Rhona J Sharpe

• BSc (Hons), Phd, MBA
• Managing Director at University of Oxford

This paper describes the implementation of an e‐learning strategy at a single higher education institution in terms of the levers used to promote effective uptake and ensure sustainable embedding. The focus of this work was at the level of the academic school using a range of change practices including the appointment of school‐based learning techn...

Research has shown that although learners in higher education may be familiar with using technology in their social lives, they do not always use effective strategies when learning online. Drawing on research into student experiences, this book provides 53 practical ideas for teachers and lecturers who are supporting students on blended or fully on...

With recent changes in how UK higher education is funded, universities are operating in a context in which finances are uncertain. It is more important than ever that university leaders are able to manage the finances of their organisations in ways which both provide long-term security and allow for investment in strategically important initiatives...

One of the challenges facing higher education is in understanding what counts for an excellent educational outcome: how students' learning can be measured effectively, and how these measurements might be used to guide current investments and inform future developments. Universities are experienced at measuring students' learning gain in terms of th...

Definitions of digital literacy, fluency or capability are now commonplace. Many universities and colleges have adopted or adapted one of these definitions as an aspiration for their staff and students. Sometimes the focus is on digital skills to perform professionally orientated tasks, sometimes the ambition is more broadly defined in terms of the...

Given that universities have significant choices to make about what is retained from our emergency measures, the authors set out to use the record of our biweekly meetings to examine the choices that we have made during the pandemic and how we have made them. In this collaborative reflective article from authors from five different institutions in...

Surveying students about their experiences has long been a tool used by lecturers to collect feedback on their teaching. More recently, as the student experience has become a strategic priority for higher education institutions, surveys have come to be the dominant tool for academic managers to measure and monitor the quality of teaching. However,...

This study assesses the use of various technologies, from institutional virtual learning environments to Web 2.0 tools, amongst learners studying at six general Further Education colleges in the UK. The study surveyed 218 students from a range of disciplines and qualifications. Cluster analysis revealed distinct patterns of engagement with technolo...

The notion of learning gains has increasingly become apparent within the higher education literature and is gaining traction in government policies in the US and UK, reflecting a desire to “quantify” the impact of university study and teaching excellence in particular. Given the increased policy focus on learning gains, it is essential that researc...

This chapter takes a critical approach to reviewing the use of surveys within the context of the institution, the programme and the individual lecturer. Established findings on survey responses are reviewed including biases in how students evaluate individual lecturers, institutional and disciplinary differences in programme evaluations and the ris...

This paper will explore the role that local research can play in understanding learners' experiences of technology. In the last 15 years there has been an explosion of research into how learners are using technologies to support their studies and this remains an active and important research area. From large-scale survey studies to collective inqui...

This paper reviews the student experience of e-learning in higher education in order to identify areas worthy of future investigation. This review highlights some common themes in the student’s e-learning experience and recommends implications for practice arising from these, particularly the emotionality of the student experience and a concern abo...

The purpose of this review is to discover existing literature on learners’ experiences and expectations of the digital environment within Further Education (FE) and the wider skills sector in the UK. It aims to examine: ● what technology learners own and have access to when they enter FE; ● what technology learners expect to be provided with by t...

See Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLa0Q1qabPg3UOG-50r6E9N04MwKW_DveC&v=JmVBTD9yO14

This chapter identifies the attributes that learners need in order to learn effectively in new technology rich educational environments. There are a number of different ways of synthesising the findings from this emerging literature which relies heavily on qualitative research. This chapter reports on a literature review which adopted a deliberatel...

This paper reports on the first year of a three-year programme of work to evaluate the impact of the specification of the Brookes Graduate Attributes in the Strategy for Enhancing the Student Experience (2010-2015), and their adoption within programmes of study at Oxford Brookes University. Well-articulated learning outcomes are important to prospe...

This paper evaluates the role of the faculty-based Student Support Coordinator (SSC) in a UK university. This paper asks how this new role is working in practice, what are the realities and tensions of the role, and what has been the impact to students? One of the challenges of implementing this new system was expected to be ensuring that all those...

Sharpe and Oliver (Chapter 10) begin our journey into the contexts in which design for learning takes place by examining the course or programme of study and specifically the role of the course team in the design process. They reveal the complexity and sensitivity of the course design process in practice, finding that designing for technology rich...

Rethinking Learning for a Digital Age addresses the complex and diverse experiences of learners in a world embedded with digital technologies. The text combines first-hand accounts from learners with extensive research and analysis, including a developmental model for effective e-learning, and a wide range of strategies that digitally-connected lea...

This study examined the policies and practices in nine UK institutions of further or higher education that had made a commitment to supporting students to develop their capabilities to learn in the digital age. Data were collected over a six-month period through multiple interactions with case study sites. Analysis of these data captures institutio...

Learning technologists and educational technology researchers will be familiar with scenarios where technologies are not taken up and used in the ways we expect them to be. From telephones to texting, to the web itself, there are ample examples from history of technology being appropriated in unexpected ways. This is one of the reasons why Cook and...

A single chapter cannot hope to encompass the breadth, depth or complexity of ‘Internet research methods’ and the research design, data-gathering and ethics issues related to them. This chapter examines one aspect of Internet research in education using the example of a national UK project to explore students’ experiences of technology-mediated lea...

This issue sees the change of name of the journal from ALT-J, Research in LearningTechnology to Research in Learning Technology – The Journal of the Association forLearning Technology. It might seem a small change in the reordering of the title andsubtitle of the journal, but it will require a commitment from all of us involved in thejournal to cha...

The papers in this issue present a convenient snapshot of current research in learning technology, both in their coverage of the issues that concern us and the methods that are being used to investigate them. This issue shows that e-learning researchers are interested in: what technologies are available and explorations of their potential (Nie et a...

This was a highly focused review, accessing only literature that relevant to the theme explaining learner differences. The review did not synthesize current empirical research. Instead it reviewed conceptual accounts which have explanatory power, i.e. those account which could be used explain individual differences in learners’ experiences of e-lea...

This paper reports an evaluation of a special interest group created to support e-learning researchers. The study aimed to examine the ways in which short term funding is used to support the development of a community and the sustainability challenges facing this emerging community of practice when initial funding ceased. The iterative, formative e...

https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/transforming.pdf

After the previous special issue on immersive virtual worlds, this issue of ALT-J returns to more familiar territory. The opening paper from Carol Russell continues to build ALT-J's corpus of knowledge around institutional embedding of technology; this time through an evaluation of the effectiveness of a staff development programme. The following f...

This paper reports some of the results from a mixed-method research project to evaluate learners’ experiences of e-learning at Oxford Brookes University. Here we present the analysis of responses to a survey completed by 1,180 full-time undergraduate students. The survey aimed to elicit patterns and preferences in technology use by this group. It w...

After the previous special issue on immersive virtual worlds, this issue of ALT-J returns to more familiar territory. The opening paper from Carol Russell continues to build ALT-J’s corpus of knowledge around institutional embedding of technology; this time through an evaluation of the effectiveness of a staff development programme. The following f...

This paper describes the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) process that ran alongside the JISC Users and Innovation Programme’s (U&I) Emerge support project to inform and direct its community-based model of support. The iterative nature of the inquiry enabled the collection of data at multiple points over time and in various formats. The result was a large...

Opening the 2008 e-learning@greenwich conference, this keynote presentation summarised the findings of the JISC Learner Experiences projects and the Oxford Brookes HE Academy Pathfinder project. As this area of research has grown rapidly in the last few years, a vast amount of rich and valuable data is being produced that provides an insight into l...

Learning technologies play an increasingly important part in higher education instruction worldwide. Recent learner studies in the UK discovered an underworld of learning technology use which is integral to student lives. They showed that students make sophisticated use of an increasing range of educational media and are capable of customising and...

https://wiki.brookes.ac.uk/display/hearoc/Home

This chapter reports on an implementation of blended e-learning within three modules in the School of Health and Social Care at Oxford Brookes University. All preregistration students within the school are required to take an interprofessional education module in each year of their study. These three modules have undergone a radical redesign, promp...

This chapter reports on an implementation of blended e-learning within three modules in the School of Health and Social Care at Oxford Brookes University. All preregistration students within the school are required to take an interprofessional education module in each year of their study. These three modules have undergone a radical redesign, promp...

Learning technologies play an increasingly important part in higher education instruction worldwide. Recent learner studies in the UK discovered an underworld of learning technology use which is integral to student lives. They showed that students make sophisticated use of an increasing range of educational media and are capable of customising and...

This paper describes the implementation of an e-learning strategy at a single higher education institution in terms of the levers used to promote effective uptake and ensure sustainable embedding. The focus of this work was at the level of the academic school using a range of change practices including the appointment of school-based learning techn...

The review report addresses the current meanings of 'blended learning' across the sector. A team of researchers from the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development (OCSLD) has completed a review of the UK literature and practice relating to the undergraduate experience of blended learning. The study aimed to review existing research and prac...

This paper reviews the student experience of e-learning in higher education in order to identify areas worthy of future investigation. This review highlights some common themes in the student's e-learning experience and recommends implications for practice arising from these, particularly the emotionality of the student experience and a concern abo...

Powerful arguments have already been made for supporting new teaching assistants, and there now needs to be a framework in which this can develop within the present United Kingdom context set by the Dearing Report and the creation of the Institute for Learning and Teaching. The framework presented here is based on an underpinning model of how teach...

Professional development for staff in higher education is developing rapidly in response to current national developments. As staff seek support and development to cope with the changes in their students, appropriate teaching, learning and assessment methods and rising use of learning technologies, institutions must be in a position to provide rele...

Professional development for staff in higher education is developing rapidly in response to current national developments. As staff seek support and development to cope with the changes in their students, appropriate teaching, learning and assessment methods and rising use of learning technologies, institutions must be in a position to provide rele...