The new UHI Learning and Teaching Enhancement Strategy 2022-27 was launched in autumn 2022. Learning and Teaching is currently working on updating the Benchmarks for the use of Technology in Learning and Teaching which are based on the Learning and Teaching Enhancement strategy. This guidance refers to the previous version of the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Strategy and Benchmarks. It will be updated during the current academic year. Until this guidance is updated to reflect the new Benchmarks please feel confident to continue using it.
This resource was adapted from Benchmarks for the Use of Technology in Learning and Teaching, which incorporates the openly licensed 3E Framework for technology-enhanced learning developed by Keith Smyth. The 3E Framework and associated guidance which is incorporated in adapted form in this document was first published under a Creative Commons license by Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, Scotland 2011, in their Benchmarks for the Use of Technology in Modules (authored by Smyth, K., Bruce, S., Mainka, C., and Fotheringham, J.)
This work is licensed under the same Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 UK: Scotland License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/scotland/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.
Introduction
The Benchmarks for the use of Technology in Learning and Teaching provide guidance and exemplars for the effective use of Brightspace and other technologies for learning and teaching in pedagogically sound and evidence-based ways.
The benchmarks and associated guidance and exemplars defined and provided here are aligned with the university’s Learning and Teaching Enhancement Strategy, and will enable the embedding of the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Values in how we use the learning environment and other technologies to support learning, teaching and assessment.
Benchmarks for module and unit spaces in Brightspace
The benchmarks comprise three broad descriptors, or categories of use, relating to different ways or extents to which the learning environment and associated technologies can be used to support learning, teaching and assessment in ways that reflect an increasing embedding of the university’s Learning and Teaching Enhancement Values through technology-enhanced educational practices.
The three benchmarks – Threshold, Developed and Exemplar – are defined below:
Threshold
To meet this benchmark your module or unit in Brightspace will encompass all essential module and unit information, guidance to support effective learning, and ‘minimum presence’ requirements as outlined in the Brightspace VLE Checklist
And:
A minimum of two simple and straightforward opportunities for active online student engagement either with the content of the module, with supportive media, for self-reflection, and/or for peer interaction. This is congruent with the LTES value ‘Making active and creative use of technology’.
Meeting the Threshold benchmark is the mandatory minimum requirement for any module or unit in Brightspace.
Developed
Module and units aligned with the ‘Developed’ benchmark will encompass the ‘Threshold’ requirements outlined above, in addition to evidencing embedded pedagogic practice in relation to the Learning and Teaching Enhancement values of:
- Assessment and feedback for learning
- Providing a connected learning experience; and
- Supporting the learner as an individual.
Exemplar
Module and unit spaces which exemplify advanced practice in blended and online engagement in learning and teaching through meeting the requirements of Developed, in addition to evidencing the embedding of the LTES value of ‘Learner choice and personalisation’, and one or more of the values:
- Learning for employment
- Integrated and sustainable teaching practice
- Harnessing open education approaches
- Engaging our students as researchers
In engaging with or working towards embedding technology-supported learning and teaching practice in line with one or more of the benchmarks, it is important to recognise:
- The benchmarks are not intended to reflect of an overall ‘standard’, relevance or robustness of learning and teaching within modules and units, but instead to inform and reflect the extent to which the learning environment and other associated technologies are being used in to support learning and teaching.
- The benchmarks relate specifically to the use of the Brightspace learning environment and associated technologies in learning in teaching. The benchmarks are not intended, and should not be interpreted, as an indication of the overall nature, quality or effectiveness of learning and teaching, as effective practice and engaging learning and teaching will also be occurring in the classroom, field, lab, workshop, studio and other educational environments.
- The benchmarks are not intended to reflect a continuum of practice in which the ‘Exemplar’ is presented as an ideal. Instead, the ‘Threshold’ benchmark is intended to encompass a level of good technology-enhanced practice that is relevant to all modules and units, with the ‘Developed’ benchmark representing a significant further development of good practice specifically in relation to how technology is being used to embed particular LTES values.
The ‘Exemplar’ benchmark is one that may be most applicable at more advanced levels of study, or in heavily blended and fully online learning and teaching, where it would be appropriate for at least some of the more aspirational LTES values indicated above to be embedded in technology-enhanced learning and teaching.
The 3 E Framework
To guide decision making about how to use technology in learning and teaching in ways that are relevant to the discipline, level of study, and experience of staff and students, the Benchmarks for using Technology in Learning and Teaching includes an adapted version of an established framework for designing technology-enhanced learning that is widely used in in the context of educational policy and practice, curriculum design, and staff development in the Further Education and Higher Education sectors.
The 3E Framework is based on an Enhance-Extend-Empower continuum, with illustrative examples of tried and tested approaches to using technology in simple-but-effective ways that increase active engagement in learning (Enhance), through to uses of technology that give students more responsibility for key aspects of their learning (Extend), and to underpin more sophisticated, authentic activities that reflect the real world, professional and vocational environments for which learners are preparing (Empower).
Within the 3E Framework, a ‘small blends’ approach is suggested as the initial starting point for beginning to make active use of technology in modules and units, in ways consistent with the requirements for the Threshold benchmark defined in the previous section.
In considering what the 3E Framework, including the illustrative examples provided, generally indicates about the kinds of changes to learning, teaching and assessment practice that can be effectively supported through technology, the following should be kept in mind:
- Although the 3E stages can be seen as a continuum of change in technology-enhanced learning and teaching practice, they should not be viewed as mutually exclusive. In any single unit module context, there may be a range of learning activities that align with any of the three stages within the Framework.
- Similarly, although the 3E Framework is most likely to be applied within a modular or unit context, it can equally be applied at programme level where common technology-enhanced approaches are used across modules, or to support collaboration and progression to more advanced learning across programme stages.
- In being part of a continuum the 3E stages are not clearly distinct categories, and it is to be expected that some technology-enhanced activities will blur the boundaries between one stage and another. This point perhaps applies particularly at the Enhance and Extend levels, and maybe less so at Empower.
- Where students are new to a topic, and likely to be new to or relatively unfamiliar with the subject matter, then activities at primarily the Enhance stage are often going to be most appropriate. Similarly for students newly enrolled on a programme of studies, for example, first year undergraduates, a balance towards predominantly Enhance level activities may be more appropriate initially.
- Enhance activities can work well in any subject at any level of study. In encouraging the development of learner autonomy and other key skills and attributes required in the workplace, an increase in Extend and Empower activities is more appropriate.
- The 3E Framework does not promote the Empower level as an ideal, and an important part of the ethos of the framework is that tutors and their students will start from (and may end up at) different points on the 3E continuum in terms of applying and using technology in a particular learning and teaching context.
- If the tutor is doing a lot of work at Extend, then aiming for the Empower stage in some aspects of what they do would be very worthwhile. However, if a tutor wants to begin by Enhancing several aspects of what they already do, then this is an equally valuable step in the adoption of technology-enhanced learning.
- As students transition along the 3E continuum, the tutor is relinquishing more control and responsibility to their learners. While this brings benefits, it can take adjusting to and requires the tutor to be comfortable with assuming a facilitating role or, for some kinds of activities, a co-learning role (e.g. in student-led seminars).
Illustrative examples
The following illustrative examples of technology-enhanced approaches and interventions for a range of common learning, teaching and assessment activities, from the simple but effective (Enhance) through to those that are more learner-centric or intended to support more sophisticated, or deeper, forms of engagement in individual and collaborative learning (Extend and Empower).
Enhance
Adopting technology in simple and effective ways to actively support students and increase their activity and self-responsibility.
Extend
Further use of technology that facilitates key aspects of students’ individual and collaborative learning and assessment through increasing their choice and control.
Empower
Developed use of technology that requires higher order individual and collaborative learning that reflects how knowledge is created and used in the professional environment.
The examples are evidence-based, having been developed and/or applied through the use of the 3E Framework in a range of educational contexts. They are intended to provide you with ideas for how you may use the learning environment and other associated technologies to support and engage your own learners in appropriate ways, or which you could tailor or adapt to your own modules and units.
Enhance
Create a series of short weekly or periodic announcements (e.g. using the learning environment announcement tool) that tell students where you expect them to be in the essay research/writing process by the end of that week.
Extend
Create a short 4 or 5 item self-test quiz on a particular topic that ‘releases’ an example of a good essay on successful completion.
Empower
Have students engage critically and directly with the public knowledge base in their subject area by having them produce essays as critical blog posts, or as accurate scholarly pieces for online resources like Wikipedia.
Enhance
Make the group working more manageable and ‘visible’ by having each group post a weekly update of progress to a private discussion forum visible to the group and tutor.
Extend
Consider the use of wikis or other collaborative document tools for the authoring of group reports to aid version control, provide a space for formative feedback and to see the pattern of individual contributions.
Empower
Use wikis and other online spaces to allow peer review and assessment of group reports (e.g. reviewing a report online, then completing a peer review survey in the learning environment).
Enhance
Provide skeleton notes online for students to explore ahead of the next face-to-face or online lecture, and to assist with their note-taking in the lecture itself.
Extend
Have students work individually or in small groups to prepare a mini presentation slot on a particular topic as part of an upcoming face-to-face or online lecture.
Empower
Provide skeleton lecture slides for small groups of more advanced students to research and complete as the basis for a lecture they facilitate or co-facilitate, either for their peers or for students at an earlier stage.
Enhance
Provide links to online case studies, online readings or news clips for students to explore ahead of discussion in class.
Extend
Have students work individually or in pairs in sourcing relevant case studies or resources to be shared online (via a discussion forum, wiki, social bookmarking space, or other collaborative document) and engaged with prior to a tutorial.
Empower
Have students work individually or in small groups to produce an online case study on an allocated topic to be presented in the learning environment, or other digital space, prior to online or face-to-face tutorial sessions.
Enhance
Provide a discussion forum for students to post follow-up comments (queries, issues that are still not clear) to that week’s face-to-face or online seminar, to be picked up during first part of the next week’s lecture or seminar session.
Extend
Encourage more equal engagement in seminars by having students take turns (in pairs or small groups) to produce a summary of that week’s face-to-face or online seminar that is posted to the learning environment, perhaps with a follow-up question to be tackled by the rest of the cohort.
Empower
Have students work in pairs or small groups to design and lead online seminars for particular topics, weeks or units, with guidance from the tutor on their proposed topic and approach.
Enhance
Use copyright cleared online video and multimedia clips, or other interactive open online resources (OER) to reinforce points and examples in face-to-face or online lectures, seminars or workshops.
Extend
Bring guest experts into discussion forums or live virtual classroom webinars for guest speaker spots, lectures or Q&A sessions.
Empower
Have groups of students make short audio or video recordings, to share within or via the learning environment, relating to particular topics, issues or concepts. This could be as part of their participation in online learning activities for a module or unit, or produced and shared as part of their formal coursework.
Enhance
Direct students to use ‘general questions’ discussion forums to handle any general, no-confidential questions about the subject matter or coursework, so that the tutor or lecturer’s answers to common questions are there for all to see. This approach may also encourage peer support in large groups.
Extend
Use online spaces in the learning environment, including discussion forums or virtual classroom spaces, to bring associate tutors or more experienced peers into the cohort as part of a broader team teaching or student mentoring arrangement.
Empower
Where possible use online tools, spaces and resources to support creative and authentic projects that drive collaborative learning from the outset, thus reducing the reliance on teacher-led ‘instruction’ in large groups.
Enhance
Use the option within standard online module or student feedback surveys to include open ‘feed forward’ questions that can be used to enhance learning and teaching and/or provide additional online guidance for future cohorts.
Extend
Use a discussion forum in the learning environment (anonymised or not) to allow students to reflect on and articulate views on the effectiveness of module or unit delivery, ask questions that ‘link forward’ to what comes next in their course of studies, and suggest or provide input into upcoming learning activities.
Empower
Support student-staff consultation and learning enhancement activities through more open and visible means for participation, with a collaborative online area where agendas and relevant documents can be shared and questions raised in advance, and where videoconference or virtual classroom tools can allow remote participation in joint student-staff consultations and programme planning meetings.
Enhance
Use short online multiple choice style self-tests to allow students to gauge their understanding of key terms, concepts and topics at important points during their module or unit.
Extend
Link online self-tests to the release of different sections of material including model answers to common questions or the ‘tutors view’ on complex or contentious issues.
Empower
Have students collaborate in designing online self-tests that can be reused with future cohorts, perhaps as part of their own assessed collaborative work.
Enhance
Have students take turns in defining one or two key terms or concepts relevant to current or upcoming activities, assignments or lectures, for inclusion in an online class glossary (e.g. in a wiki or other shared space or document), to support timely learning within their own cohort and to provide a useful learning resource that can be repurposed by the tutor.
Extend
Have students work in pairs or small groups to create an online guide or engagement activity for a particular topic (e.g. a ‘scavenger hunt’ of relevant and reliable sources and resources on the web for their peers to explore). This could be linked to the requirements for collaborative coursework activities or produced as evidence for an online portfolio.
Empower
Provide a range of relevant online resources within or via the learning environment (e.g. collaborative spaces, links to readings, reports and video clips) that students can use in undertaking case and problem based learning activities.
Enhance
Provide links to resources such as the social networking spaces of relevant professional groups, or the blogs or Twitter feeds of noted experts in the field, for exploration online and as part of class activities.
Extend
Arrange for online guest expert sessions that are co-constructed by the students themselves who collectively determine the questions to be asked and discussed during the guest expert’s online seminar or Q&A, which also has the benefit of minimising preparation time for the tutor and the guest speaker.
Empower
Have students find, engage in, and report back on relevant online supported professional communities that could support continued learning and professional development post-graduation (e.g. as part of an activity in which students create an online directory of relevant groups and communities in a wiki or other collaborative online document or space).
Enhance
Provide online work-based learning tips and guidance for those new out on placement, including a discussion forum where general questions can be handled by the tutor while students are on placement.
Help maintain social connections and support amongst students on placement through setting up a Twitter group or #tag for the cohort, or harnessing other social networking platforms and spaces.
Extend
Hold weekly or fortnightly work-based learning meet-up sessions via a virtual classroom tool. Consider having students take turns to share their work, experiences and lessons learned from their placements.
Empower
Consider technology-supported forms of assessment that will allow students to engage with the academic side of their work placement as an integrated part of the experience (e.g. maintaining a reflective blog that leads in the development of a final report, documentary, or Patchwork Text).
Enhance
Provide links to video or narrated visual tutorials of safe laboratory and fieldwork procedure as a means to prepare effectively. Consider linking these to a short online self-test to help students gauge their readiness for practice.
Extend
Make lab and fieldwork more engaging through the use of mobile applications including: QR codes for ‘point of use’ information and explanation of equipment and field samples; personal technologies such as cameras, video and mobile phones to record lab and fieldwork; applications which employ ‘pin drop’ features to record locations; and even the use of Geocaching to provide a structure to field activities.
Empower
Have students work in small groups to prepare a ‘virtual field trip’ or ‘virtual lab tour’ that will bring together a range of relevant resources (e.g. documents, websites, video clips) that can be assessed as an output of their lab or field work and used as a learning artefact for future cohorts of students.
Enhance
Provide incoming direct entrants with links to pre-arrival and pre-enrolment online information and resources about studying in Higher Education, and what is expected on the course itself. Feature wherever possible the voices of students who have successfully made the transition from FE into second or third year of an HE programme.
Extend
Allow articulating and other direct entry students to have online access (pre-arrival and/or on arrival) to online readings, lecture recordings and other resources from modules that ran in the prior to their direct entry to the programme.
Empower
Provide new students including direct entrants with pre-entry opportunities to engage with the peers who will be part of their year or wider programme cohorts (e.g. through online social network groups, or through a virtual drop-in session run through a virtual classroom space or videoconference meeting).
Create formal learning opportunities between current students and those from FE that are on an articulation route for a named programme (e.g. by having HNC/HND students undertake joint tasks or activities including online seminars, discussions or lectures with those in the cohort they will be joining).
Enhance
Establishing the means for students to create or curate content and contribute it to the public domain in an informed way. This could involve a discussion within the learning environment covering: 1. Intellectual property, knowledge exchange and issues relating to the publication of content in the public domain; 2. Determining the digital medium of choice; 3. Deciding on how and where to host or contribute material for online public domain access.
Extend
Students are tasked with curating a hosted video channel or podcast feed on a given topic or research question. A discussion is held online between the group members to decide what to include and exclude. The guidelines for the curation are drawn up online to result in a collaboratively produced shared reference document. The public domain contribution is the curated channel or feed, including title, description and ‘follow’ or subscription options.
Empower
Postgraduate students are encouraged to join an established online research community or professional group in their discipline, e.g. via LinkedIn, where they begin sharing their work, expand their personal learning network, and learn from more established peers.
Enhance
Establish online peer-peer support opportunities at programme level, within a dedicated programme space on the learning environment, where cohort wide peer-peer discussion and sharing can be enabled, in addition to peer mentoring opportunities within mentor group discussion forums.
Extend
Consider using digital tools, spaces and resources to support structured individual mentoring opportunities and dialogue for students, e.g. through one-to-one video conferencing or virtual classroom discussions, or a closed blog or reflective online journal that the mentee maintains and the mentor has invited reader access to.
Empower
Establish an interdisciplinary peer mentoring space within the learning environment, or other appropriate online space, to providing mentoring opportunities and/or critical discussion and reflection on mentoring approaches across disciplines and programmes in which mentoring is used or required for professional development and accreditation purposes (e.g. Nursing).
Enhance
Establish ‘core skills’ online forums (e.g. for assistance with numeracy, information literacy, etc) that are available asynchronously to avoid timetable clashes, and where students could seek online advice from study skills advisors and each other (this could be linked into peer-mentoring initiatives where more experienced students help less experienced peers).
Within discipline-specific course, provision provide from the outset access to exemplar projects and case studies available online that place the discipline the student is studying in a wider interdisciplinary context.
Extend
Establish a space within the institutional learning environment, or utilising another appropriate platform, for students from different disciplines to share project ideas, resources, and ask questions of the wider student community. For example, a computing student wishes to develop a healthcare app for their Honours or Masters project and can seek input, ideas and suggestions for recommended readings from peers in nursing or health sciences.
Empower
Harness the learning environment, and other appropriate digital spaces, to support ‘horizontally integrated’ projects that cut across different programme cohorts and allow students from different disciplines to work together on a relevant community or industry focused initiative or development. Online tools and spaces can be used to plan and co-ordinate the work and make key outputs (e.g. reports, case studies, videos) available as digital artefacts for wider dissemination and future reuse.
Enhance
Provide students with links and subscription information for online news feeds, podcasts, professional groups, blogs and Twitter accounts that are good sources of regular international news and information in their discipline area. Make a point of using news and updates from these sources yourself in face-to-face and online activities, and get your students involved in regularly sharing what they have discovered from these sources as part of online discussion and debate.
Extend
Consider using virtual classroom technology to hold periodic seminars involving your students and the tutors and students from similar modules or programmes running in other countries and cultures, or to bring in guest experts who can help your students explore the nature and practice of their discipline from different cultural and geographic perspectives.
Empower
Harness the learning environment and other appropriate online spaces to allow your students to collaborate with students from other countries and cultures, e.g. a view to undertaking a particular project that relates to their discipline within a globalised context, but also with a focus on learning about each other’s culture and cultural practices.
Enhance
Establish a wiki or other collaborative online document or resource on a controversial topic, and ask students to identify and contribute relevant article links.
Help students explore simple online research tools and apps (e.g. for creating questionnaires, managing reference material and citations) that they can start to use relatively easily for their own research and inquiry related purposes.
Extend
Have students critique Wikipedia articles you know have omissions and inaccuracies, and undertake further research to help them prepare more current and accurate articles to post online. You can assess these against equivalent kinds of criteria as an essay, but allow the student the additional satisfaction and confidence that might come from adding their work to the publicly available knowledge in their discipline area (see also the further examples under ‘Contributing Knowledge to the Public Domain’)
Consider offering an asynchronous research ‘mini-conference’ to prepare and support undergraduate students during project work. This could be an online conference running over a couple of weeks in which all the students in a cohort outline their research project plans (e.g. for small-scale research projects or dissertations), contribute literature resources to a shared page of links, and use discussion forums to formulate and ask questions about the research process.
Empower
Involve students who are new or less experienced as researchers in ‘apprentice researcher’ roles on research projects undertaken by students further on in a programme or being led by the tutor, assessing them on their contributions in terms of collecting and presenting data, literature, and authoring project updates to be shared within an online space (e.g. blog, wiki, website) for the research project
Arrange for students to interview established researchers in their field and produce a podcast/video of the interview along with an online ‘resource base’ of links, articles, and presentations of their work.
Enhance
Introduce research students to institutional and appropriate external digital technologies that can support their research activity from the outset of their projects. This could include reference management tools like RefWorks, EndNote or Mendeley, or introducing the #phdchat tag on Twitter as a means to interact with other research students elsewhere.
Webinars open to research students across departments, schools or faculties could be used to bring together and guide groups of research students at similar stages, or for supervisors and guest experts to offer ‘masterclass’ sessions on particular methods and approaches.
Extend
Have students explore and use institutional research repository as a means to disseminate their work, and have them engage with other open access repositories and networks, or discipline focused communities (for example LinkedIn groups) for the purposes of public engagement, professional networking and building their academic and research profiles
Have research students present their work to a wider network of peers by delivering or leading online webinars (as part of a departmental, subject network, or faculty series open to invited guests). If recorded, this will give the student a useful means of reviewing the session, including questions tackled, that could help prepare them for wider public presentations of their work.
Empower
Help research students establish their own online-supported community where they can share their work and support one another, organise events and social gatherings, and where recent post-docs can offer peer mentorship and begin to develop skills that could be of use when they move into co-supervising and supervising roles. An online community of this kind could feature an online research students journal or periodical that would allow them to disseminate their work more widely, and provide links to personal blogs that research students use to establish and build their academic public profile.
