{"id":500,"date":"2015-03-24T15:23:49","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T15:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/loproject\/?p=500"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:23:59","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:23:59","slug":"eresources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/loproject\/2015\/03\/24\/eresources\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating an effective e-learning resource: some helpful tips for a challenging process"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"E<\/a><\/p>\n

One of\u00a0my initial tasks when I started on the ‘Learning Outcomes Project’ was to develop an online resource\u00a0that aimed to improve students use of their learning outcomes.\u00a0 My brief was as general as that, however, I knew that\u00a0we wanted a resource that students would find useful as a learning support and would help them to use learning outcomes as a\u00a0study tool.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0From our previous research activities we had already obtained\u00a0a lot of data from students about how they viewed learning outcomes and how they went about\u00a0incorporating them, if at all, into their study approaches.\u00a0 This data was presented and discussed in our published paper ‘Learning about learning outcomes: the student perspective’<\/a>.\u00a0 So, drawing on this data and referring to relevant learning theories I developed a resource that offered students a framework for how they might use their learning outcomes to make their current study approaches more effective.<\/p>\n

The aim of this particular blog post is not to discuss this resource as such (we are currently preparing a paper in which we do this) but to hopefully\u00a0help, to some extent, those who are in the process of developing e-resources of their own.\u00a0 My main way of\u00a0doing this is to highlight some key papers that provide some very useful and relevant insights and\/or guidance about developing effective e-resources.\u00a0 And that word ‘effective’ is key because as you will see when you read the papers,\u00a0an effective resource is one that\u00a0is not only pedagogically or educationally sound, but one that has the greatest amount of ‘uptake’ from its intended audience.\u00a0 I would assure you as well, based on my own experiences, that this latter\u00a0type of effectiveness\u00a0is the hardest to achieve.\u00a0 I am confident that the resource I developed is well-grounded within appropriate\u00a0learning theories and methods,\u00a0is\u00a0very educationally-sound and is a good learning support\u00a0resource.\u00a0\u00a0In our evaluations, students also say that when they go through the resource they find it very helpful and will look to incorporate some (or all) of the guidance it offers into their study approaches.\u00a0 I am, then, quite\u00a0reasonably assured that students who\u00a0view the resource do find it useful.\u00a0 Therein, however, lies the biggest problem – getting it viewed by students.\u00a0\u00a0The resource is currently\u00a0housed on\u00a0our student learning support department web pages and is alongside other relevant e-resources concerning essay writing, plagiarism, etc.\u00a0 Currently, however, the ‘uptake’ of the resource has been, to say the least, disappointing.<\/p>\n

\"Ignore\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now,\u00a0I deliberately phrased the problem as ‘getting\u00a0[the resource]\u00a0viewed by students’ rather than ‘getting students to\u00a0view it’ because the latter phrasing implies a fault with the students and that they are not doing something that they should be doing, i.e. viewing all of the resources developed for them.\u00a0 This, of course, is completely unfair to the students.\u00a0 They have no obligation to view\u00a0the many different types of resources provided for them,\u00a0especially if these resources, whilst they\u00a0may be helpful, are not mandatory to their particular courses or modules.\u00a0 It is our obligation, as the tutors,\u00a0educational researchers\/developers, etc, to develop our resources in ways that not only meet our\u00a0pedagogic needs (or desires)\u00a0but also satisfy\u00a0our ‘end-user’ requirements (i.e. what our students specifically want and need, and when they want and need those things).\u00a0 From my experience,\u00a0I would say that if we do not fulfil this latter obligation then no matter how good\u00a0our resources are, they will\u00a0inevitably become the digital equivalent of the dusty book left on the bookshelf.<\/p>\n

\"Resources\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In our forthcoming paper\u00a0I will discuss in detail the reasons why I think getting the ‘uptake’ for our resource has been challenging.\u00a0 Many of these reasons will,\u00a0I think,\u00a0centre on the extent to which the resource does or does not satisfy our ‘end-user’ requirements.\u00a0 So I would urge anyone who is in the process of developing an e-resource, or is thinking that they might embark on the process soon, to read the papers below (and do even further reading around the topic)\u00a0to help you make\u00a0a resource that is\u00a0as ‘effective’ as possible:<\/p>\n