Learning Thresholds: A Journey in Online Learning and Teaching

Three tertiary business educators transitioned their teaching from a just face-to-face mode of content delivery into online/blended content delivery formats. It was found there were three dominant domains of learning thresholds for these educators, which involved the course, student engagement and the teacher. The course domain considered alternative approaches to teaching and course design. The student domain focussed on student engagement and feedback. The teacher domain addressed teacher identity and interactions. Challenges faced by the educators included adopting a new paradigm of teaching, benchmarking efforts, and adequate resourcing. The positive transformative experience involved the educators gaining increased self-assurance in becoming effective online educators. Introduction Online education is growing at a rapid pace, with MOOCs (massive open online courses) now having in excess of three million students (Clarke, 2013). Business education, as a part of this phenomenon, is also facing the issue of having to develop a response, which involves “developing and applying TEACHR different approaches to blending technology with face-to-face learning” (Clarke, 2013, p. 410). The experience of including components from the online learning environment into the on-campus face-to-face mode of teaching, outlined in this study, was an interesting and unique journey for those who participated in this research project. This research seeks to capture the reflections of three business education lecturers at a Christian tertiary institution as they encountered learning thresholds on the journey of implementing online/blended teaching alongside their regular face-to-face course delivery mode. The lecturers who participated in this study typically taught 6-8 units of study per year which involved contact with approximately 120 students. While each lecturer taught some of these study units in on-campus mode, some of the units were taught in a blended mode in which many online components and communication tools were used to teach off-campus students. For ease of understanding, the term ‘online’ is used throughout this paper to describe both purely online and partially online (blended) components in the teaching experience. The aim of this study was to identify learning thresholds that teaching staff experienced as they learned about online learning and teaching in business education. It is anticipated that the identification of these learning thresholds will inform the content and nature of professional development TEACH Journal 11-1.indd 37 7/7/17 12:23 pm 38 | TEACH | v11 n1 v11 n1 | TEACH | 39 Research & Scholarship ” “Learning thresholds are transformative, troublesome, irreversible, integrative, bounded, discursive and reconstitutive, and they typically involve . a state of liminality programs for future business educators who engage in the processes of online course design and online teaching. Findings from the study are based on journal reflections kept by the lecturers throughout the online unit development process and during their teaching experience, as well as transcripts from focus groups held with these business educators during the teaching semester. The trends in the delivery of subject content are fast changing. Today educational institutions are dealing with students who have higher expectations, are much more demanding, are more aware of their rights and are quick to switch providers if they are unhappy. The requirements of off-campus students are somewhat different from on-campus students in terms of their learning needs. To suit learners’ demands for flexible delivery of courses, most universities and higher education institutions have already moved, or are in the process of moving, the delivery of courses to the online environment. It is difficult to recognise learning thresholds in the process of online course development and teaching. Some learning thresholds act as ‘gateways or portals’ (Meyer & Land, 2006) to a higher or new level of understanding and, in turn, this leads to the attainment of more difficult and complex learning thresholds. To assist in the recognition of such threshold concepts, Meyer and Land (2005) have highlighted eight key features of learning thresholds that are typically part of the learning process. Learning thresholds are transformative, troublesome, irreversible, integrative, bounded, discursive and reconstitutive, and they typically involve learners entering a state of liminality which is described by Land, Meyer and Baillie (2010) as “a transformative state in the process of learning in which there is a reformulation of the learner’s meaning frame and an accompanying shift in the learner’s ontology or subjectivity” (Land, Rattray & Vivian, 2014, p. 199). Transformation occurs when there is a basic, fundamental and structural change in the perception or view of oneself, the environment or others. Cranton and King (2003) note transformation consequently changes the way one sees things to make meaning of the world. The integrative element of a learning threshold follows in a linear fashion in that it combines the prior knowledge and understanding with a learner’s newly changed perceptions. When learning of this nature is significant, it can be categorised as being transformative. Kiley and Wisker (2009) observe that earlier research studies on learning thresholds have been directed towards discipline-specific studies in undergraduate education and are primarily related to discipline-specific fields. Many of these studies focus on the challenge that besets educators who are attempting to define threshold concepts or learning thresholds within particular disciplines. While online teaching may not be a discipline or area of study, the process of identifying learning thresholds of online teachers has some similarities with the way in which threshold concepts are identified in other fields of study (Northcote, Gosselin, Reynaud, Kilgour, & Anderson, 2015). It has also been noted that identifying learning thresholds of online teachers has the potential to assist novice academics (Davies & Mangan, 2008) involved in the preparation of resources and instruction because the process of identifying learning thresholds of such staff can provide direction for professional development. Creating a framework and guidelines are essential for identifying learning thresholds. Not all learners are equipped to handle online teaching (Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008; Goodyear & Ellis, 2008), and a combination of traditional classroom teaching and online methodologies, referred to as ‘blended learning’, has proven beneficial to learners (Means, Bakia, & Murphy, 2014). Lambert and Brewer (2007) suggest that this blended learning style can allow elements of traditional face-to-face learning, alongside online teaching, to benefit learners more than either mode of study being offered alone. Studies across a range of teaching contexts (Farrell, Cubit, Bobrowski, & Salmon, 2007; Kelly, Lyng, McGrath, & Cannon, 2009) have identified benefits of blended learning for students as being: • provision for learning at any location; • self-paced timing of learning; • changed nature of peer interactions; • opportunities for reflection; and • improved levels of involvement. A number of considerations have been identified as being critical to the successful delivery of online units of study, particularly where distance students are involved. These critical success factors are varied, with Volery and Lord (2000) identifying technological factors (access and usability), instructor characteristics (teaching style, technical skills) and student characteristics (technological ability) as being important. Cheawjindakarn, Suwannatthachote and Theeraroungchaisri (2012) reviewed the literature of critical success factors in online distance learning in higher education between 2000 and 2012 and, more broadly, identified five factors in need of consideration at the higher education level: 1. institutional management (including framework and scope of the program, operational plans and assessments of cost effectiveness); TEACH Journal 11-1.indd 38 7/7/17 12:23 pm 38 | TEACH | v11 n1 v11 n1 | TEACH | 39 Research & Scholarship ” “there is some evidence an online accounting degree is not the best preparation for professional accounting qualifications 2. the learning environment (including course management systems, technical infrastructure, interactive learning opportunities, access and navigation); 3. instructional design (including clear learning objectives, quality content, learning strategies, student motivation, and appropriate assessments); 4. service support (including training for key stakeholders, communication tools, and a help desk for student access); and 5. course evaluation. Any institution implementing an online learning program would be well advised to give consideration to these areas in order to increase the likelihood they are delivering a quality online learning program. Online learning, in whatever form it takes, is extolled as a critical and worthwhile endeavour (Grandzol & Grandzol, 2006), not least for its additional range of resources and flexibility (Wong, 2012). Students who have experienced online learning reported in one study, “a preference for being able to watch lectures at times that were convenient to their schedule” (Watters & Paul, 2009, p. 55), and felt it was a more effective content delivery system. The use of pre-recorded lectures in particular, was seen to be “an effective alternative to traditional live classroom lectures” (Watters & Paul, 2009, p. 56). For instructors, there is a range of new multimedia tools and technologies that open new ways of teaching, and this can increase creativity (Morgan, 2015). Freeman and Hancock (2013) found in their study of accounting academics that rather than move to a fully online context, “what is more likely to happen is academics will judiciously