Abstract
In university education a lot of emphasis is placed on the use of the virtual learning environment (VLE) in teaching to enhance the student learning experience. As a result, the academic staff is encouraged to use VLEs in different ways, including as a platform to provide online access to the study material but also as a source of additional online module activities aimed at enhancing student learning. This article reports on a study conducted on 257 students to investigate whether the utilisation of VLE has any impact on the final marks achieved by the students. As part of the study, the VLE logs were contrasted with the final marks of the students participating in a Law Module (LM), an Electrical Engineering Module (EEM) and a Mechanical Engineering Module (MEM) delivered at Edinburgh Napier University in the academic year 2013/2014. The results showed that the number of VLE visits did not have a direct impact on the final marks obtained by the students. However, for one of the modules there was some correlation between the final marks obtained by the students and the way the modules were structured around the VLE. The results of the study emphasised the need for continued improvement of the technology-enhanced teaching and learning skills of the academic staff in order to enhance the student learning experience.
Highlights
Widening access to Higher Education (HE) in the recent decade has enabled entrance to the university of students from diverse economic and social backgrounds, increasing the number of students who combine study with part-time work and are not best served by conventional, face-to-face teaching methods
The first research question (RQ) is: RQ1: Is there a correlation between the number of virtual learning environment (VLE) visits and the final marks obtained by the students? The aim of this research question is to find whether the dependent variable and the independent variable (VLE visits) are correlated to each other
The results of this study show that the numbers of VLE visits are not directly related to the final marks obtained by the students but that other factors must be taken into consideration, in particular the structure of the module, as well as online components used to promote engagement and interaction
Summary
Widening access to Higher Education (HE) in the recent decade has enabled entrance to the university of students from diverse economic and social backgrounds, increasing the number of students who combine study with part-time work and are not best served by conventional, face-to-face teaching methods. The value of technology-enhanced learning is increasingly recognised by the HE sector in the UK (Kirkwood & Price, 2014), with universities placing technology at the centre of learning, teaching and assessment Institutions such as the Higher Education Academy (HEA), the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) and the National Union of Students (NUS) partner up in initiatives such as ‘Changing the Learning Landscape’, renewed in 2013–2014 with “an increased focus on the impact of online learning on institutions’ learning and teaching strategies” (Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, 2014). The UK’s £12m Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) explored TEL in 2007–2012 in four themes: ‘flexibility’, ‘personalisation’, ‘productivity’ and ‘inclusion’ It was the ‘productivity’ theme which prompted this inter-disciplinary study on the role of TEL in “achieving higher quality and more effective learning” (Laurillard, 2011). For the purpose of the study the accepted definition for ‘productivity’ is the one provided by TLRP, whereby productivity is perceived as “an increase in the value of output per unit of resource input”, where the value of the output is “the level of achievement of the learner and the number of learners achieving at that level” (Laurillard, 2011)
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