Designing appropriate online staff development for part-time distance teaching staff presents many challenges. Traditionally, much of what is learnt happens ‘on the job’, as staff try out new approaches or meet each other for a chat over coffee (Clus, 2011). In a geographically distributed institution such as The Open University, this sort of situated and social learning is unlikely to take place often, particularly for its part-time staff. In addition, staff often will have the time and motivation to participate only in development or training which is directly relevant to their own working practices and is very timely for them (Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010). To encourage staff to make the best use of technologies and to adopt them enthusiastically, we need to make development engaging and attractive. In this presentation we discuss how we address these challenges when designing and developing training and development opportunities in the use of Blackboard Collaborate for part-time distance teaching staff in The Open University. An overview of the various resources and courses we have produced will be discussed, alongside participant perspectives. Our development pathways include experiential and peer learning in cohort groups, exploiting the potential of short online courses (Campbell & Macdonald, 2011), as well as supported self-study routes using online resources. Each of the development pathways we provide allows staff the opportunity to participate in shared reflection, fostering a sense of community (Baran and Correia, 2014; Perry and Edwards, 2009). As well as these main development pathways, ongoing support, for those not presently participating in one of our development pathways, is provided through online communities of practice (Kear, 2011).

1. How do we develop part-time
distance teaching staff in best
practice for using Blackboard
Collaborate with student groups?
Anne Campbell, Graham Storey
The UK Open University1

2. Educational setting
2
• The Open University is the biggest university in the UK, and a world leader in
flexible distance learning
• Around 200,000 part-time students based all over UK and global – urban, rural,
remote, small towns
• Student ages from school-leavers to retired with busy & active lives (median age of
new undergraduates is 29)
• Personal tutor (Associate Lecturer or AL) as part of a small group
• Distance learning & distance teaching: large highly distributed
workforce who rarely have the chance to meet face to face
• Long history of synchronous online tuition: Lyceum, Elluminate,
now BB Collaborate – being rolled out across all teaching

3. Effective staff development…
3
Learning in the workplace often is:
• Informal: ‘unintentional and results from interaction with co-workers’
• Situated: ‘involves making sense of the daily learning that occurs in
organisations and involves examining embedded knowledge and
encouraging learners to be self-directed and reflect on their learning
experiences’
• Social and community building: ‘represented by a range of strategies
including conversation, social interaction, teamwork and mentoring’
(Clus, 2011)

4. Challenges for distance developers
4
How do we…
• …create opportunities for development which distributed distance staff
want to and are able to attend?
• …design development which incorporate some of the features of informal,
situated & social learning situations? (Knight et al, 2006; Clus, 2011)
• …include opportunities to learn experientially? (Campbell
& Macdonald, 2011)
• …create a sense of presence and community? (Kear, 2011)
• …make development relevant to staff’s own working
practices? (Ottenbreich-Leftwich, 2010)

5. Challenges for OU developers
5
• Large (~5,500) diverse body of distance Associate Lecturer staff
with differing constraints on their time
• Wide spectrum of general online technical ability
– From apprehensive staff: reluctance to change from familiar methods of
teaching, inability to understand simple computing tasks
– To early adopters: need for advanced development both pedagogically
and technically, expert in general computing
• Regional, faculty and module system within the OU
• Gauging demand – sometimes can have huge bottlenecks

6. 6
• Large groups of staff still need introductory training in the features and tools
• After basic training many are stuck on replicating face to face tutorials instead of
thinking about how to use the new environment imaginatively
• Can often end up with one pedagogical style – lecture with element of
questioning, and student questions at the end
Challenges for OU Collaborate developers
• There can be distrust of teaching ideas outside own discipline
• Need for pedagogical development, running in tandem with
development on features
• Also need occasional development of practice outside formal staff
development

7. Usage stats
7
0
10000
20000
30000
40000
50000
60000
70000
80000
Rooms Started Total Attendees
0
10000
20000
30000
40000
50000
60000
70000
80000
Desktop Total Mobile Total

8. 8

9. 9

10. Meeting the challenge:
OU Live Pathways– a choice of core routes
10
Identify
development
need based on
experience
Beginner or
needing basics
refresher
1-week
moderated
cohort route
Supported,
open-ended self-
study route
Already
experienced,
want to learn
more
2-week
moderated
cohort route
Supported,
open-ended self-
study route

11. 11

12. Cohort routes – ‘Tutor Moderators’
12
Practice
Reflection
with
peers
Module
activity
• 1-week online ‘Introduction’ to OU Live, part of a 3-week ‘Introduction to Online
tutoring’. Can be taken as standalone week. Takes ~5 hours
• New 2-week online ‘Advanced’ module. Takes ~ 14 hours
• Experiential learning: online activities
• Synchronous and near-synchronous activities
• Experience of being a student online
• Pastoral support by moderator (the identifiable individual)
(Campbell & Macdonald, 2011)

13. 13

14. 14

15. 15

16. 16

17. Completion rates on cohort routes
17
• Up to 25 participants per presentation in each module. Often
run with 18 or 20.
• Introductory route: ~2800 participants since Feb 2010 with a
72% completion rate
• Advanced route: just started – 3 presentations so far. 60
participants with 73% completion rate

18. Exit evaluation data on introductory cohort module
18
• Increase in overall confidence and competence
16%
52%
26%
6%
0%1%
10%
45%
39%
5%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Terrified Anxious Moderately
confident
Confident Very confident
(Mar 2012 to April 2015, n = 383, 45% response)
How confident are you as a moderator?
Start of
module
End of
module
36%
38%
20%
4%
1%2%
5%
51%
38%
5%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Complete
Novice
Generally
unfamiliar
Moderately
competent
Competent Very
competent
(Mar 2012 to April 2015, n = 383, 45% response)
How competent are you as a moderator?
Start of
module
End of
module

19. 19
– I am looking forward to having a go. Before this module I was
dreading it!
– The demo was the most useful part of the course. Being a
student in itself was very valuable.
– The use of breakout rooms was previously a mystery to me
but now I will be using them!
– The course gave space and time to practice working with OU
Live, as well as demonstration, explanation and support
which I found very useful.
– …there is so much to OU Live that it is almost the case that
the more you know, the less you know…
– …it was good to know that competence with basic OU Live
tools would enable one to produce an effective tutorial and
the more complex elements could be introduced later when
confidence and competence have grown.
Participant perceptions (Introductory module)

20. Participant perceptions (Advanced module)
20
– (The module)… is so well designed, with all parts
interconnecting with each other ie teaching,
practice, reflection (personal and collaborative).
– I was quite surprised by the variety of uses of the
whiteboard in OU Live in producing interactive
sessions for students.
– fostering a community of learning using OU Live
sessions... is one of the learning points I intend to
use…
– The OU Live sessions… offered a valuable
opportunity for taking a student’s perspective on
the use of OU Live .
– I got an awful lot from the final activity in which
we presented our ideas: this sharing of our
practices and ideas was extremely useful.

21. Non-cohort routes – ‘Independent’
21
• Aimed at tutors who prefer self paced, self-study to group work
• Provide an overflow when cohort reaches capacity
• Moodle VLE delivery, similar to cohort route
• Activities designed for self study BUT
• Introductory route offers early opportunities to join a Live!
session. Can’t collaborate alone.
• Collaborative production by team of PALS

22. 22
Practice rooms
prominent

23. 23

24. 24

25. Communities of practice
25
• ‘Helping hand’ forum
• Online rooms forum
• OU Live wiki
• Shares good practice
• Open to all staff

27. Other development initiatives for OU Live
27
• ‘PALS’ – Peer Associate Lecturer Support group
• Exemplar tutorials in different disciplines (Macdonald and Campbell, 2011)
• Face to face development sessions – eg scenarios, sharing
practice
• One-off online ‘Talking point’ events (Campbell & Jones, 2014)
• Series of ‘transition’ events

28. Overall principles
28
Relevant and timely to
own working practices
Scaffold - start simple,
build up from the basics
Practice alone or
with peers
Experiential online
activities – learn as you do
Grounded in pedagogy
Informal social learning –
learn as you discuss and
share ideas
Offer choice – time-
limited cohort or own-
pace self-study
Supported learning
with peer moderators
Reflect on own and
others’ actions

29. 29

30. Contact details…
30
Dr Anne Campbell
Online Educational Developer
anne.campbell@open.ac.uk
Graham Storey
Project Manager
graham.storey@open.ac.uk
Associate Lecturer Support and Professional Development team
The UK Open University