Abstract:
Teaching and learning online is now commonplace in higher education yet academic
development support for teachers going online is often quite fragmented. This paper focuses on
a neglected area of academic development support for teachers going online—the development
and adaptation of assessment activities—and the role that informal, one-to-one conversations
between teacher and developer can play in helping the teacher to negotiate the transition online,
seen by some teachers as a chasm. Three metaphors, (greenfields site, a room makeover, and a
partial renovation) are used to illustrate some of the key differences in the approaches a teacher
might take in going online. The renovator is the focus of this paper. A renovator wants to do
something more significant than splash some paint around, but not as extensive as building a
new dwelling. For teachers conversant with ideas of teaching and learning such as constructive
alignment (Biggs, 2003), the challenge of going online can be recast in more familiar ways as
one of focusing on desired learning outcomes and how appropriately designed assessment
activities can be crafted to bring these about.
With evidence from one case, we suggest that a few hours of focused just-in-time conversation
can have remarkable results, bearing out the view that the key change in understanding required
for teachers going online is that the important questions to think about are those relating to
issues of teaching and learning, and not to technology.
