed was a platform which could facilitate a digital coursebook. The platform would have to be customisable, intuitive for users to navigate, and able to host a variety of media types. Most importantly, I wanted the new platform to be scalable, so that the material could be disseminated among the teaching team and the students without the need to upload individual items to class pages.

Experimentation phase

I initially tried using a Google Site as an alternative to 'traditional' office apps to write a lesson. Straight away I found this offered advantages to materials writing compared to using the VLE to host documents:

1. The Site layout is highly aesthetic and visually appealing, and allowed me to embed text, graphics, audio and video onto a single page.

2. The interface feels less fragmented. I didn't need to add links or upload documents to a Blackboard or Google Classroom page. Everything is in one place. Where the course creator holds the editing rights, it means material can't be altered or duplicated by anyone else without permission.

3. The page could be built in discrete sections which meant it could naturally mirror the flow of the lesson.

4. The students and teachers access the same URL and see the material in the same way. As such, the Site can be used both as an in-class digital textbook and a self study resource for student.

The screenshot on the left is the first lesson I created using Sites.

I and two of the other teachers on the team ran some initial pilots with these individual lessons. The pilots highlighted some glitches in terms of page layout (for example, the amount of scrolling required in-lesson needed to be reduced), but generally feedback was extremely positive. The feature of Sites to create sub-pages and navigation menus meant that the platform seemed to be ideal to host the module in its entirety. This aspect, as alluded to in point 4 above, is a promising solution to the problem of scalability that I highlighted earlier in part because it drastically reduces the amount of uploading and downloading required by teachers and students in order to access the material.

Reflection and future directions

The pilot period of the Site's first iteration provided a wealth of information for reflection, refinement and future direction for the development of the material. In addition to the student feedback outlined above, qualitative feedback from teachers was collected via semi-structured interviews (key points summarised below). The data triggered reflection on the best use of specific platforms that would most enhance the learning experience. Overall, the experience led me to consider carefully what the technology is being used for, and whether it is improving the learning experience, acting as a straight substitute or perhaps even acting as a barrier to learning. These are points raised by Puentedura in his SAMR model (see diagram across), and act as a guide for future iterations of the materials. Upon reviewing the data and the experience of the year, I decided the issue of interactivity was the most important point to address in the next round of development, and so I began to explore ways in which applications such as H5P, Xerte and Padlet could be integrated into the Google Sites platform and help address this issue. Staying up to date with these kinds of platforms that can be connected to and embedded in Sites will be the key to maintaining its effectiveness as a teaching tool. The best way of doing this is through continued participation in online CPD events organised by the teaching community, which have proliferated since the shift to online teaching.