“It Needs to be Better than Face-to-Face”: Introducing Elluminate into a Social Sciences Distance Learning Programme

Abstract

Online synchronous tuition has the potential to enhance the study experience of students who cannot attend face-to-face tutorials, or where there are no face-to-face tutorials available. This could be particularly beneficial for students of online and distance institutions, such as the Open University, who may otherwise feel disconnected from the study experience. One such synchronous technology, Elluminate, has been introduced in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University over the last few years, with feedback suggesting that the students who take part have a very positive experience. This paper explores the views of students and tutors from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University, about Elluminate, concluding that Elluminate tutorials are not better, nor worse, than face-to-face-tutorials – they are simply different. By setting up one method of teaching as a gold standard, all be it a standard with very little evidence supporting it, the debate is reduced to “can online learning do what face-to-face learning does, to the detriment of students and their teachers?” We note that feedback from students and tutors suggests a reluctance to embrace new technology among tutors that is not mirrored by students. While some tutors may not be comfortable with technological innovation, we argue that sensitive and subject-driven training can increase both the confidence and perception of tutors.

Keywords:

• Elluminate
• online
• distance
• education
• synchronous

Introduction and background

The introduction of technology into the higher education (HE) classroom has been a long-term project with mixed results. Very often technology is regarded as disruptive to the established discourses of learning by the staff that are expected to embrace it. Middleton (2010) has pointed out that too often the emphasis has been on the ‘e’ in e-learning, rather than the learning, something borne out by the authors’ experiences in social sciences. While our own experience of introducing an online tuition facility within a distance learning environment was not without its challenges, we are apt to agree with Disbrow (2008), who has argued that it is no longer a case of whether to use technology in the classroom, but how best to do so. This paper is concerned with only one institution, the Open University (OU), and within that only one Faculty, Social Sciences. In introducing Elluminate, an online synchronous tutorial system, to social science tutors we have noted that for some the issue remains the technology itself, rather than a debate about how best to use it. This, despite the evidence, that it can be highly beneficial to the student experience (Carbonaro et al. 2008, Disbrow 2008, Fuller 2009, Santovena-Casal 2012).

We would argue that although the OU is unique among HE institutions in the United Kingdom our experiences will have a resonance beyond our institution. While the OU is the only dedicated part-time, distance learning institution in the UK, it is worth pointing out that it is not the only part-time provider. Indeed, it has been estimated that part-time students are now over 43% of the student population in the UK (Million+ 2010, cited in Middleton 2012). Moreover, with the change in student funding in England, it is likely that the part-time market will grow. In addition, the OU is far from being the only provider of distance education. A number of institutions now offer very successful distance education programmes, often serving the lucrative overseas market. Therefore, the experiences at the OU are not of merely parochial interest, but should be of interest to our colleagues in social sciences throughout the sector.

This paper reports on two practical experiences of introducing Elluminate which we believe have lessons for other providers who may want to use synchronous online tools. The first experience was the development of a training programme specifically aimed at the tutors who deliver OU materials. This is relevant because we would argue that training and development in online pedagogy is under valued in the academy generally, and it is too often taken for granted that lecturers are able to deliver quality education when there is little evidence to support this assertion. The second experience was a large scale set of three online tutorials, held as part of our undergraduate psychology programme. This experience is included here mainly to show the difference in perceptions of tutors and students. We accept that nobody outside of the OU in the UK will have modules with over 3,000 students, but many universities would be capable of running online modules with up to 300 students, which was the approximate number of students who accessed the online tutorials we discuss here.

Elluminate, now rebranded as Blackboard Collaborate, is a synchronous conferencing tool that can be used for online tutorials (see Blackboard 2013, for further information). The Elluminate interface allows participants to talk in real time over the internet using a simple microphone headset. It also allows text via a simple chat interface and, although not widely used, the option of webcams. The Elluminate programme was first adopted at the OU in 2007. Uptake was keenest in the Faculty of Education and Languages who used it to replace the in-house audio programme Lyceum (see Stickler & Hampel 2007). The Faculty of Social Sciences took a more ad hoc approach to the introduction of Elluminate leaving it to individual Associate Lecturers (part-time tutors) to decide whether to request to use it or not and their line managers (full-time regionally based academics) to approve it. In one or two regions (we use the term regions as shorthand for the 10 English regions and three nation offices of the OU) of the OU more widespread use was made of Elluminate.

Although some generic training was available for those engaging with Elluminate for the first time, this was very much concerned with the technology rather than the pedagogy. An approach to introducing any technology into the classroom that is based on the technology tends to reinforce the divide between advocates and opponents of innovation, and subsequent debates can ossify into debates around the utility of the technology itself rather than its impact on the pedagogy of the institution. Moreover, institutions are often reluctant to commit resources to training and development leaving it to the advocates to champion the new technologies. As Conole (2011) writes:

Professional development in understanding and using technologies is more important than ever, but many institutions struggle to provide adequate and targeted support; this is further exacerbated by the fact that teachers lack the time and incentive to explore new technologies and have competing calls on their time … . (p402)

Only in 2011, four years after its introduction, did our Faculty commit to a Faculty-wide training programme, Teaching Social Sciences Using Elluminate. That such a programme was needed was obvious to us in our role as tutor managers, but was also shown in the enthusiasm for taking up the limited places that were available. In its first year, 93 people participated in the training, the majority of whom were part-time tutors. The course was designed to be taken over a period of five weeks in sessions lasting one and a half hours. These sessions were focused not just on the ‘button pushing’ technology but also on online delivery as a way of teaching social sciences. Each presentation of the course was limited to 20 people, and the course was built around a group project. While the course was not designed to debate the introduction of Elluminate more widely in the Faculty, it inevitably attracted both advocates and those who were not so keen on the technology. The quote in the title was from one such Associate Lecturer (AL) who was not convinced that Elluminate measured up when compared to their experience of face-to-face teaching.

As Lavolette et al. (2010) have noted, there has been little evaluation of the training required to use Elluminate. A recent paper by Kear et al. (2012), while noting that tutors, in their OU study, ‘commented that they would appreciate some experience of being a student’ (Kear et al. 2012, p960) did not, by their own admission, provide such an experience in the training they provided. As in many aspects of HE it seems that training and development can be low down on the priorities of those keen to adopt new technologies. By the use of the group project our tutors were encouraged to think of themselves as ‘tutors’ when delivering their project, but as ‘students’ when receiving the projects of others. We always felt that this was an important part of the experience.

While the OU is primarily a distance, and in recent times largely online, provider of HE, the majority of students have always been offered the opportunity to attend regular face-to-face tutorials. However, face-to-face attendance for many modules can be poor. This is often a consequence of the part-time and distant nature of our students. A technology that can overcome the problem of distance should, in theory, have no downsides. Kear et al. (2012) noted in their study that attendance at Elluminate tutorials was rarely more than three students from a group of 15. If tutorial attendance is a problem in an institution it is not likely to be solved simply by the introduction of an online environment. However, as Disbrow’s (2008) study showed, when students do attend they are keen on the interactivity and the ability to participate from wherever they happened to be, but were also concerned about some of the technical difficulties particularly those concerned with audio. Ironically it is the superior audio capabilities of Elluminate that were praised by Lavolette et al. (2010), in comparison with other systems.

Parker and Martin (2010) have argued that the key features of an online environment are interactivity, synchrony, usefulness and ease of use, and sense of community. The present authors believe that to be successful an online environment has to be relatively easy to use and have clear pedagogic value. Moreover, it should help to increase learning among students. What an online environment cannot do is overcome lack of engagement from students. While the literature suggests that students are very positive about online learning, and our own experiences support this view to some extent, we would point out that in order to be positive about any aspect of teaching it is necessary to experience it.

Disbrow (2008, p232) concluded that Elluminate is “appreciated by students as it offers them a more interactive environment in which to learn, and more convenience as their learning environment is no longer place bound”. While Carbonaro et al. (2008) found that there was no significant difference between face-to-face and blended groups in relation to achieving team process skills, there was a more positive achievement of learning objectives using blended learning. Schullo et al. (2007, p332) claim that “Online synchronous learning is, in many ways, similar to a physical classroom. For example, both physical and virtual classrooms allow for immediate feedback, interactions with instructor and peers, and guided exercises to motivate and increase student learning”. This is a point also made by Disbrow (2008, p228), who noted that “Interacting on the Elluminate system is designed to mimic behaviours used in a traditional classroom and behaviours used during online communication”.

While the literature points to the many positives of Elluminate, many tutors we spoke to have highlighted the differences between face-to-face and online teaching and learning, with the latter often deemed inferior. It seems important to highlight what does transfer from face-to-face to online and the benefits for teaching and learning, while acknowledging that Elluminate is not a perfect tool. As Lavolette et al. (2010) note, while Elluminate remains one of the best online tools on the market in comparison tests (their research compared it with Dimdim), the advantages it has are, to some extent, dependent upon the uses to which it is put. Tutors, particularly part-time tutors often with busy professional lives, will not spend too much time worrying about how a particular system compares to another, their focus is very much on the here and now. Our experience suggests they are not so much opposed to the introduction of technology per se, as reluctant to embrace technology which they point out, with some justification, has no proven benefits. Elluminate is often described as a virtual classroom, thus inviting comparison with the physical classroom with which tutors are very comfortable. In listening to those who oppose this online environment we have been forced to consider whether the metaphor of the classroom is inadequate? As Conole (2011, p406) states: “Simplistic descriptions of the digital environment replicating physical spaces are no longer appropriate; it is necessary to take a more holistic view and describe technologies and users together, emphasising the connections between them”. If so, then it is important not only to explain and explore with tutors how Elluminate can be used but also to use the right metaphors to aid understanding of it.

In the rest of this paper we examine the views of tutors and students. The data was collected from tutors who completed the Teaching Social Sciences Using Elluminate training programme and from students’ feedback on a second level psychology module.

Tutors’ perceptions

Tutors at the OU come from a variety of backgrounds, many employed full time in other HE institutions, but many engaged in portfolio working of which the OU is a greater or lesser part. They do, on the whole, tend to be in the 40+ bracket, and this is particularly the case if they have been with the OU for 10 or more years. The point is that they are both incredibly busy and from the age group often assumed to be the least enthusiastic adopters of newer technologies. ‘Assumed’ because the description of younger generations as a ‘net generation’ (Tapscott 1998) or ‘digital natives’ (Prensky 2001), whose use of and comfort with information and communication technology (ICT) is more advanced than older generations (whom Prensky calls ‘digital immigrants’), has been challenged (Bennett et al. 2008). So, this may be an issue that actually crosses the generational divide. The perception of an ever-changing technological environment may take them outside of what might be colloquially called their ‘comfort zone’ and means that the effort required appears to be incommensurate with the reward. When we use the term ‘reward’ we do not mean just the financial reward, but also the perceived benefits to both students and tutors. These are not always immediately apparent. If it was the case that an online tutorial engaged a significant number of students who could not otherwise be reached then clearly tutors might see the attraction. However, in many cases (as the Kear et al. 2012 study illustrates) attendance online may replicate that at face-to-face tutorials. There is though a point to be made about this that could easily be overlooked by the technological cynics: these may not be the same students. An analysis carried out by the Faculty of Social Sciences at the OU in Wales found that while some of those attending online tutorials were also attending face-to-face ones, many students were either attending either online or face-to-face. In other words, students who had previously not attended tutorials due to geography, disability, work or family commitments were now able to attend.

As a technology linking a number of disparate computers Elluminate is often judged on the technical limitations of the set-up of its users. There are some weaknesses in such an approach, immediately apparent to anybody who has struggled with a group of students who have varying degrees of technical competence. This issue of technology also means that tutors can become concerned that the focus of tutorials becomes the technology and not the subject. This theme is apparent in much of the formal feedback from tutors engaged in Teaching Social Sciences Using Elluminate. The first year of training was evaluated using a Survey Monkey questionnaire, with 46 respondents (a response rate of 49%). The majority of respondents (41) were tutors. Although the course was open to anybody, the majority of tutors were from the Faculty’s largest Level One module, Introducing the Social Sciences (DD101), which attracts an average of 7,000 students per year with around 470 tutors throughout the UK. The evaluation consisted of a series of factual questions followed by an open response option. The quotes which follow are from the open response questions. While 20 of the tutors had already taken some generic training, which on the whole they found helpful 65% (n = 30) had had no experience with Elluminate as a learner prior to starting the course, and 72% (n = 33) no experience as a tutor. All respondents found the training now offered either ‘quite’ or ‘very’ helpful. The most striking figures were in response to the questions about how confident they felt about using Elluminate prior to and post the course. Out of the 45 who answered the question, 71% (n = 32 ) said that they were not at all confident prior to the course, while the same proportion said that they were ‘quite confident’ after taking the course. The remaining 29% were ‘very confident’. In other words, the training appeared to result in a dramatic increase in the confidence levels of those involved.

Elluminate has a number of features including an interactive whiteboard, the ability to create breakout rooms, audio, chat, polling, and importation of materials. To run a teaching session on Elluminate nobody needs to have a thorough knowledge of the mechanics of each of these, but a working knowledge is desirable. We asked how confident participants felt on a range of features following the training. Levels were high on almost all features, with only two – importing a picture and sharing files – having negative responses at 15% (n = 7) and 41% (n = 19), respectively. This is hardly surprising given that these features were only dealt with rather cursorily in the course. Overall, however, it is reasonably clear from the results of our evaluation that the training increased the confidence of tutors prior to actually using the system with students. This is in slight contrast to the experience of Kear et al. (2012, p959), who reported that tutors “valued the training they had received before the first session and, indeed, viewed it as essential … some tutors felt that two training sessions were enough to get started … others felt they needed more practice”. It should be pointed out in relation to this that the sample of six tutors in Kear et al.’s (2012) study was self-selected and therefore probably the most confident to begin with. Our findings indicate that with sufficient, subject-oriented, training tutors will overcome their initial lack of confidence. This is important because if tutors lack confidence in their ability to use a system it seems unlikely that they will embrace it, regardless of evidence that it enhances accessibility for some students. While this may seem irrational, we should note the context in which OU tutors work. Typically, they will have a group of 15–20 students of whom five to six may attend face-to-face tutorials. Doing additional online tutorials could well double the workload, but only increase student attendance by one or two students.

Tutors may, or may not, conduct this type of cost-benefit analysis, but inevitably they do compare online tuition to face-to-face tuition. In open responses this was a clear theme that emerged, one participant writing:

I remain to be convinced that this is an improvement on face-to-face tuition. There were many technical breakdowns and the whole system seems very ‘clunky’. It needs to be much better before the OU takes it up in earnest and it needs to be shown by research to be better than face-to-face tutorials. I don’t think it is by any stretch of the imagination.

Another trainee who admitted to having ‘reservations’ about using Elluminate despite being confident that they would be able to use it and “confident I know my subject inside out and back to front” argued that “I can see Elluminate potentially alienating as many students as it enables”. It is hard to gauge from these responses whether the tutors are genuinely concerned about their students’ ability to cope with the difficulties imposed by online tuition, or whether it is actually linked to their own worries about teaching online. It may be some combination of the two. Some tutors in Wales, where its introduction has been more widespread, consistently argued that ‘their’ students simply did not like, or lacked the technical competence to use Elluminate. Though, strangely, those tutors who are keen on the introduction of the online element to the tutorial strategy in Wales did not appear to have the same problems with their students.

Students’ perceptions

During 2012 a series of three Elluminate tutorials were held for any students studying the OU’s Level Two psychology module Exploring Psychology (DSE212). This module has 3,600 registered students and the all-student tutorial was a departure from normal OU practice of locally based tutorial provision. It came about as online tutorials for the module were being offered in the OU in Wales (the tutors of whom had been the initial tutors for the Teaching Social Sciences Using Elluminate programme) and this became known, via Facebook, to students living elsewhere. The first tutorial was held in March 2012 and attracted 93 students from all 13 regions of the OU, together with a number of students based in Continental Europe. This led one of the tutors to rename the tutorial ‘the worldwide tutorial’. The second tutorial in April 2012 attracted 156 students and the final tutorial in May a total of 170 students. Feedback forms, in the form of a short questionnaire, were sent to all participating students shortly after each tutorial. In total 209 students completed the questionnaires, 60 from tutorial one, 68 from tutorial two and 81 from tutorial three. In addition to the quantitative data students were invited to respond to an open question. Many chose to do so, and some of their comments are reported below.

Although we asked similar questions each time the questionnaire was tailored to each tutorial to some extent. What we report here are responses to the questions that were aimed at eliciting views of Elluminate rather than the specifics of a tutorial. The numbers refer to the responses to that particular question. We were specifically interested in whether students had prior experience of face-to-face tutorials. For tutorial one, although the majority, 82% (n = 49) said that their main reason for attending was “to experience an online tutorial”, over half (n = 32) stated that they were “unable to attend face-to-face tutorials”, while 27% (n = 16) said that “there are no face-to-face tutorials close to where I live”. These figures tend to support our earlier assertion that many students do not attend tutorials because they do not want to, but rather because they are unable to. In the context of a discussion about the superiority of face-to-face tuition, it really does not matter how good face-to-face tutorials are for students who, for very good reasons, simply cannot attend.

Of those at the first tutorial 53% (n = 32) had not used Elluminate before, by the third tutorial this figure was 43% (n = 35), but some 30% (n = 24) had attended one of the previous two online tutorials in the series. While 57% (n = 39) of those at the second tutorial had not attended an online tutorial previously, 57% said that they attended all the tutorials that they could, although 29% (n = 20) said that they had never attended any face-to-face tutorials. Taken together what we can see is that for students who cannot attend tutorials for whatever reason, online tutorials offer a means to partake in an activity that most tutors would argue brings a particular value to their experiences.

One of the major problems experienced at online tutorials is the quality of audio. Both tutors and students report frustration at the breakdown in audio connections which were, for some users a persistent problem with Elluminate. This has resulted in an apparent reluctance by some students to speak at online tutorials where they often prefer to use the chat function. We were interested in whether this apparent reluctance to speak was in fact, a feature of the online environment, or simply mirrored a reluctance of students to speak in front of their peers, which most tutors will have experienced in tutorials and seminars. We asked the students about their use of the microphone and chat features during the session. Many chose not to use their microphone, even if they had a working microphone available. At the first tutorial a reasonably healthy 38% (n = 23) reported using their microphone during the session – this rose to 47% (n = 38) by the third tutorial – while 23% (n = 14) had a microphone but did not use it in tutorial one, this figure fell to 15% (n = 12) by the final tutorial. Obviously if students do not have a microphone they cannot fully participate in discussions. This affected 15% (n = 9) at tutorial one and 21% (n = 17) at tutorial three. If an advantage of online tutorials is the ability to have synchronous discussion then the lack of the means to do so, is a distinct disadvantage. Coaxing students from their inhibitions about speaking is not, however, an online tutorial problem, it is a matter that most tutors face at some point. Putting students into pairs and then using the ‘snowballing’ discussion technique discussed by Cannon and Newble (2000, p45) is one of many techniques good tutors use in face-to-face that seems to us an appropriate response to this particular pedagogic problem.

In the absence of a microphone, or because of an unwillingness to commit to using one, students made extensive use of the chat panel. Over three quarters of the students posted a message on the chat board during the sessions and this created a seemingly endless stream of messages. The popularity of the chat feature was commented on by some students who found it rather distracting. One noted that: “It is hard to listen to what is being said while people are asking questions in the chat box”.

During the three sessions we made extensive use of the interactive whiteboards often linked to activities in breakout rooms. Use of the whiteboard included:

• Asking students to put a smiley on a map of the UK to indicate where they were (we had forgotten that we have students outside the UK).

• A drag and drop exercise, which allowed students to drag the missing words into a text piece on what constituted a good essay.

• Writing on the whiteboard to report back from small group discussion.

The breakout room sessions were not always popular with students, one of whom commented: “The breakout room was a disaster, we were four students but there was very little communication”. One or two students remarked that they would have preferred to listen to a tutor speaking rather than ‘waste time’ listening to other students. Some felt that the exercises were trivial, which could be a valid point, but others found them more challenging. Breakout rooms were the dominant reason for free text responses. Although a number of the comments were critical some people clearly enjoyed interacting with other students:

The breakout groups worked particularly well and it was really good that the tutors visited the different groups – even though the technology did confuse one of the tutors at one point!!

In response to the comments made after tutorial one, for tutorial two we asked about the time spent in breakout rooms, which was planned to be about half of the two hours. While 49% (n = 33) thought this amount of time was about right, some 25% (n = 17) were of the opinion that too much time was spent in group work. It is fairly easy to put students into a breakout room and ask them to discuss an issue, but very often students are confused as to what they are being asked to do. It is also likely that, as in the face-to-face situation, some students are happier than others to take the lead in discussions, and if the participants in a breakout room are all passive then it can lead to inertia. With no tutor presence breakout room activities can very easily become dead ends and reinforce the negative feelings that people have around online tutorials. Indeed, the ‘onlineness’ can be seen as the problem rather than the passivity of the students, or the poor organisation of the lecturer.

Managing breakout rooms is not dissimilar to managing small groups in a face-to-face setting. As Exley and Dennick (2004) note:

The facilitator should make clear from the outset, during the introduction or the setting of ground rules, that the session has aims and objectives, a focus on particular activities and a specific structure, and that it has to finish at a particular time. (p48)

The issue for us in this particular context was that there were far more students than facilitators (and far more than the nominal 15:1 ratios in a level one tutorial group). Small groups of students, many reluctant to use their microphones, could be left to their own devices. If they did not understand the task, they could find the time spent looking at their screen wasteful. It was clear to us in reflecting on these tutorials that we could not simply regard the online environment as analogous to the face-to-face one, even if some of the techniques are very similar. The use of breakout rooms requires a considerable amount of thought and planning. Indeed, this insight, which challenges the hegemony of the ‘sage on the stage’ model, has proved valuable in aiding our development of the training programme, where much more time is now spent considering how to make best use of breakout rooms.

Despite some of these issues, and we would suggest that these are issues that face all teaching staff whether online or not, the students responded very positively to the tutorials. The majority felt that all or most of their expectations were met: 52% (n = 31) for tutorial one and 75% (n = 61) by tutorial three. When asked whether Faculty policy should be changed so that Elluminate was offered on all modules the figure was consistent across the three tutorials with 79% saying ‘yes, definitely’ and the remainder saying ‘yes, with reservations’. In other words, there is no dissent among these cohorts of students that online tutorials are a good thing and should be more widely available.

The comments made by students included these:

I really like having the Elluminate tutorials. I have children and very little in the way of childcare options, these allow me to attend tutorials and not miss anything. Personally I would like to see more of these tutorials on all the courses given that many people who take part in distance learning probably do so because getting to a given place on a particular day may be difficult.

Brilliant – as a single [parent] I cannot attend face-to-face tutorials because of the times and days but I can always attend Elluminate ones!

This was truly amazing and inspirational. The concept is fantastic, it is such a great idea to have this as an option as well as face-to-face tutorials.

Discussion

There is a seeming inevitability about the creep of technology into HE. With more and more universities attracting part-time students and investing in distance learning (particularly for overseas students), our experiences should have a wider resonance.

Our main point is that the lack of confidence among many staff concerning the introduction of online tutorials can be overcome by targeted training. Our findings suggest that properly thought out training can increase confidence levels. This is important if lecturing staff are to regard online tutorial systems as a pedagogic rather than technological challenge. It is also costly. We are constantly invoked to create quality education with cost neutrality. But training and development are not costs that we can afford to cut.

The secondary point that we have tried to make is that students, on the whole, remain more enthused by online tutorials than tutors. In some ways this is inevitable. In an institution such as the OU many students are geographically remote from their nearest tutorial. In addition, tutorials are irregular, maybe taking place every five to six weeks. Online tutorials can potentially occur on a weekly basis because there is no travelling or room booking involved. But more importantly when we ask students about their experiences of online tutorials, they do not always have a face-to-face experience to compare with. Indeed, we would argue that this is very often a weakness in the literature that seeks to promote e-learning. Small cohorts of students (often no more than a dozen) are asked to assess a form of learning without necessarily having the prior knowledge to do so. Our findings suggest that it is generally the case that students appear to be slightly more positive about Elluminate than their tutors. We should qualify that by stating that this is a general impression, and of course there will be students who are unreceptive to the introduction of online tutorials and tutors who are enthusiastic ‘early adopters’ (Rogers 1995, p283).

Our final point concerns the concern, among some tutors, that these systems exist merely to replace face-to-face contact. The scepticism regarding the introduction of online tutorials (and Elluminate is not the only commercially available option) is, it would appear, greater among tutors than students. Here we should reinforce the point that students experience an online tutorial not as a novel alternative to face-to-face teaching, but often as the only contact available with their peers and tutor. Tutors, by contrast, have to balance the time and effort involved in learning to use a new system with their extensive experience of face-to-face teaching. Our training programme, which has included what Bunderson (2003) calls ‘resistant learners’ in addition to those ‘performing learners’ (ie those that will feel comfortable with the technology and seek to use it autonomously), has shown that with a sympathetic instructor even the ‘resistant learners’ can be encouraged to see the positive aspects of a technology of which they are inherently suspicious. And, of course, as was noted recently many of the objections to e-learning are based on myths that require little in the way of debunking (TeachThought 2013). Having said that, number one on their list is that ‘technology is unreliable’, and this persists as a reality rather than a myth for many people. So long as tutors and students’ first experience in online learning is blighted by poor connections and microphones that do not work, then that is inevitably going to have a negative outcome on the take-up of these systems. Tutors, and other academic staff, are the gatekeepers to e-learning and can provide a powerful barrier to its introduction. We would argue, however, that the unreliability can be over stated. After all, face-to-face teaching also suffers from power failures, microphones that do not work (in lecture rooms), inadequate facilities, etc. At some point we reach a settlement with these inadequacies rather than deciding that the whole system should be scrapped. It is also inevitable that as technological innovation continues that the infrastructure supporting online learning will improve dramatically. We should recall that is only just over 50 years since the first fuzzy black and white pictures were sent via satellite. One only has to look at today’s 3D, computer-enhanced, large screen colour televisions to realise how far we have come technologically. Indeed, it is only 40 years since the OU’s innovative approach was black and white programmes broadcast late at night on the, then, new third TV channel, BBC2.

The idea that online tuition is to be contrasted with face-to-face tuition, which for many it inevitably pales in comparison with, is common place. We would argue that this is a false dichotomy and is no more useful than comparing the reading of a book to the watching of a film. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, the lack of systematic evaluation of face-to-face sessions makes it difficult to assess what this ‘gold standard’ to which we should aspire actually amounts to. As Ramsden (1992) noted:

No golden age of impeccable instruction and taken-for-granted high academic standards ever existed, except in the world of academic mythology. Appraisal or no appraisal, large classes or small, it is useless to deny that, although there is much that is and has been excellent in higher education teaching, there is a great deal that has always been frankly bad. (p3)

Twenty years on what Ramsden wrote seems, to us, to be a fair reflection of the field. The difference is that the technologies available to us have multiplied since the early 1990s. Importantly, having completed the Faculty’s in-house training, tutor confidence in Elluminate, despite some reservations about the technical aspects as explored above, changed drastically. What we saw was a shift in both confidence and perception. It strikes us that it is not just about training, as many of the tutors had attended generic training sessions which taught them what the interface looked like and how to set up their audio, use the whiteboards, etc. What appears to be missing from this training is the context in which the technology is to be used. In short, we train people on the technology, rather than how to use the technology appropriately. We believe, based on both the formal evaluation and the informal discussions we have had with tutors in our management roles that subject-specific Faculty engagement with training can have a big impact on attitudes towards technology, particularly confidence, which is much of the battle won.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Associate Lecturers and students who gave up their time to take part in the research projects. We would also like to acknowledge the invaluable advice provided by three anonymous referees.