Archive for the ‘e-learning’ Category

#coursedata: making the most of course information

Friday, June 24th, 2011

#coursedata: making the most of course information

It’s possible to find information on almost any book with a few clicks of the mouse, and many online stores will even let you read a sample chapter for free. Sadly, the same cannot be said of course information, which is often spread across institutional systems, duplicated or contradictory, and in a variety of formats.

books

While some prospective students will have a desire to study in a particular location, based on its academic reputation, its proximity to home, or its nightlife, many are uncertain of their options. Finding the right course is tricky, particularly for online, part-time or postgraduate offerings.

Finding out whether it’s really what you’re interested in studying is even harder.

“Information about online programmes is lacking and often difficult to find, both for distance courses and for the online learning elements in blended programmes. This has a significant impact on student choice, domestically and internationally. Only with better information can prospective students find what they want, judge value for money and make more accurate decisions about where and how to study. Better information will give institutions competitive edge ”

Report to HEFCE by the Online Learning Task Force January 2011

2011/01 http://www.hefce.ac.uk/learning/enhance/taskforce/

At a recent JISC sponsored event Tony Hirst, David Kernohan and others worked on Course Detective http://www.coursedetective.co.uk/ which provides searches for courses from a list of 165 University websites. Course Detective does a great job with the data available but would be far more useful if it could find and use institutional data in a machine-readable common format.

XCRI-CAP (eXchanging Course Related Information, Course Advertising Profile) provides a way for institutions to mark up course descriptions for advertising purposes in a standard format that makes it easy to gather and compare. The major benefit is the increased visibility of the information – not just in simple search engine results, but because it can be used to build new integrated information, advice and guidance services. Better informed students are more likely to choose a course that they will complete, and be more motivated to achieve better results, thereby improving retention and achievement rates.

Alan Paull, one of the authors of XCRI-CAP explains that for some organisations adopting the standard can be quite straightforward, whereas for others it may take some time to organise their course information. “If the location of information is already known, particularly if it is centralised in a database, and its quality is high, then writing code to create an XCRI feed can take as little as a day for an experienced developer. However, as with all things sometimes there is an initial time investment up front to organise the information.  Many universities and colleges are doing this so they can adopt the Government’s open data policy as well as for quality assurance purposes.” The XCRI Knowledge base website http://www.xcri.co.uk/index.php contains a wealth of information to support institutions planning to implement the standard, including an XCRI-CAP self assessment framework http://xcrisaf.igsl.co.uk/

XCRI-CAP and KIS

David Willetts, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills has discussed the coalition Government’s commitment to providing better data with which students can decide their future in education, and Sir Alan Langlands, Chief Executive of HEFCE, has said:

“As the new student finance arrangements are introduced, it will be more important than ever for universities and colleges to provide accurate, up-to-date and easily accessible information to help prospective students choose the course and institution that  is best for them.”

The Key Information Set (KIS) is the result of a HEFCE consultation on public information about HE. The consultation found that institutions should standardise the way they publish key pieces of information about each course they offer. http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/hefce/2011/kis.htm Their research indicated that the KIS should be available on the institutional website and include an aggregation of information from a range of sources, not just course information, but institutional-level data – fees and accommodation costs, historic subject-level data (such as National Student Survey (NSS) scores), indicators of student satisfaction and information about the different teaching, learning and assessment methods used on the course. In its basic form XCRI-CAP does NOT cover these elements, but does provide a structure for accurately describing the courses identified in the KIS. XCRI_CAP can be extended to include other data including KIS elements, and JISC work is beginning to focus on this.

XCRI-CAP and HEAR

The HEAR http://www.hefce.ac.uk/learning/diversity/achieve/ is a way of recording student achievement in higher education (HE), and is intended to provide more detailed information about a student’s learning and achievement than the traditional degree classification system. It will be issued to students on graduation and will include and extend the existing record of academic achievement – the academic transcript – and the European Diploma Supplement.

HEAR development is being led by the Burgess Implementation Steering Group (BISG), supported by the Centre for Recording Achievement (CRA), Higher Education Academy (HEA),Universities UK (UUK), Guild HE and JISC.

The HEAR will conform to the European standard  “European Learner Mobility – Achievement information (EuroLMAI)”.

It will use XCRI-CAP as the course description component.

http://www.xcri.org/wiki/index.php/HEAR#Introduction_to_the_HEAR

Funding

To support institutions in making better use of their course data, JISC is funding a large-scale programme of investment.

“Course data: making the most of course information” is open to all institutions eligible for HEFCE CAPITAL funding, HEIs and FECs with over 400 HE FTEs, and will be a 2 Stage process:

Stage 1: Review and Plan of course data Sept-Dec 11

Stage 2: Implementation Jan 12- Mar 13

JISC is holding an online community briefing event to provide information about the background to the call, its objectives and the funding process. Attendees will also have an opportunity to ask questions of JISC executive staff.  The online meeting will take place on 19th July at 15:00-16:30. The link for this meeting and full details of the call can be found on the JISC funding site: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/funding_calls/2011/07/coursedata.aspx


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Testing the waters, or making waves?

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

I enjoyed a really useful and interesting day out at our Assessment Symposium on Tuesday – well worth the cross-border trek to substitute for our Austria-stranded childminder. It was organised to support the production of our new effective practice publication on technology-enhanced assessment, but was a great opportunity to explore many of the issues with assessment practice, and how technology may be able to help change things. Change was a recurrent theme of the day, in fact: while we obviously need to appreciate what works in current assessment systems and practice, there are many situations in which technology can support course teams in taking a fresh approach, always remembering that it’s important to consider what you can stop doing, as well as adding new things.

Views were presented from the student, quality, technology, practitioner and staff development/organisational support perspectives, and while each had a different emphasis, and we were rather drowning in lists of principles for effective assessment, there was a large degree of consensus. Key issues that emerged included the importance of: skills in assessment design; communication with students around assessment; good models of institutional support; formative assessment; using the information obtained through assessment to give feedback to students and feed back into teaching processes; and having people or teams on hand who understand the discipline, effective assessment practice, and the affordances of the technology. One thing which I was pleased to see, with my background in administration-related work for JISC, was the recognition that technology can be very powerful in managing assessment, interpreting results, identifying problematic subject areas, students at risk, and helping to inform teaching, assessment, and student support. On the flip side, something I was surprised not to see mentioned was e-portfolios, despite lots of talk about the sort of reflection and feedback processes which they can support.

As with so many processes within education, trying to work out how technology can improve aspects of assessment is a powerful opportunity to identify and address problems with existing processes. Large student numbers and the importance of giving rapid, useful feedback to students are significant challenges to traditional assessment practices, and it is important that technology does more than just paper over the cracks. Beyond that, opinions differed on whether you need to knock the whole wall down or do some careful re-pointing of your existing bricks!

Some suggestions for JISC work in this area going forward were to seek to drive wider take-up of technology-enhanced assessment in all its many forms, embedded into teaching and assessment practice, through work on articulating, demonstrating and evaluating the benefits of this for learners, teaching staff and institutions: tackling the business case or ‘what’s in it for me?’ Another focus may be to promote greater discussion between technology specialists, assessment specialists, teaching staff and learners, so that approaches and systems are fit for purpose.

Presentations from the day are available from the JISC e-learning pages.

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Do educational institutions have a future?

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Join Graham Attwell, Martin Weller (The Open University) and Rob Howe (University of Northampton), session facilitator, John Traxler, and other delegates in this year’s JISC online conference, Innovating e-Learning 2009 to debate the future of education on the 24th November.

As part of the pre-conference buzz, Martin Weller has produced a short video interviewing his ‘future self’. You can view Martin’s video at http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2009/10/an-interview-with-the-future.html, but be warned, you may straight away want to make your own!

This year’s programme also includes keynotes by Charles Leadbeater (leading authority on innovation and strategy and former adviser to the government), Nigel Paine (freelance writer, organisational coach, broadcaster and former Head of People Development at the BBC), Helen Beetham and Rhona Sharpe (JISC Learner Experiences of e-Learning programme) and Peter Bradwell from the think tank, Demos.

To take part in these and other sessions at Innovating e-Learning 2009, register now at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/elpconference09. The conference has two themes and takes place online between 24-27 November. You decide when, where and how often you take part. The conference opens for reading and preparation on 17th November, and with a delegate fee of £50 and no need to travel, this is excellent value as well as great fun.

PS. Follow the pre-conference buzz on Twitter using the tag, #jiscel09. Keep in touch with what’s going on during the conference with James Clay (Gloucestershire College). There is an excellent Have-a-Go area as well this year, where you can try out new tools and technologies with the support of representatives from the RSCs and other JISC services and projects. Sounds good? Be quick to book your place and we’ll see you there!

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OERs & Internationalisation

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

On Tuesday the OER programme held its interim programme meeting in London – details of the full agenda and copies of the presentations are available on the JISC website here: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/oer/progmtgoct09.aspx.

Of the three parallel morning sessions, I attended the Internationalisation session and these are my notes for this – if you are interested in continuing (or joining) the discussion, Patrick McAndrew from the OU has set up a cloudworks page for this here: http://cloudworks.ac.uk/index.php/cloud/view/2534

Introduction
The session began with a short introduction to the topic by John Robertson from CETIS (covering for Lorna Campbell from CETIS who was unable to make the day due to illness). John started by getting a show of hands from the audience to gauge how many felt that making resources openly available was a good thing – which resulted in an overwhelming response of ‘yes’ they did think it was.

John then went on to ask whether the OER Programme was another example of British imperialism – and provided a number of thought provoking quotes (all in the presentation which can be downloaded from the link provided in the first paragraph of this blog). This is one example:


“What does encouraging ‘openness’ mean to a culture that is already open?”
Jared Stein, Utah Valley State College

US perspectives
This was followed by David Kernohan, who talked briefly about his recent visit to the US and meetings with those currently involved with openly releasing content and which were particularly pertinent to the issue of internationalisation.

He spoke about the work of Michigan State University (MSU). MSU is a former farm college which was set up with an agricultural remit. They are currently engaged in releasing some of their content openly – including materials about farming practices and horse management. They were aware that these resources were of particular interest to students and farmers in a number of developing countries. However, they found that their materials were not being used as often as expected and were concerned about this, as the release of their content was principally done for “public good”. Therefore they decided to do some research into why their resources were not being used in the volumes that they expected. They found that the cultural context in which they were packaged (i.e. how they were put together and presented) often meant that they were designed with a particular cultural background/understanding which was needed to understand them and this in turn made them difficult to use in a country that did not hold similar cultural views or knowledge. MSU have since been successful in gaining funding from the Gates Foundation to create these open educational resources alongside academics and potential users (students and farmers in Africa) to improve their (re)usability. They also have a parallel project in the food sciences which is working with end users in India, Malaysia and Egypt.

It is interesting to note that the MSU Project Manager for this work is not sure that this is sustainable (involving end users) even when using technology so that some meetings can be held remotely, as even this is expensive.

David also added that a range of MIT resources have (voluntarily) been translated into a wide number of other languages, including Chinese, and that it is not just the US and the UK releasing open content – the OpenCourseWare Consortium has 80 countries signed up.

All of which, David pointed out, highlights just how global the potential user base of Open Educational Resources can be.

Are Open Educational Resources Cultural Colonisation?
Patrick McAndrew from the OU started with answering his own question (are open educational resources cultural colonisation?) with “No” he didn’t think that they were, but that it was important to understand the risks associated with this.

He began with discussing an example of how easy it is to (unintentionally) culturally load materials by showing a presentation that he put together to promote the OpenLearn project. It begins with an image of Shakespeare, accompanied by classical music and goes on to include images of Queen Victoria and Darwin.

However, what he has found is that it is still possible to use culturally loaded material by using it to compare with, and discuss, local (e.g. African) cultures.

Patrick considered the motivations around making OER’s available, including:

• University culture (sharing/open/collaborative)
• Building institutional reputation and markets
• Institutional commitment to social justice and widening participation
• Improving student recruitment

The OU have found that (opposed to their implementation view) that OER is not necessarily about the media or content – when working with an overseas institution they found that it was more focussed on the research agenda.

Patrick then went on to talk about the wider ‘cultural mix’ of open educational resources. He showed the OpenCourseWare Consortium membership list as a pie chart, which clearly demonstrated that the UK is only a very small segment of this – with Spain, Japan and ‘affiliate’ members having the largest slices of this ‘pie’.

In terms of the OU’s OpenLearn, Patrick described how it has had 8m visitors from all over the world since its launch and described some of the impacts that this has had – especially in terms of getting content back from users:

• Content augmented by users
• Collaborations on content that have occurred as a result of it being openly available
• Translated versions of their content
• Entire courses developed by others have been deposited which have been created by gluing together content from a range of open sources including OpenLearn, MIT and elsewhere.

Following these three presentations, the discussion was then opened up to the audience – below is a summary of the questions and answers that took place:

Discussion

Q1. When we say things are free for re-use for education but not for commercial uses – isn’t this commercial use anyway when universities use it with their students?

A. Patrick (OU): How we (the OU) dealt with this was by explaining what we meant. Just about every use of our content is acceptable. Commercial companies can use it – although they cannot sell the material as it is. It is important to prevent people thinking they can’t do things that they can.

Most people don’t read the licence. Most people think that content on the internet is free to use anyway. It’s also worth remembering that copyright is meaningless in some cultures. We should be in this game to get our material out there to be used by people with the imagination to use it.

Creative Commons have released a report about the use of ‘non-commercial’ which might be useful for you.

Q2. Patrick, you mentioned Africa in your presentation – what are your experiences?

A. Patrick (OU): Actually it is mainly about finding about ways to operate with one another and partnership. Don’t invent new barriers for yourself. Overall we have had very positive feedback and interest, but it is a difficult area to work with – especially around infrastructure issues.

Q3. How do you deal with the issue of jurisdictions of CC – there are even regional distinctions between England and Scotland, let alone further afield?

A. Patrick (OU): You grant rights to people based on where you are. It doesn’t matter where the user comes from.

Q4. I want the panel to note/make clear that even when rights to re-purpose content are granted, it doesn’t always mean that this is possible. For example, PDFs are not re-purposeable so although you ‘may’ re-purpose content the technical barriers mean you cannot.
It is difficult to even agree within the UK how materials can be used, so doing this for an international audience is going to be even harder. Is there a collection of use-cases for OERs, or a model that can be used?

A. Patrick (OU): The OU is looking at learning design and patterns to see how people are meaning materials to be used. We are also starting to look at how these are being used. Agree that it is important to communicate options for how content is used.

A: David K (JISC): In terms of use cases, there is currently a project (iChem3D ) which is part of the JISC Learning & Teaching Innovation Grant Programme that is investigating this issue and looking at how users are making use of their materials then repurposing their content around the use cases they are building up.

It’s also worth having a look at the final reports of the RePRODUCE programme projects who repurposed existing materials to create new modules.

Q5. How did Creative Commons save the OU £100,000 in licence fees?

A. Patrick (OU): Openlearn budgeted £100k for legal advice, but ended up using CC instead – thus the savings.

Q6. Does an open resource have to be completely culturally repurposeable? How is this achieved?

A. Heather W (JISC): The RePRODUCE programme found that content served up in smaller chunks was easier to re-use and repurpose – this could also make re-purposing easier for other cultures

A. Patrick (OU): Big chunks and little chunks of content can both work well for repurposing. It is the in-between chunks that are the difficulty. Need to give users the permission to strip out the assets so that if they want to use bits, then they can.

Q7. Why are we writing licences at all? What is the point?

A. Patrick (OU): Using a licence such as Creative Commons gives a clear message to the user about what they can do with it – without the need to find and check with the original author.

A. Heather W (JISC): Support Patricks point – one of the biggest challenges for the RePRODUCE projects was that for much of the material they located it was very often difficult to find out what they were allowed to do with it and who the original author was. Content that is clearly licensed makes the whole process much easier.

A. David Morris (OCEP, Coventry): Licences do more than just say that the content is open/free to use. They also enable the authors to have recognition for their work.

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ALT-C: OERs Matter Symposium

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

This is only my personal reflections of this symposium which was held on 8 Sept at ALT-C 2009. I have almost certainly missed things, but if I have missed things this is only due to my failings and not due to any deliberate intention to do so.

The symposium was chaired by Oleg Liber (Director of CETIS) and the symposium began with the pro’s and con’s of OER being outlined by a prestigious (and ficticious) panel:

    Polly Pegler – Academic & an enthusiast for open educational resources
    Prof. Ogden Wisden – Sceptical Academic
    Will Pileham-Highe – Pro-Vice Chancellor
    Joe Zawinul – civil servant representing the minister of BISCUIT (Business Colleges Universities and International Trade)
    Quentinna Yan – Chinese secondary school teacher

Each member of the panel stated their take on OERs (well summarised here on the OERs Matter cloudworks page), then the debate was opened up to the audience.

The panel’s position statements proved to be a good starting point for the audience debate which followed. The audience debate further highlighted some of the difficult and thorny issues around OER, whilst (I felt) still retaining a sense of the future potential that OERs can offer.

The discussion began by considering the approaches to adoption of OER and it was suggested that it was a mistake to talk about the adoption of OER in ‘top-down’ approach terms (which many of the panel had done in their opening statements). It was argued that there was a real need to factor in a more ‘bottom-up’ approach and to understand the barriers associated with this, not limited to but including, unrealistic expectations on the amount of metadata that needs to be attached to an OER in order for it to be ready for release.

There was also a plea for more positive (carrot) arguments rather than negative (stick) arguments for the adoption for OER. Negative (e.g. saving money) ‘top-down’ approaches are unlikely to create motivated and enthusiastic adopters of OER – so more needs to be done on this.

Issues around the quality of content was also raised. It was agreed that this needs to be clearly articulated (without being imperialist), but also raises issues of trust – something that it was felt needed more exploration.

Picking up on this, another member of the audience added that the issue of reputation could do much to encourage the adoption of OER in a positive way. Currently there is no real percieved benefit to the individual to make content open – unlike the publishing model. If OERs had some kind of recogised peer-review type model then this is likely to increase the level of material that is made available in this way.

Another participant suggested at looking at what already works in terms of rating resources – e.g. amazon, the rating systems used by digg etc. This then raised the interesting question on who should rate the resources: academics or students? It was felt that they would be likely to rate quite differently, which would raise all kinds of issues (that time did not permit to be discussed further during the symposium).

The important role that repuposing plays in the advantages and benefits of OERs was also raised – it was pointed out that an open licence doesn’t just mean ‘free’ content, it can also mean content that can be used/repurposed and generally ‘messed about’.

However, deciding on the best granularity for a particular resource was considered to be one of the more difficult tasks as the context of a resource is likely to have big impact on its usability, depending on the end user of that resource. Resources for the independent/lifelong learner need to be strongly contextualised and accompanied with supporting material. If it is to be used as part of wider course, then items with much less context would be fine (and probably would be preferred).

Looking to the future, the debate also considered the changing nature of educational paradigms, in particular the impact of globalised education and how OERs can help support this. It was argued that there was a need to think more strategically, that even with the inherent difficulties of adopting OER that education as a whole could lose out if it did not grasp the opportunities provided.

So lots to take away from this session – not least the extent to which the current OER Programme pilots will go towards investigating more fully a large part of the issues raised during the debates.

“OER Matters – maybe been more negative talk than positive in this session – but more openness remains inevitable!”
(tweet from Patrick McAndrew made during the session)

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Semantic Technologies in Learning and Teaching

Monday, July 27th, 2009

A JISC funded report on the use of Semantic Technologies in HE Learning and Teaching has recently been published, along with a range of materials presented at various conferences. The project, led by Thanassis Tiropanis at the University of Southampton Electronics and Computer Sciences Department examined the current use of Semantic Technologies to support all aspects of the learning process in UK Higher Education.

The semtech project drew a distinction between “hard” and “soft” semantic technologies.

  • [The report defines] soft semantic technologies as those that let people document certain concepts in formats that are easy to communicate to other people. These concepts can be communicated as part of learning and teaching processes. Examples of soft semantic annotation are folksonomies and topic maps.
  • [The report defines] hard semantic technologies as those that support efficient exchange and processing of semantic data between programs and machines. An example would be linked data constructed from RDF statements.
  • [The report distinguishes] between linked data that express the existence of relationships between resources and “traditional” metadata that express such relationships using ontologies.

It was found that “there is extensive use of soft semantic technologies in HE at the moment. Hard semantic technologies like RDF are initially used in some HE/FE repositories for interoperability.”.

Drawing on a wide ranging survey (with data available), the report identifies and critiques several potentially relevant semantic technologies that could be used to support and streamline learning related systems in HE around ideas of collaboration content authoring/annotation, searching and matching, repositories/VLEs/authoring tools, and infrastructure.

Detailed recommendations are made concerning a “roadmap” for Semantic Technology adoption, which spells out a route to the realisation of the benefits that such technology could offer the sector.

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Thriving in the 21st century: Learning Literacies for the Digital Age

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

We are very pleased to have just published the final report from the Learning Literacies for the Digital Age (LLiDA) project, which was set up to examine the kinds of skills and capabilities students need to have to get the full benefit of the technology and resources available to support their learning and the differing ways in which institutions supported the acquisition of these.

We intend to publicise this report (written by Helen Beetham, Allison Littlejohn and Lou McGill at the Caledonian Academy within Glasgow Caledonian University) in many ways over the summer, but here – for the early adopters – is the document itself.

Download executive summary and conclusions (Adobe pdf, 360kb)

Download full final report (Adobe pdf, 1MB)

The intellectual rigour of the report is obvious to even a cursory reader, what is equally striking is the timeliness of such attention to this aspect of academic life. As JISC programme managers we encounter these issues within project final reports frequently, and we are also seeing digital and learning literacies making increasing appearances in high-level strategy documents. What the LLiDA team has done is to put the debate onto a firm evidence- and research-based footing, allowing interventions by individual institutions and national bodies to provide maximum benefit to students.

(more…)

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Open Educational Resources – what’s going on?

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

The revolution continues apace – following the launch of the circular and related guidance in December, alongside the ongoing commentary in twitter and on blogs and the programme briefing day in January there is now a great deal of resources and guidance available for those currently writing to the 4th March deadline.

This is a joint JISC/Academy delivery of a HEFCE programme, to encourage the HE sector to release and share learning materials openly, for the benefit both of themselves (in terms of reputation, exposure and encouraging prospective student interest) and the world (regarding opportunities for the reuse of high quality learning materials).

We’re looking to help institutions and consortia put processes and policies in place to support the large scale and sustainable release of resources. So, it’s not about buying and relicensing stuff – more about helping people get over the “hump” of interia and changing the culture of the sector. Releasing valuable resources in their own way, suiting their own needs and benefiting the wider community.

And this first year is only the pilot – we are looking for evidence of what works, what are the approaches that are most effective in particular settings. Not in terms of institutional versus individual versus subject – in terms of common successful practices, key compontents of projects that have worked well. And an even bigger programme is intended to follow – learning from the trailblazing dynamism of the pilots and bringing OER into the mainstream.

Interest has been widespread – worldwide, even. A lot of eyes are focused on our HE sector regarding OER – in terms of pumping public resource into this agenda, and testing multiple models of release, we are leading the western world. And our (your) content is going to be out there. Via Jorum Open, via web pages and web 2.0 services. Making a case for the quality and innovation that the UK HE sector is respected for, and dragging this message into the 21st century worldwide learning economy.

Is this a programme or a revolution? From some angles it is hard to tell. Certainly we are taking a big risk, putting a marker down regarding our intentions and aspirations. And we are looking for a level of cultural change that we know is difficult to achieve and difficult to measure. Certainly some pilot projects will “fail”, but in terms of learning these are still successes as they help us on the road to understanding how to achieve our aims.

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Effective use of social software report & case studies now available

Monday, February 16th, 2009

This JISC funded report, and collection of 26 case studies, which examined the effective use of social software in the UK further and higher education sectors in enhancing student learning and engagement is now available for download at www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/projects/socialsoftware08.aspx.

This very readable report provides insights about the:

* educational goals of using social software tools;
* enablers or drivers within the institution, or from external sources which positively influence the adoption of social software;
* benefits to the students, educators and institutions;
* challenges that may influence a social software initiative;
* issues that need to be considered in a social software initiative.

It also includes a very useful ‘recommendations’ section aimed towards anyone considering implementing a social software initiative to support student learning and engagement.

I’d like to end this blog post with a quote taken from the study:

“When I thanked an educator, associated with one of the initiatives investigated in this study, at the end of a long day of interviews with her and her students, she said: ‘my heart is with the learners; if I know that something works for them, I want to share it with others so that other learners can also benefit; that is what we are here for – to help our learners’. This statement embodies the spirit of this study: the willingness of colleagues to share their experiences with the wider community.”
Quote from study author

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