L3 3 2

=Teaching staff are provided with support resources (including training, guidelines and examples) for developing learning activities that support incremental development of student e-learning skills. =

Evidence
Teaching staff should be supported in developing their own skills as learning facilitators able to engage the students in effective learning built on a foundation of practice, demonstrated competency and guided reflection.

Kvavik and Caruso consider training to be an ongoing requirement as technology advances and changes, ‘[w]e cannot assume that students are prepared to take advantage of these technologies in the absence of planned, systematic, and just-in-time training that is based on a recognized level of required skills’ (p. 19). Students need to learn how they can learn with new technologies and this training must be continuous (Kvavik & Caruso 2005).

There are two dimensions to the support of knowledge and skill development for e-learning: Technical knowledge and skills; and information and communication literacy skills, which include an understanding of e-learning educational principles (Kirkwood and Price, 2005) and motivation (Cao, 2005).

Students need support when undertaking e-learning, see S1 and S4. Staff need to know how to provide the appropriate scaffolding of student e-learning skills. Support resources for staff to undertake professional development enabling them to develop effective learning activities needs to be in place.

The JISC Digital Libraries in the Classroom report (n.d.) concludes that… Through their evaluation activities, DLiC projects have developed a better understanding of students' requirements for effective use of ICT, VLE and electronic information resources. The main findings were: • Students’ level of information literacy skills were often lower than academic staff had expected. • Students may need training not only in how to use a system from a functionality perspective but also how to use it effectively in their studies.

The dependence of e-learning on technology means that students must be able to receive support to ensure they can make effective use of that technology whenever they choose to study (Ragan, 1999; Salmon, 2000; Laurillard, 2002). Access to support facilities has been shown to correlate with improved learning outcomes (Fredericksen et al., 1999) but this is obviously predicated on students getting a professional and timely service.

Teaching staff need training and support if they are to be effective with new technologies and the associated pedagogies. This is a complex area and teaching staff need to be able to access a range of professional support as they encounter issues during their work (Harasim et al. 1995). E–learning is not just a technological add-on that teachers need to learn how to use; it is a new educational system involving new pedagogical and professional procedures and processes that require support and professional development. Khan (2005) notes that many academic and administrative staff may have not experienced e-learning themselves. He recommends that they should undertake a course using the medium in order to better understand the learner’s position (p. 35).

Resources
Milne & White (2005) collect together twenty-three sets of e-learning quality guidelines from an array of geographical regions. Such guidelines, or something like them, should be part of the support offered to staff by their organizations. Staff need guidelines, and examples of good practice.

The University of Florida has a one-stop e-learning support site for students and instructors https://lss.at.ufl.edu/

McPherson & Nunes (2009) describe the integral role that tutors play in e-learning support. As agents responsible for the delivery of e-learning tutors must be equipped with an appropriate set of technical skills and be available to assist students in specific courses.

When performing well, higher education institutions will have developed an overall support mechanism including instructional designers, graphic designers, multimedia specialists, programmers, and information system specialists (Vovides et al. 2007).

Options for professional development in e-learning include not just centrally run courses, but also decentralised systems of mentors, self-tuition and online exploration. All but the most experienced staff surveyed by Mansvelt et al. (2009) wanted readily available ‘just-in-time’ support options and access to exemplars and examples of good practice. In all institutions surveyed staff wanted a range of face-to-face and online opportunities as well as personalised help on a just-in-time basis.

The George Washington University has templates for use by instructors that encourage self-reflection in course design and the use of learning objects and metadata. http://citl.gwu.edu/pages/instructdesignguides.html

eLearning skills training is offered e.g. by inWEnt capacity building international http://gc21.inwent.org/ibt/GC21/en/site/gc21/ibt/openGC21/courses/docs/eskills_2010.pdf