eLearning Week at Communications & New Media

-Kenneth Gerard Pinto, CIT

WE can be thankful that our previous brush with SARS only brought about zoning measures in NUS. The question remains: if something similar happens in the future, what can we do to enable teaching and learning to continue during a crisis?

It is with this in mind that the Communications & New Media Department, Office of Safety, Health & Environment and the Centre for Instructional Technology carried out the University’s inaugural eLearning Week. Held from 18 to 22 February, this pioneering project involved the staff and students taking CNM modules.

Preparations for the exercise began in December 2007. While the NUS community is familiar with the Integrated Virtual Learning Environment, eLearning Week involved software which users would not encounter on a day-to-day basis. These would allow for lecture delivery, audio conferencing and simultaneous collaboration.

During the week, faculty staff conducted lessons virtually. With IVLE as the base where course notes and assignments reside, lecturers used Breeze, which combines slides with an audio track. Students viewed Breeze lectures via IVLE from any place where they could get online.

Centra, a virtual classroom tool which allows audio conferencing and collaboration, was used in facilitating tutorials for several modules. Students taking NM2220 Introduction to Media Writing, for example, used Centra to form discussion groups where they came up with different responses to an in-tutorial activity. All this took place without the need for meeting face-to-face.

“I think that the online tutorial was rather novel and exciting. While we had problems during the first 10 minutes of class, once we students got familiar with the programme, it was rather interesting,” offered undergraduate Samuel Chee, who took part in a Centra tutorial for NM2219 Principles of Communication Management. He added, “I believe that increased usage of the programme would make the entire online tutorial process more efficient. Perhaps we can use this programme again in the future!”

Besides a few isolated hiccups, eLearning Week went by largely without incident. Faculty staff took to online lectures and tutorials in their stride. Students, after getting familiar with the software, enjoyed this mode of lessons – very much an extension of how they socialise online. 

Overall, the first-ever eLearning Week met its multi-pronged objectives of preparing, monitoring and evaluating the readiness and ability of our students, staff and systems to cope with an emergency situation where on-campus teaching facilities are unavailable.