Slides from EdTech ILTA 2016 presentation in Dublin 26th May 2016

1. Mapping Digital Technology
Teaching Practices:
Are we being scholarly?
Louise Drumm
Glasgow Caledonian University
Louise.Drumm@gcu.ac.uk
Irish Learning Technology Association Conference, Dublin, 26th May 2016
@louisedrumm

2. PhD question:
What role does theory play in university
teaching with digital technologies?
Aim:
To explore attitudes and experiences of lecturers using digital
technologies in their teaching with a view to developing a
theoretical understanding of their practices.
@louisedrumm

3. Research design
• Qualitative project
• Semi-structured interviews with 25
lecturers
• Pre-interview questionnaire
• 2 x universities (Scotland and Ireland)
• Across 7 disciplines
• Rhizome Theory (Deleuze & Guattari
1987) as theoretical framework
@louisedrumm

4. @louisedrumm
Presented
Internally
Presented
Externally
Teaching Peer
Reviewed
Academic
Development
Teaching
Qualification
Has
Published
Engages with
Educational
Research
Shared
Practice
• All have shared practice with
colleagues
• Nearly all engage with (i.e. read)
educational research
• Just over half regularly engage with
Academic/Professional development
• Half hold a teaching qualification
Scholarly Activity Identified in
Pre-Interview Questionnaire
Participants(25)

5. Pragmatists Pedagogues
Dabblers Broadcasters
A Typology of Digital Teaching Behaviours
@louisedrumm
Please note: Most
lecturers displayed
more than one of
these behaviours

6. Core
Teaching
Core Student
Activity
Add-ons to learning
Alternative
Routes to learning
Pragmatists Pedagogues
Dabblers Broadcasters
A Typology of Digital Teaching Behaviours
@louisedrumm
What are lecturers
doing with
technology?

7. Core
Teaching
Core Student
Activity
Pragmatists Pedagogues
Dabblers Broadcasters
Engagement
Enhancement Levelling
A Typology of Digital Teaching Behaviours
@louisedrumm
Flexibility
What reasons do
lecturers give for using
technology?
Add-ons to learning
Alternative
Routes to learning

8. Core
Teaching
Core Student
Activity
Pragmatists Pedagogues
Dabblers Broadcasters
Engagement
Enhancement
Online lectures
Digital content
MCQs
Wikis
Discussions
Blogs
Virtual Worlds
Lecture capture
Digital content
Social Media
Screencasting
Levelling
Classroom clickers
Video
Discussions
A Typology of Digital Teaching Behaviours
@louisedrumm
Flexibility
What tools do they
use for this teaching?
Add-ons to learning
Alternative
Routes to learning

9. Core
Teaching
Core Student
Activity
Pragmatists
Flexibility
Pedagogues
Dabblers Broadcasters
Independent learning
Social learning
Active learning
Experiential learning
Engagement
Enhancement
“Learning styles”
Online lectures
Digital content
MCQs
Wikis
Discussions
Blogs
Virtual Worlds
Lecture capture
Digital content
Social Media
Screencasting
Levelling
Classroom clickers
Video
Discussions
“Bigger picture”
learning
A Typology of Digital Teaching Behaviours
@louisedrumm
How do they explain their teaching theoretically?
Add-ons to learning
Alternative
Routes to learning

10. Theorised Practice & Untheorised Practice
Alice (Business)
Assessed group activities for students to
complete using wikis to simulate real-
world entrepreneurship situations:
“So when you teach the module, you
don't actually teach it, you facilitate it.
You have to construct learning
environments and all we're doing is
creating frameworks and architecture
that you then let the students work in,
and with each other. So you're relying
on some social learning for them to do
certain things”
Lynn (Social Sciences)
International collaboration with other
universities where students work
together on a wiki to role play a
scenario:
“they've got traditional teaching and
they've got what they learn themselves,
and what they teach other students on
the wiki”
@louisedrumm
Contrasting levels of pedagogical vocabulary used
in descriptions of teaching, although Lynn held a
teaching qualification and Alice did not.
Pedagogical terminology coming from discipline?

11. Cultural Truisms and Folk Pedagogies
“we have to use the modes that
they're comfortable with, to try and
transfer that knowledge” (Abigail,
Business)
“that's their language” (Janice,
Business)
“babies have iPads these days” (Lynn,
Social Sciences)
@louisedrumm
1: Generational Differences and Digital Natives
Perceived student comfort with digital
technologies given as reason for using
digital technologies for teaching.
Although ‘digital natives’
concept has generally been
debunked, this idea held
traction for lecturers.

12. Cultural Truisms and Folk Pedagogies
“So I post things on different topics that were another way of learning that
topic, maybe a video, maybe an illustration or something that sort of added to a
different way of learning for the students, so sort of a little bit of blended
learning idea, sort of 'how can I teach this thing to my students in different
ways', you know the whole VARK thing” (Greg, Biomedical Sciences”)
“I’m a very visual learner…If I put up a graph or a diagram or things I think
people will take that away with them, well some people will. People who learn
that way will take that away with them and be able to remember it... whereas
other people who work better when they read a text” (Nuala, Social Work)
“I mean one thing I suppose we are aware of in the school…would be all the
different learning styles that people bring into the equation, right so, in a
lecture you don't get to hit all of them. But if you can give people some video
material, something to read, something to do, other skills come into play to
support their learning and so more students get impacted by that“ (Pearce,
Physics)
@louisedrumm
2: Learning Styles
Similarly, accommodating
different ‘learning styles’
used by Broadcasters as
reason for using digital
technologies, although
‘learning styles’ has been
discredited as a theory of
learning.

13. Findings
• Invisible pedagogies: under articulated, possibly untheorised
practices
• Unpractised theories: powerful orthodoxies of what should be done
• Use of explicit, evidence-based theory coming from (some) disciplines
• Academic development provides ideas, teaching qualification
provides theory but lecturers struggle to join the two
• Cultural truisms and folk pedagogies are being seen as theory
• Probably a lot of practice retrospectively theorised
• Lecturers engage with the literature but don’t apply it
@louisedrumm

14. Recommendations & Questions
We should:
• Help lecturers link the literature, ‘idealised’ uses of technology and their teaching
practices
• Critically engage with both educational and educational technology theory
• Question edtech orthodoxies, aspirational technology use
• Value and accommodate lecturers’ ‘Bought sense…’
• Recognise contextual differences in disciplines and individuals
• Where do ‘invisible pedagogies’ come from? And is it a problem they are
‘invisible’?
• Does all teaching need to be ‘scholarly’?
• What does this mean for the ‘professionalisation’ of teaching
@louisedrumm

15. Photo by Jens Rusch CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
@louisedrumm