casestudy: Teaching with the Access Grid

Establishing Collaborative Postgraduate Research Programmes And Integrated Teaching Agendas Using The Access Grid

Start Date: July 2005
End Date: Oct 2006

About the Project

The increasing pervasiveness of Access Grid technology makes this one of the most significant distributive e-learning tools currently available, with the potential to permit harmonisation of curricula across countries and continents. The project is exploring the educational context of the Access Grid in a variety of circumstances:

• To investigate values and limitations to the technology
• To provide methodologies for use in seminar and formal lecture provision
• To demonstrate the practicalities for implementing harmonised curricula integrated across institutions and countries
• To create a set of guidelines and protocols to facilitate the learning experience

The project is seeking to investigate the potential advantages of Access Grid technologies including:

• Efficient and cost-effective delivery of shared courses through harmonised curricula across institutions and countries;
• Extension of curricula content through access to courses delivered at other institutions;
• Novel environments for teaching which enhance student interaction from different institutions;
• Enhancement of student learning experience through the integration of direct personal instruction as part of an e-learning strategy in support of abstract technologies such as WebCT;
• Promoting increased understanding amongst students and academic staff of differing academic traditions and teaching practises through international courses.

A number of Access Grid-based seminars are run at Birmingham. These have been used to provide feedback on the success of the technology, as well as student reactions to the teaching environment and possible improvements to the format.

Project URL

University of Birmingham project site

Funding Sources
Higher Education Academy

Source Material Used
Case studies of current usage contributed the majority of data for project output. Questionnaires were issued to all participants and reports were made by Access Grid operators.

Resource Created

Responses to the Access Grid were generally positive, and much of the criticism was levelled at format and lecture content rather than any shortcomings of the technology itself. These criticisms were used to improve delivery of the seminars.

Advantages to the technology noted included that it was incredibly advantageous for students to have access to state-of-the-art research around the globe. This also fostered a sense of community between small departments in disparate locations and expanded teaching and research opportunities through shared curricula. This also showed great promise for the development of distance learning courses, with the ability to record and deliver lectures on demand.

Most disadvantages noted were related to the use of the technology rather than its functionality. The lecturer often failed to engage the students in remote venues, particularly when asking questions. Students noted that consequently it was easy to coast through classes as little was expected of them. This therefore requires some change in teaching style to take this into account. It is also necessary to think about ways in which features may be pointed out in slides. Lecturers ordinarily get up and point to slides but this is impossible. A laser pointer will not be picked up by remote audiences - this must be addressed. Many lecturers will need a technical operator as they are not familiar with the technology. Availability of venues may also be a problem is taken up more widely.

Publications resulting from project

Contributed to white paper on Access Grid in Education (in preparation), as well as the report to the funding body. Published report in preparation.

UK HE organisations involved

Universities of Birmingham

Durham

Manchester

Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

Other Institutions involved

University of Arkansas

Princeton University

University of Ljubljana

Principal staff member

Prof. Vince Gaffney

Dr Mary Harlow

Ms. Helen Goodchild

Mr Paul Hatton

External Expertise

Mike Daws (Access Grid Support centre, University of Manchester)

Mark Lydon (I2a)

Subject Domains

Archaeology, Ancient History, Physics

Content Type

Visualisation

distributed computing

Tools Used in Project

Hardware:

Access Grid node

Gentner echo-cancelling unit

Powerwall projection facility

Software:

InSORS

AGToolkit

IGPix