e-Teaching Leadership: Planning and Implementing a Benefits-Orientated Costs Model for Technology Enhanced Learning

Project team members

Professor Belinda Tynan: University of New England
Professor Yoni Ryan: Australian Catholic University
Professor Alan Smith: University of Southern Queensland
Professor Mike Keppell: Charles Sturt University
Dr Leone Hinton: Central Queensland University
Professor Grant Harman: University of New England

Overview

This project seeks to assess the full costs and benefits of online teaching, specifically via development of appropriate methodologies for within-institution costing of online teaching, and the implications of online teaching staff workloads. On this basis, the project will provide leadership by working with Schools and Course Teams within the four participating universities to plan and implement strategies for a prospective rather than retrospective cost-benefit model, which can enable innovators to plan and understand the relationship between the expected learning benefits and the likely teaching costs and will be the first Australian study based on 21st century learning modes.

The project will seek to address the following questions:

• What currently informs Australian universities about the costs of teaching online, and how do Schools calculate staff workloads for online teaching?
• What methodologies might be used to assess the costs and benefits of online teaching and guide universities in decisions on resource allocation and staff workloads?
• What are the teaching demands of online programs, and are workload demands the same for online teaching compared with face-to-face teaching?
• Is there evidence that there is a tendency to not revise materials for online contexts, and if so, what effect does this have on course quality and learning outcomes?
• What insights can the above project activities provide in determining class size and the number of staff allocated per unit?
• What documentation could be prepared to provide guidelines for Schools and their staff in achieving enhanced online teaching and in developing materials?

Leadership is required in this area to ‘catch-up' and wrestle the difficult questions about workload, as these have been inadequately addressed. Capacity-building within the project members, but also more broadly for the sector, is now urgently required. The leadership framework drawn upon in this project is multifarious and asks all stakeholders to be drawn towards new perceptions and understandings of workload associated with web-based environments in action.

The key outcomes and deliverables of the research will be:

• Detailed analysis of international and Australian literature on the costs and benefits of online teaching, particularly related to costing models and staff workload implications;
• Development of a detailed planning model for implementation of new online courses based on the key concepts put forward by Laurillard and Twigg, but also drawing on other costing models for university teaching;
• Implementation of the model in selected schools in the four universities for planning and establishing new online courses;
• Generation of data on staff costs and workload implications for planning and implementing the model for establishing new online courses;
• A detailed explanation and demonstration of the multifarious leadership model of Rogers, Twigg and Laurillard;
• Development of a guidebook for staff with strategies to enhance learning and cost effectiveness in online teaching.