A short  introduction to engaging students with online teaching and learning (2 page PDF).

Download the leaflet.

This volume, produced by the University of London’s Centre for Online and Distance Education (CODE), addresses the practice and theory of online and distance education, building on knowledge and expertise developed in the University over a lengthy period. It was written and edited by a total of 36 authors including many CODE Fellows past and present and their colleagues and collaborators. Work on the book began well before the pandemic, but its comprehensive coverage of the pedagogy and practice of online and distance learning is of even greater relevance in the post-pandemic era of online and hybrid provision.

Throughout the book, contributors explore important principles and highlight successful practices in areas including course design and pedagogy, online assessment, open education, inclusive practice, and enabling student voice. Case studies illustrate prominent issues and approaches. Together, the chapters offer current and future leaders and practitioners a practical, productive, practice- and theory-informed account of the present and likely future state of online and distance higher education worldwide.

This toolkit has been designed to support the review and redesign of existing programmes and courses as well as the development of new ones for the University of London. It is divided into a number of sections which give both general guidance on assessment, feedback and marking as well as providing detailed descriptions and discussions of a range of methods.

Download the assessment tool kit part 1

The exploration of time-constrained examinations presented here highlights the range of possibilities that examinations offer in terms of different methods of assessment. At the same time, it embeds the discussion of possible methods of assessment under time-constrained examination conditions within the broader context of assessment and feedback practice. It covers:

• principles underpinning good assessment design practice, 
• the relationship between formative and summative assessment, 
• the language and design of exam questions, and 
• design which minimises opportunities for academic misconduct.

Download the assessment toolkit part 2

This page provides information and support for teaching online during the Covid-19 crisis.

In 2018 a research project led by Professor Stephen Brown with Dr Endrit Kromidha and sponsored by the University of London Careers group aimed:

• To ascertain the potential for e-learning to enhance careers services provided by The Careers Group (TCG). 
• To develop a plan to enable The Careers Group to develop effective e-learning for students.
• To explore the possibility of sharing student e-learning resources among members of the TCG.

Principal findings:

• More careers and employability guidance needs to be available on demand at any time and accessible by students, careers staff and faculty academics online and via mobile platforms
• e-learning is the only viable option
• e-learning activities need to go beyond information delivery to include practical skills development
• activities need measurable learning outcomes and built-in assessments that enable learners to measure their own learning gains

Download: The Careers Group e-Learning Developments report.

This book chapter by Dr David Baume, CDE Fellow, and Eileen Scanlon, Open University Regius Professor, is based on earlier work by David with CDE Fellows Professor Alan Tait and the late Dr Roger Mills.

It identifies seven conditions for effective learning:

1. A clear structure, framework, scaffolding surrounds, supports and informs learning;
2. High standards are expected of learners, and are made explicit;
3. Learners acknowledge and use their prior learning and their particular approaches to learning;
4. Learning is an active process;
5. Learners spend lots of time on task, that is, doing relevant things and practising;
6. Learning is undertaken at least in part as a collaborative activity, both among students and between students and staff; and
7. Learners receive and use feedback on their work.

Baume, D. and Scanlon, E. (2018). What the research says about how and why learning happens. In: R. Luckin, ed., Enhancing Learning and Teaching with Technology - What the Research Says, 1st ed. London: UCL IoE Press, pp.2-13.

A workbook (warning: large file, 2094 KB) prepared for the National Universities Commission for Nigeria by Dr David Baume and Professor Stephen Brown. The workbook was designed to underpin a three-day practical workshop delivered in Abuja, Nigeria, 3-5 July 2018. The workbook is freely available to download under a Creative Commons BY NC SA licence.

This Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Get Interactive: Practice Teaching with Technology, is a three-week exploration of some of the popular technologies that educators use to make their learning engaging, interactive and dynamic. It is aimed at educators who have little experience using online tools and technology for teaching purposes but who have basic familiarity with the Internet, online learning environments and computers in general. The course is most relevant for teachers, lecturers and instructors of adults and older children (i.e., secondary school, college, further education, higher education, continuing education).

The course is taught by: 

Dr Eileen Kennedy, Researcher in online learning, UCL Institute of Education

Dr Nancy Weit, Digital learning specialist, Architela

Sarah Sherman, Manager, Bloomsbury Learning Environment (BLE) (CDE Fellow)

It is free to take this MOOC, however there is fee of £39, payable on the course site if you would like to receive a course completion certificate.

This book chapter by Dr David Baume, CDE Visiting Fellow, and Eileen Scanlon, Open University Regius Professor, builds on an earlier chapter, What the research says about how and why learning happens. It relates the seven conditions for effective learning to the Jisc Digital Capabilities Framework and thereby offers  a concise account of good learning for the digital world.

Baume, D. and Scanlon, E. (2018). A contemporary digital capabilities framework. In: R. Luckin, ed., Enhancing Learning and Teaching with Technology, 1st ed. London: UCL IoE Press, pp.150-153.

This open access e-book, was co-edited by Sarah Sherman, CDE Fellow and Service Manager of the Bloomsbury Learning Environment (BLE) and Leo Havemann, UCL, as the culmination of a two-year focus on assessment and feedback. The e-book contains three research papers, which capture macro-level snapshots of current practice across the BLE partner institutions, as well as a wide range of pedagogic and technical case studies. The book chapters, which were contributed by academics, learning technologists, administrators and consultants, bring a variety of perspectives to the topic. The collection therefore offers an overview of current assessment practices, and some inspiration and ideas for making better use of technology.

Download the free e-book.

The study presented in this report explores how online tools in a context of ipsative assessment influence performance and retention, and thus enable progression to the second module of the UoL PG Cert Learning and Teaching in Higher Education programme.

Principal findings include:

1. Engagement with the discussion forum on learning content is not a very good predictor of completion and success except that unsurprisingly no engagement at all predicts non-completion.
2. Engagement in peer review, and especially giving feedback to peers, is a good predictor of success. Students who engaged moderately or well in the peer review were successful despite low discussion forum posting.
3. Different learners might use different tools for success either posting in the discussion forum or engagement in peer review. One student with weak engagement in peer review did perform exceptionally well. This student did use the discussion forum to a great extent for posting ideas and learning which may have resulted in the successful outcome. Thus, spending time on task in either the forum or the peer review was linked to high or moderate performance. Other learners seemed to prefer to engage with both activities and these students were also successful.

Download the full report.

The Digital Educator project set out to identify significant developments in Educational Technology which can influence the HE Distance Learning Sector in the next two to five years.

Principal findings:

Mobile Technologies and Social Media are often quite well established, but AI and VR are more emerging, with learning analytics being somewhat in between.

Humanities disciplines have much less uptake of a whole range of technologies, while professional education and, perhaps unsurprisingly Mathematics/Technology have made more use. Biomedical education has slightly lower uptake than the latter two domains, but there was considerable enthusiasm for a number of more avant-garde technologies, such as Augmented Reality and AI.

Disciplinary differences reflect different barriers to acceptance. For example, it was felt that humanities academics were less familiar with many of the technologies than other disciplines because they are less likely to use them in research. However, mathematics and technology academics, while very comfortable with technology, are often less familiar with the pedagogical ideas that would help them put these technologies into practice in education.

Technology itself was not generally a barrier, but there were a number of individual and organisational barriers. These include individual lack of familiarity with technology and also organisational factors such as incentive structures that do not reward pedagogical innovation.

Where technological barriers do exist, these tend to be in situations where there have not been sufficient resources to explore and develop new technologies in an educational context.

Download the final report [PDF]

The On-Boarding project aimed to create a template for student on-boarding in under graduate and post graduate distance learning programmes administered by University of London Worldwide (UoLW).

Principal findings:

Students found the core study skills course based on the new template useful and engaging, they thought the template was easy to navigate and were satisfied with the quality of the content.

Students' feedback and recommendations about future improvements highlight their need for more course-specific content and support elements.

The survey findings also highlighted the need for constant monitoring and updating of the core study skills guide in order to ensure that all links and resources are accessible.

• Download the CDE On-boarding Project report [PDF]

This CDE project aimed to provide programme teams with guidance and support on IL that is practical, evidence- and practice-based and scholarship-informed, to enable enhancements in students’ critical and informed use of a range of appropriate information sources.

Download the Final Report [PDF]

This CDE project aimed to investigate the impact of the teaching, learning and assessment framework (Track C) applied to the MSc in Professional Accountancy (MPACC course), to establish early signals of impact on student retention and inform potential further developments.

Principal findings:

• Most users have prior knowledge of using a VLE, and therefore a certain level of expectation of usability.
• There is variability in the way students use the online tools and this is influenced by factors such as time available, prior experience in using online tools and the extent to which they understand and value the tools.
• Users have clear ideas on what would improve their experience of using online tools; for example, tools with features that allow some form of feedback.
• Data systems need to be designed to allow for links between different data sources, so that a coherent digital picture of users can be captured.
• Some direct correlation is evident between user and performance data.

• Download: Impact of Track C on the Student Experience report [PDF].

This project aimed to examine the impact on campus-based teaching for those who had been involved in MOOC production and presentation.

Principal findings

Involvement with MOOCs has indeed had indirect and unintended outcomes on mainstream teaching practice:

• By accelerating innovation with digital practices in both distance and campus-based programmes.
• Transferring good practice gained from participation in MOOCs to other aspects of participants’ practice, career or professional role.

• Download: MOOCs: The Consequences For Learning and Teaching in Credit Bearing Programmes [PDF]

This CDE project set out to identify, and assess the feasibility, of approaches to mitigate against student drop out from the University of London International Programmes.

Principal findings

Student retention is highly contextual and contingent on institutional and student aims, expectations and conceptions of how ‘success’ is defined.  Interventions at key annual transition points might have significant impact on retention rates and the first year of study is where potentially the biggest impact can be made on student retention.

• Download: Supporting Progression and Completion Final Report [PDF]

This CDE Teaching and Research Award-funded project adapted a model for mixed mode teacher development courses for South Africans from deprived areas, for use with mathematics teacher educators in East Africa.  The report highlights issues of context-specific content and framing, including effective 'low tech' delivery and approaches to overcoming the digital divide.

Download the report [PDF]

This CDE Teaching and Research Award-funded project identifies ways in which task-based principles can be used to define, guide and design online CPD activities.

Download the Final Report [PDF]

There are many different ideas about the best ways to teach, and there has been a great deal of research, of varying quality, into what works best and why.  This resource summarises some of the more important ideas, drawing on substantial, evidence-based pedagogical research.

Some theories of learning (PDF)

What research says about learning (PDF)

The idea of ‘literacy’ or ‘literacies’ is receiving significant attention across higher education. This suggests that the idea is being found useful. 
This short (4 page) paper considers by whom, and why, and for what purposes, and with what actual or potential effects.

Some notes on literacies (PDF)

A previous paper in the journal Open Learning reported evidence that ‘proactive motivational support’ to distance students had some effect on their success rates.  This paper [PDF] reports an attempt in the University of London International Programmes to use proactive motivational support in the form of ‘motivational emails’ which found an increase in retention of 2.3%.  Although this increase was small, it had a positive financial return on investment to the institution.

The paper suggests that motivational emails could be made more effective through the use of interactivity, nudging and priming.  However it also argues that distance student retention will always depend less on technology and more on personal human support.

This paper calls for a new theory of learner support in distance learning based on recent findings in the fields of learning and motivational psychology.  It surveys some current learning motivation theories and proposes that models drawn from the relatively new field of Positive Psychology such as the ‘Strengths Approach’, together with Dweck’s Self Theory and Anderson’s insistence on proactive support, could be developed into a ‘Proactive Motivational Support’ (PaMS) theory.  Such a theory might enable distance educators to support learners more successfully than existing models of learning skills development and remedial support.  The paper then reports on further findings from experiments (one previously described in Open Learning), using these approaches in the UKOU.  These findings confirm the previous results, showing significant increases in retention which, in the context of the UKOU’s funding arrangements, appear to be at least self-financing.

This paper reviews some of the ways in which student success can be predicted in conventional and distance education.  Predicting such success is particularly important for new students where the pre-course start information available is sometimes slight and withdrawal often occurs very early in a course.

It suggests that in such cases statistical methods involving logistic regression analysis are the most useful rather than questionnaires or tutors’ opinions.  Identifying students with low probability of success allows support to be targeted on them.  However there are ethical dilemmas to do with targeting support and openness with students about the results of any analysis.

The Student Learning Hours and Learning Strategies project, led by Professor Stephen Brown and Dr David Baume, addressed three research questions:

RQ1. How do student study hours and study patterns compare with programme team expectations?
RQ2. How and why do students engage with different types of content and learning activity?
RQ3. What role does peer interaction play in student learning?

Read about the findings in the final report [PDF]

A presentation by Dr Jane Secker, DELILA Project Manager, London School of Economics. Conducted at a DELILA (Developing Educators Learning and Information Literacies for Accreditation) dissemination event hosted by the Centre for Distance Education on 26 July 2011.

Listen to the presentation [external link]

Presentation from Research in Distance Education 2011 conference, held on 26 October 2011. Presented by Dr Sarah Rauchas and Matthew Yee-King, Goldsmiths College. Goldsmiths offers a degree in Creative Computing in a distance context. As part of a bigger study to look at ways of delivering and supporting students in their creative practice, we have been looking at the role of feedback to students on their assessed work, particularly assignment work.

Listen to the presentation [external link]

Dr Jeanette Botha (University of South Africa) conducts a presentation and a discussion on issues around the ‘digital divide’ within South Africa (something likely to be an issue in other countries around the world). The main thrust of the talk was: “Who are we teaching?” Dr Botha alluded to the issue of technology driving education vs education driving technology and highlighted numerous concerns of developing world ODL practitioners and students, contextualizing ODEL in South Africa in the current socio-economic framework, with reference to Unisa. The argument was made for the pragmatic consideration of the acquisition and use of appropriate technologies in line with these “real world” considerations.

Listen to the presentation [external link]

James Ballard from the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC) came to the Centre for Distance Education to introduce a framework for personalised learning and discuss its relevance and application. 
This session will be of interest to anyone interested in the development of e-portfolio, VLEs or e-learning in general.

Listen to the presentation [external link]

James Ballard from the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC) came to the Centre for Distance Education to introduce a framework for personalised learning and discuss its relevance and application. 
This session will be of interest to anyone interested in the development of e-portfolio, VLEs or e-learning in general.

Listen to the presentation [external link]

James Ballard from the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC) came to the Centre for Distance Education to introduce a framework for personalised learning and discuss its relevance and application. 
This session will be of interest to anyone interested in the development of e-portfolio, VLEs or e-learning in general.

Listen to the presentation [external link]

A presentation by Claire Gordon (London School of Economics). Conducted at a DELILA (Developing Educators Learning and Information Literacies for Accreditation) dissemination event hosted by the Centre for Distance Education on 26 July 2011.

Listen to the presentation [external link]

Presentation from Research in Distance Education 2011 conference, held on 26 October 2011. Dr Gwyneth Hughes and Kaori Kitagawa, Institute of Education - 'Implementing Ipsative assessment’. 
Distance learners rely on effective assessment and feedback for motivation and for learning. There is evidence from a previous study that an ipsative approach to assessment (assessment based on a comparison with a learner’s previous performance) might both motivate distance learners by developing self-awareness of progress and help them to take a longer-term approach to academic study.

In this project an ipsative feedback scheme was developed with distance learning tutors and implemented using an ipsative feedback form for students to complete. These forms and subsequent tutor comments were evaluated and analysed for changes in feedback practice. Students and tutors were also interviewed about the value of the scheme. Findings indicated that ipsative feedback on progress has the potential to motivate learners and to encourage them to act on developmental feedback, but further intervention is needed to manage student expectations and to ensure that this intervention is sustainable and scalable.

Listen to the presentation [external link]

A presentation by Cathy Walsh and Ella Mitchell, University of East London. Conducted at a DELILA (Developing Educators Learning and Information Literacies for Accreditation) dissemination event hosted by the Centre for Distance Education on 26 July 2011.

Listen to the presentation [external link]

A presentation by Jane Hughes, University College London. Conducted at a DELILA (Developing Educators Learning and Information Literacies for Accreditation) dissemination event hosted by the Centre for Distance Education on 26 July 2011. 

Listen to the presentation [external link]

Most of us have our own responsibilities for some element(s) of the student journey through University. But who looks after the whole student journey? And how do we each locate our own particular responsibility for ‘our’ part of the student’s journey, from first contact to being alumnus / alumna, in the bigger picture of the student journey?

CDE Fellow David Baume’s “A Student Journey” offers one possible account. It does more than list the steps in the journey. It suggests what success might look like at each step. Of course, it should be modified as required for your own University.

It has been used by groups of staff from different parts of various Universities as a tool for planning, for ensuring the coherence of, the student journey. It works equally well for in-person, blended and distance education.

Download "A Student Journey" (PDF)

How can education be kept both good and simple, despite the two elephants in the room - complexity and technology? That’s the question that CDE Fellow David Baume answers in a 15 minute presentation to a University of Kent E-Learning webinar - What can we learn from distance learning?

Keeping it good means being clear what 21st century qualities we are trying to help our graduates to develop. David offers a long list, all starting with C: Competent, Communicative, Collaborative, Creative, Critical, Comfortable with Complexity, Conscientious, appropriately Confident, and Computerate. It is not enough for students, David stresses, just to know large numbers of things. Good also means applying what we know about the conditions for good student learning.

David suggests 5 ways to keep it simple. Use:

• Engaging learning activities, aligned to:
• Clear vivid attractive learning outcomes;
• Pointers to good sources & resources;
• Peer support and review; and
• Helpful self, tutor and peer feedback

Watch David's presentation on keeping education good and simple.

A short introduction to the purpose of learning outcomes statements and how to write good ones.  This guide was developed by Elizabeth Burns with input from former CODE Fellow David Baume.

Writing Learning Outcomes [PDF]