Interview with Lucka Lorber and Stanko Pelc at Maribor University

Case study "Transport Geography"
Lead institution: University of Maribor, Faculty of Logistics
Authors: Lučka Lorber, Stanko Pelc
In collaboration with: Matija Vidiček, Andreja Čurin, Metka Zorič-Venuti

Can you tell briefly what the context was at the beginning of the project?

The Faculty of Logistics of the University of Maribor is a young, dynamic and innovative faculty with two study centres: Celje and Krško. It was established in 2004/05. From the very beginning, faculty leadership decided to implement a study process in the form of blended learning with the help of Moodle, a virtual learning environment (VLE). What were the reasons for such a brave decision, if we have in mind that the University of Maribor is a classical-type university? Member of the Blend-XL project group Stanko Pelc gives us the following explanation:

The majority of all courses at the Faculty of Logistics are run in a half semester period:

• 7 weeks of lectures and tutorials combined with different forms of e-learning and
• 1 week for the final assessment.

Lectures are given alternately, i.e. one week in the study centre at Celje and the other week at Krško. With the help of a video-conferencing system, the lectures are always transmitted from one location to another.

Student group - numbers, what kind of student, their perceptions and expectations?

The number of students enrolled in the Transport Geography course was 152 in the first cycle and 153 in the second cycle. Students come from all parts of Slovenia. The analysis of their background showed that most of the students had attended professional colleges or high schools in which Geography as a subject had only been feebly represented. Lučka Lorber, teacher in the first cycle, talks about the problems caused by the differences in prior knowledge among students:

Attending the lectures is not obligatory and to come prepared to the lectures is not a custom of Slovenian students either. With such student attitudes towards teaching and learning, it is not easy for teachers to apply active methods of teaching. Using the VLE and e-materials add additional demands – students need informational illiteracy and basic computer knowledge.

Who have been involved in the implementation of the course?

There was a teaching team, consisting of a teacher (lectures) and assistant (tutorials). For validation purposes, another experienced teacher from the same professional field supported them.

What were your main goals for the Blend-XL project?

The main goal was: "What kind of blended learning model is best suited to achieve better communication, more active learning and, as a result, lower dropout of students?"

How did you plan for improvement in practical terms?

With the use of the VLE we planned to give students a better possibility for communicating with teachers and other students. But we also maintained regular live contacts with teachers during the course.
We planned to improve students’ active participation and continuous learning during the course by:

• offering interesting links on the Web for the exploration of content relating to the students’ future professions
• preparing individual assignments (homework), supported by a help forum
• preparing group assignments, supported by a forum and a group chat room
• quizes
• motivating continuous learning by making assignment and quiz results part of the final course grade.

Can you briefly describe how the two cycles of the local case were set up?

The implementation of the first cycle was in the period May/June 2007 and the second in the period October/November 2007, taking place at the same time in two centers (Celje and Krško) with the following course structure:

TRANSPORT GEOGRAPHY

Weeks 1-7:  45 hours lecturing, 30 hours tutorial (blended format)
Week 8: assessment, exam

(VCS = video conference system)

Study materials consisted of MS Word files and MS Powerpoint presentations for all the topics. In the VLE relevant links were provided to direct students to web pages, where additional information about the discussed topics was available.
Communications were supported by forums, assigned to different purposes – news, discussions, group work and assignments. Quizes covered each part of the total content of the course. Before the oral exam students had to pass the test (the final quiz covering all the topics). At tutorials students had to do two individual assignments and one group assignment. For each assignment instructions were given in the classroom and instructions were also available in the VLE. For group assignments students were given the chance to group themselves and use a chat room for group discussions. Each assignment had to be submitted through the VLE before a deadline.

What were the main differences between the cycles?

At the end of the first cycle, a questionnaire was filled out by the students. They were generally very positive about blended learning and were prepared to share with us their ideas on how to make it even better:

• more group activities,
• still use some face-to-face lecturing and tutorials,
• more independent work, learning activities where students discover new knowledge by themselves,
• more collaboration in forums.

Case study second cycle teacher Stanko Pelc concisely describes the main differences between the cycles.

What new problem areas have you discovered?

From the students’ point of view we were very successful with the blended learning approach – combination of traditional teaching methods and using the VLE:

• communication between students and teacher was much better
• students’ active participation had improved
• students said that blended learning motivated them for continuous learning and independent study during the course.

But better communication and more student activities (exercises) in the VLE increased the work load for teachers. For example, within the course with approximately 150 students there were two individual exercises and one group exercise. The assistant was therefore obliged to read and assess over 300 texts. If we assume that the length of the average text was 5 pages, that meant the examination of 1,500 pages within only a few weeks!

What actions will you take in the future on these points?

However, the e-learning environment makes it possible to apply different forms of student-to-student assessment and mutual help. This has two very important advantages:

• students get the feedback from their colleagues and
• they have to learn how to assess their own as well as the work of others.

What has been noticeable in the feedback from students?

The student questionnaire gave us very useful feedback, including the following three findings:

• Blended learning was the right decision - more than two thirds (68.4%) of the students preferred blended learning to the more "traditional" ways of learning/studying that they experienced in the past.
• If one of our objectives is also to stimulate independent study, then it is interesting that almost two thirds of the respondents (64.9%) believed that the work with the VLE stimulated their independent study.
• Students realized that a large part of their future professional work will probably be team work. Therefore group work (supported by the VLE) was a good experience for them: they learned the benefits of group work but also the constraints (problems of group communication, task organization and implementation of the final product).

What were the lessons learned from the project?

Did "blending" – combination of traditional teaching and use of the VLE improve student work? "Yes!" Stanko Pelc has no doubts about that. He talks about changes in the behaviour of students and other benefits.

There are benefits on the both sides. Lučka Lorber talks about lessons learned from the project, for her personally as an educator and professional. One of the things she discusses is the way the teacher will have a new role.