In this reflective essay, I am going to share my
experience on teaching Information Security course using various ICT-tools. It
was the fourth course that I was teaching in the span of one year at Lulea
University of Technology (LTU). I got good reviews and some critical comments
in my three previous courses. Those courses have some limitations in terms of
aligning intended learning outcomes, teaching/learning activities, and
assessment. Particularly, utilization of ICT-tools in these courses was limited
to Fronter and Adobe Connect. Before teaching my fourth course ‘Information Security’,
I attended two courses in teaching and learning in higher education. In these courses, I came
across two theoretical lenses constructive alignment (Biggs & Tang, 2011) and conversational framework (Laurillard, 2002). The theoretical lenses were useful to understand how
to align various teaching/learning activities and assessment process.
Furthermore, the framework also helped me to select different ICT-tools and
integrate these tools to teaching/learning activities. In response to the questions
such as why two theories, I would say constructive alignment provides a
holistic approach to align intended learning outcome, teaching learning
activities, and assessment, but says little about choice of media in this
process. On the other hand, conversational framework as a complementary
framework explains nicely on selection and use of the media. For example,
Laurillard’s (2002) framework explains how teachers and students create a
shared understanding through discussion, adaptation, interaction, and
reflection. She also suggested that in this learning process, media provide
different affordances, such as narrative (e.g. showing some text and images),
interactive (e.g. responding to the participant), communicative (e.g.
exchanging ideas through discussion forums), adaptive (e.g. changing the
learning environment as per learners need) and productive (e.g. where learners
can produce something while learning).
To start with the planning of mixed mode (distance as
well as campus) teaching/learning activities as Salmon (2002) termed it as E-tivity. My prime concern was to use
the ICT-tools to actively involve all the students, especially distance, in the
classroom discussions and exercises. In Laurillard’s word, I used media as an interactive
(Adobe), communicative (Fronter and Wiki) and productive (Security Lab) tool. In
this approach, I establish myself as an e-mediators (Salmon, 2004). I applied the E-tivity concept here to bring
learners and e-moderator (myself) in the same platform using online
communication environment. To achieve this goal as Salmon suggested, I asked my
teaching assistant, to provide all the necessary information to explore the
ICT-tools that we were using in the course. Thereafter, I asked my students to
write their perception of information security as the first assignment. The
idea was to socialize and understand their pre-knowledge and expectation from
the course. The initial short notes from students helped me to get an overall
idea of students’ background with regard to the subject. The intended learning
outcome of the course was to provide a broader picture of the information
security as formal, informal and technical controls.
The next activity was to make interactive seminar. In
this seminar, the students were already provided with reading materials before
coming to classroom. Thereafter, they used to write down the essence of the
reading materials and try to form a shared understanding through debate and
discussions on the wiki. The biggest challenge
in this case was to actively involve students in the discussions. For example, it
was easy to engage on-campus student, but bringing distance students into the
dialogue was not so easy. To tackle this situation, I used Adobe as an
interactive tool. The benefits of using adobe are we can use microphone, chat
room, discussion rooms, etc. to promote active participation. There are some technical challenges with
using adobe such as poor sound and video quality, and low bandwidth in the end
user side.
In my teaching/learning activities, some elements of
flipped classroom (Baker, 2000) were also introduced. For instance, I use to record
all the lectures so that distance student can watch the video in their own pace
and post their reflections and questions in the wiki. The use of wiki was not
only for writing learning diaries but also for the group discussion. For that I
divided the students into different groups and assigned a case study so that
they can generate discussion among their own group members. The idea of
dividing students into smaller groups was to enact the sense of roles and
responsibilities among group members. The enactment was easy in smaller group.
However, at the same time, I gave the liberty to every student so that they can
comments to any other groups’ task, if they found some discussions interesting
to them. I was continually reading and monitoring their wiki entries. I have
also used the learning management system (Fronter) as an information organizing
tool. For instance all the lecture recordings, prescribed reading materials,
and administrative information were uploaded on the Fronter. The information
security course needs hands on exercises as well. Therefore, I designed some
lab assignments. The micro approach in designing lab assignments was PSI
personalized system of instruction (Sherman & Ruskin, 1978). The idea is to give assignment with specific
deadline, and make the entire assignments path dependent. It means they have to
complete first assignment to attempt the second one. Moodle another learning
management system was deployed to handle security lab exercises. Salmon (2002)
argued that E-tivies take place asynchronously; however, I utilized both
synchronous and asynchronous approach to provide feedback and critique as an
e-moderator. Furthermore, the ICT-tools facilitated an environment where
learner/moderator exchange their information, co-create their knowledge, and
developed the habit of being responsible for reflecting and assessing their own
in addition to peers work.
The whole process helped me to do the formative
assessment more efficiently and effectively. Likewise, I could easily monitor
the contributions of each student as an individual as well as a contributor to
the group work. For the summative assessment, I used case study analysis
instead of multiple choice questions. The evaluation framework was derived from
SOLO framework (Biggs & Tang, 2011). The framework suggests creating a deep learning
among students. Therefore, to assess the students’ level of understanding, I reassigned
the same task to them that they did at the beginning of the lecture. For
example, write about their understanding of information security. And, as expected
the understanding of students about the subject was enriched. For example, at
the beginning, most of them wrote that they think information security is
mostly about technical control; however, after the course, they realized that information
security is not just about protecting hardware and software, but it is an
interaction among technical, social, formal (policies), and informal (culture)
controls.
Teaching students with different cultural and
educational background, and mix of online and campus students using different
media in education is always a challenging task. One of the challenges in the
online education is to create a sense of presence as Dreyfus (2008) call it embodied involvement. That’s why Salmon
(2002) suggested that the first step in this learning process should be ‘Socialization’. We have
to create a rapport with the student. We as an e-moderator needs a lot of
social skills to successfully implement eLearning platforms.
It is also important to make all the teachers’
familiar with the ICT-tools and pedagogical approaches. We need to apply useful
and easy to use ICT-tools to the students. In my course, I found that once the
students get familiar with the tools, they start using it in a very productive
way. Likewise, teacher assistant plays an important role in providing technical
support, managing assignments, and facilitating students to communicate with the
teacher.
Similarly, conducting online examination can be
another challenge. It is difficult to monitor the students during the exam
time, and sometimes students get offended when they are asked to install
spyware to take distance exam. One of the solutions can be to create
affiliation with different distant educational institutions and provide
examination facilities in those affiliated centers.
In conclusion, the growing use of internet and inter-connectivity
have changed the teaching paradigms, therefore it’s a time to look for appropriate
pedagogical approaches that can integrate the emerging technologies in teaching/learning
activities.
References
