Teaching and Learning > DOCUMENTS
Subject to debate: an inter-departmental VLE for Religious Studies students
Brian Bocking
Department of the Study of Religions, School of Oriental & African Studies
Start date: July 2006
The project uses developments within VLE technology to enable students pursuing introductory courses in three departments of Religion in the UK to debate topical and methodological issues in the study of religions. The project will assess the extent to which local student learning is enhanced by mentored participation in an on-line inter-institutional forum. The universities involved are deliberately widespread: in central London, the North-West, and rural Wales. The project embodies a pilot scheme that, if successful, will provide a viable model of good practice for implementation by other institutions and at other levels, both in the UK and internationally.
Final Report
Background
This project was set up as a pilot scheme in the 2006/7 academic session and was funded by the Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. The purpose of the project was twofold: (1) to investigate the effectiveness of VLE technology-particularly discussion-board technology-for enhancing the learning experience of first-year undergraduate students on an introductory course to the study of religions; (2) to establish an inter-departmental e-forum across three religious studies departments in the UK so that students would be able to encounter different approaches to the subject matter typical of a first-year course in the study of religions. The departments initially involved were the Department of the Study of Religions, SOAS (lead department); Department of Religious Studies, University of Lancaster; and Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Wales, Lampeter.
The project was prompted in part by our recognition of the increasing place that internet technologies have to play in the educational context and the ways in which today's students turn to the internet for their information as a matter of course. Students are internet-savvy and natural networkers with most of them using networking sites (such as Facebook and MySpace). Further, with the post-1990 expansion of higher education the type of student applying to study of religions degrees has become increasingly and recognisably diverse in terms of educational background, ethnicity, age, sexuality, and economic status. That this proved to be a decisive factor in the success or otherwise of the project will be discussed below but suffice it to say for now that the diversity of the student body has significantly changed the way we teach and internet technologies have provided a means of catering to a broad range of student abilities, learning methods, and expectations. Essentially we wanted to harness student enthusiasm for internet technologies by building in VLE technology (at SOAS, Blackboard) as a core aspect of our introductory courses, providing a virtual classroom where we could deliver subject content (lecture notes, PowerPoint slides, supporting documents, etc.) in a form that could be accessed repeatedly and in the students' own time until sufficiently understood. With respect to the specific aims of the project, we wanted to use the discussion board built into the VLE to initiate and sustain dialogue and group discussion on issues generated by the three courses concerned. This was particularly in view of the fact that the first-year course at SOAS was quite large with an extensive syllabus to cover and so free-ranging discussion in small groups, or one-to-one tutorials of the type more typical prior to the expansion of higher education, was hard to achieve. We thus viewed the VLE as a useful tool in providing students with additional opportunities for discussion, argument, consensus reaching, clarification, and information. We believed that the discussion board facility in particular would encourage student interaction over religious topics in a (generally) undirected way which would serve as a helpful counterpoint to the 'strictly academic' approach of the classroom. To facilitate freer exchange of student views the 'anonymity' feature was enabled in the VLE Discussion Board from the outset so that those students who were shy or sought privacy would feel less inhibited to participate.
The Project
The project was intended to run for one year and with the support of the funder, ran for two years. In the first year, the three above-mentioned departments were involved with two mentors appointed at the University of Lancaster and the University of Wales, Lampeter. Since the designated Lampeter mentor took up a new post just before the start of the year at the nearby Trinity College Carmarthen, participation in the project moved with her to Trinity. A briefing meeting was held with the two mentors in term 1 of 2006-7. Because it had proved impossible to find a date when both mentors could come to London at the same time, separate briefings were held, each with a lengthy agenda covering the project application and issues such as: adding new students, feedback to participating students, privacy/ confidentiality, anonymity, intellectual property, fees and expenses, ID, contact details, etc..
In term 2 of the first year of the project some Religious Studies students from Victoria University Wellington (New Zealand) were also included in the project, with the active cooperation of the Head of Department there. In the second year, in light of experience during year 1, the interdepartmental collaboration was between the Department of the Study of Religions at SOAS and the newly-formed Department of the Study of Religions at University College Cork, Ireland, since one of the principal researchers on the project moved there in January 2008.
Use of Blackboard and the Discussion Board had been instituted for the first time in the Introductory course in religions at SOAS in 2005-6, the year before the present research project began. In that first year of its operation discussion on the VLE had been vigorous, lively, often entertaining and informative and almost entirely constructive. As well as topics raised in the syllabus, discussion was prompted by a number of 'religious' controversies prominent in the media. Pre-eminent among these was the Danish 'cartoons of the Prophet' controversy which broke in the middle of that teaching year. It was not anticipated in the syllabus, but once it hit the headlines worldwide it engaged the attention of most of the students in the course. The controversy could not be ignored; it intersected with many of the issues central to the study of religions such as freedom of expression vs. freedom of religion, satire vs. blasphemy, religious minorities and multiculturalism, the role of the state vis-à-vis 'religion', Sharia law vs. UK law, 'Asian' vs. 'European' cultures, the globalisation of local religious controversies, media and religion, the proper role of scholars of religion in the debate, and so on. The nature of the controversy raised a very specific problem, the solution to which exemplifies the advantages of VLE learning technology. The issue strongly divided opinions in the class, with some asserting that even viewing images of the Prophet is absolutely forbidden in Islam. On the other side were those who defended the principle of free expression. However, even the most passionate advocate of the principle of freedom of expression would not claim that this gives a lecturer the right to force devout students to act contrary to their religious beliefs, so for us to 'publish' the cartoons by distributing copies to students or projecting them onto a screen at the front of the lecture hall to a captive audience would be a provocative act.
At the same time, no student had any problem with talking about the cartoons, and an informed debated seemed to require that at least some of those involved should have viewed the images. The VLE provided a solution unavailable to previous generations. A website already existed with dozens of images of Muhammad, ranging from Persian miniatures to twentieth-century book jackets, to the recently-published Danish cartoons and the additional few 'fake' cartoons which had added so much to the controversy. The website also displayed, for good measure, some of the anti-Jewish cartoons circulating in the Middle East. We placed the link to this website on the VLE with the caveat that students were free to view the site or not, as they chose. The cartoon issue went on to generate a searching online debate among students. It was this very positive experience of the pedagogic potential of the VLE that encouraged us to seek to extend the activity with Subject Centre research funding help 'beyond the classroom walls' with the intention of engaging our students with their peers in other institutions in other parts of the country.
While regular student input remained a positive aspect of the use of the discussion board in the first year of the research project (2006-7), there were several unanticipated downsides. Firstly, discussion on the site was completely dominated by SOAS students. Students from the other departments contributed hardly at all, and never in a sustained way (fewer than ten postings in the whole year were from outside SOAS, and some of these were from the two external mentors!). Secondly, in contrast to the previous year which had seen sometimes heated but always cogent and purposeful debate, there was a tendency for the discussion to be taken over by a few 'big' personalities who posted long and rambling contributions in response to almost every post, a practice which eventually resulted in most of the students on the course withdrawing from active participation. Thirdly, some opinions expressed in the discussion board were reproduced or reported in sites like MySpace and Facebook without the consent of the posters concerned, and this led to some students feeling that the board was not the safe place it was supposed to be. Another problem was the inclusion by some discussants of inappropriate personal content. Finally, over the course of the first term the discussion became increasingly hostile and inflammatory (with elements of homophobia, racism, and Islamophobia prominent) and 'flaming' reached such a level that the board had to be closed temporarily over the Christmas period. This was partly to let things cool off and partly due to the fact that some postings could have been deemed to be in breach of SOAS's policies and statutory responsibilities in respect of various forms of discrimination. While the board was suspended, staff on the project compiled a code of conduct which students were then requested to agree to before their access to the discussion board was restored. The code of conduct appeared to work to a degree: postings became more moderate and respectful but it also had the unforeseen effect of discouraging active use of the site and subsequently discussion was much more intermittent. It also became evident that the external mentors were unable to encourage 'their' students to get involved, reporting that the students were somewhat put off by the site, As a result, the mentoring role became irrelevant to the project after term one.
At the end of 2005-6 and 2006-7 we surveyed users of the VLE including the discussion board in order to ascertain the extent to which it had aided learning. Responses were varied although, given the nature of some of the discussion, somewhat surprisingly positive even in 2006-7.
Students said that they valued the opportunity to 'express their own opinions', 'engage in discussion with others' in the same course and through 'learning about other people's experiences and cultures', to come to 'understand more about others'. They acknowledged the benefit of being able to 'pick a topic and find out what others thought' and seemed to value the fact that there was 'freedom to begin and then direct a discussion' which resulted in a deeper discussion than that available in seminars and lectures as students were able to encounter 'more than one opinion on issues/topics'. It also seemed clear that the discussion board had served to expand existing knowledge with one student stating that he/she had the opportunity to hear 'about what is out there other than what I already know about'. It appeared from the survey that students valued the chance to 'explore areas outside of what is covered in lectures' and to 'link with the teachers' via the board. More significantly, the majority of students agreed that the discussion board helped them with seminar work, providing a proper 'forum for discussion and debate (which while they are excellent things, are not so excellent in a lecture, when the point is to learn from the tutor)'. Others suggested that it 'encouraged people to interact' and allowed students 'to help each other', not only in understanding terms and concepts, but also in practical aspects of the course, such as finding useful resources, learning from each other about essay-writing techniques and about coursework deadlines (!).
Students clearly valued the option of remaining anonymous on the discussion board because this gave them the opportunity to ask questions anonymously (insofar as this did not run the risk of revealing one's ignorance or prejudicing the reply). The possibility of anonymity also seemed to appeal on the basis that it gave students 'the confidence to say things you might not otherwise say in lectures' and that the discussion board 'allowed students who are quiet or shy in a class situation to debate and explore ideas (it's not just the loudest voice that is hear'. One student shrewdly observed that the discussion board gave students the 'freedom to discuss topics including the extent of freedom of speech'-meaning freedom of speech within the board itself, where, as noted above, the issue of appropriate and inappropriate postings and the need for rules or moderation by the tutor were recurrent themes in 2006-7. Others pointed out that the discussion board 'enabled one to know who others [in the class] were, what their views are and ultimately to make contact in the real world'. One summed up the discussion board as 'educational'. Finally, students also appreciated the fact that the board was 'accessible to everyone' in the course and that there was twenty-four-hour access.
The tone of the discussion was the subject of some of the more negative feedback about the usefulness of the site with several students commenting that discussion 'became limited…[to] only a few of the same people. Discussion became argumentative and pointless. People lost respect for each other' and that 'some posts were very childish at times'. One student suggested that he/she stopped using the site because of 'the homophobic, racist and stupid comments that were made'.
Since the experience during the first project year 2006-7 had been so markedly different from that of 2005-6, and because the differences appeared to be connected with particular students whose postings dominated the site, and this had evidently dissuaded students from other institutions (as well as from SOAS) from contributing to discussion, the researchers approached the Subject Centre to request that the project be extended for a further academic year, when it was hoped things would return to normal. An additional interim report was submitted (September 2007) which detailed the problems encountered. However, the second year of the research project's operation could hardly have been more different from both of the preceding years. Students seemed extremely reticent to involve themselves in discussion at all, despite repeated encouragement to do so. At the beginning of the course, students were asked to agree in writing to the existing code of conduct and most did so. Teaching staff on the course posted starter questions but these garnered only a small number of responses. This was despite the fact that in lectures and seminars the students on the course seemed lively and willing to contribute to discussions. At the start of the second term, we decided to change tack and to link discussion on the board to the discussion questions set for each seminar discussion around a set reading. This had moderately successful results to begin with where approximately one third of the class (of a total of 80 students) responded to the questions week by week. However, responses consisted of a series of isolated contributions on the questions in hand rather than any kind of sustained discussion. We then asked the students to email us with their reasons for their reluctance to get involved. The majority of responses indicated that students were a little intimidated by the forum and this appeared to be partially because of the obvious staff involvement, insofar as teaching staff were initiating the discussions. Several students expressed anxiety that their responses would be judged and found wanting because they were unfamiliar with the subject material and did not have the confidence to make a case in 'academic language'. It was difficult to know how to address the problem apart from staff withdrawing involvement and seeing if discussion would evolve organically. Despite a deliberate 'hands-off' policy from this point onwards, discussion throughout the year failed to take off. Nonetheless, seminar and lecture discussions were lively and often continued outside of the classroom.
We have been unable to draw any firm conclusions from the way things went in each of the years of the project. On one level success-if 'success' can be judged in terms of regular and productive use of the discussion board- seems to depend on the make up of any given class: the personalities, level of confidence, commitment to the academic study of religions (some of the most strident voices were of students registered for other majors who were taking the course only as a breadth option) and even level and type of religious commitment of participants. On the other, it would also seem that too much or too little staff involvement can hamper student participation. We cannot discount also the 'year on year' effect; although each first year cohort is in theory 'new' to the institution, there are many ways in which students may come to hear about the previous year's experience, and this may colour attitudes to the VLE and discussion board. In a Subject Centre workshop held in December 2007 one of the researchers discovered that another institution had experienced an identical trajectory in VLE use over three years; year 1, productive participation; year 2, serious problems; year 3 virtually no participation.
Lessons Learned & Assessment
It is clear that our initial objectives-to investigate the potential of VLE technology by establishing an inter-departmental e-forum across three religious studies departments in the UK so that students would be able to encounter different approaches to the study of religions-was successful only in part. It is clear, judging from student feedback, that during the first year of the research project the discussion board did considerably enhance learning at SOAS. However, what is also clear is that inter-departmental collaboration proved considerably harder, in fact virtually impossible, to achieve. In part this can be explained by the tone of discussion. Given that SOAS was the host department, students from the other departments naturally felt somewhat intimidated and found the often confrontational character of the discussion distasteful. Further, the two mentors appointed at the University of Lancaster and University of Wales Lampeter were for various reasons able to be less proactive than we would have hoped. In the second year we took advantage of the fact that one of the researchers was moving to another department (Cork) and could act as mentor there, but the outcome was much the same; students from the other institution were registered and encouraged to participate, but hardly did so. During this second year of the course, on-line discussion among the SOAS students remained intermittent and never 'took off' in the way it had in previous years.
However, the failure of the project to achieve the productive inter-institutional learning and discussion forum that we had envisaged in the proposal does not mean that the research failed to produce valuable findings, only that these findings were entirely unexpected. In particular, the research highlighted the inconvenient truth that the application of new learning technology can expose weaknesses in the 'traditional' academic learning and teaching process, particularly in the area of widening participation and diversity, an area in which universities may still have much to learn.
Several issues are worth drawing attention to, particularly the way in which the diversity of the student body had an impact on the manner in which discussion proceeded and the way in which the forms of discussion highlighted some of the complex assumptions and conventions underlying 'proper' academic discourse. For reasons of confidentiality we are unable to disclose the details of the students concerned but it became apparent some months into the project that several of the students who were posting provocative, hostile or overly long and rambling posts had learning or other disabilities. This posed a problem, not least in terms of how to tackle student behaviour that seemed to be inappropriate, off-putting or offensive to other students. Should we disregard the form and tone of what is generally considered 'normative' academic debate to ensure that their right to participate fully in the course was respected? This was particularly an issue in light of the responsibilities of the School ('School' refers to SOAS, University of London) under the Special Educational Needs Discrimination Act (SENDA) a subsection of the Disability Discrimination Act of 2001 which states that an educational institution should not treat disabled persons 'less favourably' for a reason relating to their disability and that an institution is required to make 'reasonable adjustments' if a disabled person would otherwise be placed at a 'substantial disadvantage'.
Given our intention to integrate the discussion board and VLE fully into the content of the course and to exploit it as a pedagogical tool, we did not want to discourage full participation in the discussion board by students who were disabled . It was neither possible nor desirable to prevent their access to the site, which in any case would have been a breach of their legal rights. In some ways the disability legislation seemed at times to be at odds with other School policies regarding discrimination on other grounds, whether sexual orientation, religious commitment or gender. It became a question of whose rights trumped whose-for example, were students who, on religious grounds, expressed views at odds with the School's policy on attitudes towards homosexuality to be sanctioned, perhaps to the point of being excluded from the discussion? Or if students were expressing views which were offensive to others but unintentionally so because of a learning disability, should they be prevented from using the board? It was in view of this potential contradiction that we produced the code of conduct which listed a number of basic rules of behaviour and drew attention to School policies. We also took the step of speaking to the students concerned individually, to explain to them why their behaviour was alienating others and took the opportunity at the same time to refer them to the Student Disability Office so that they could get more support. The Disability Officer, it should be stated, provided substantial help and advice both to staff and to students throughout the process, and in highlighting some of the contradictions we encountered we are not suggesting that these should have been or can ever be satisfactorily resolved. During the course of the research two sessions (a briefing and a workshop) were held with the Subject Centre representative. These proved extremely helpful in many respects but on both occasions it became clear in discussion that the situation 'on the ground' was more complex than the list of suggested solutions could have anticipated.
Conclusions
One conclusion from our project is very clear; that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to establish a productive inter-institutional VLE discussion among first year undergraduate students. We have not tested a similar idea with more advanced students and there is every likelihood that it would work better. We might reasonably expect better results with third year UG students who are more confident in expressing their views, or with MA students, assuming two or more cohorts could be found, in different institutions, following similar enough programmes.
It is more difficult at this stage to to identify the potential implications that our pilot study might have for the wider use of VLE technology in the study of religions. This is partly because of the contrasting experiences we have had over the initial year of VLE use and the subsequent two years of the project's operation. On the one hand, it is clear that when the discussions worked, they proved to be of real benefit to the students involved and fulfilled our aims of enabling students to expand their knowledge of areas outside those covered in lectures, to interact with each other, and to seek clarification on aspects of the course from teachers and fellow students. This was regardless of the fact that in on-line discussions students were able on occasion to 'break the rules' of academic discourse, for example expressing strong personal or religious convictions as of right, rather than on the basis of argument and evidence. On the other hand, when discussions didn't work-i.e., they were destructively polemical, digressive, or rambling-then the pedagogical value of the technology was certainly undermined, and the problems of encouraging 'free' discussion among a large group of students, several of whom failed to internalise the rules of academic discourse, became evident. In a face-to-face class, 'disruptive' behaviour of most kinds can be managed by a skilful tutor with the support of the institution; this is an area in which primary and secondary schools which have long integrated pupils with a great variety of special educational needs into the mainstream, are probably well ahead of most universities. On-line, where postings - and interventions - are a matter of written record, and where university students are regarded as independent and potentially litigious adults, things are rather different. Some of the 'obvious' solutions, such as excluding 'difficult' students from the discussion board, are illegal, and other very reasonable-seeming solutions, such as requiring students to agree on a code of conduct and expecting them to adhere to presuppose relatively high levels of self-awareness and self-control which are the very features which cannot be taken for granted.
It is also difficult to draw conclusions about why the second year of the project proved so different to the first. It seems largely to have been an issue of personality. The students in the second year of the project were a great deal less vocal on-line than those of the first year and this had an impact on the use, and usefulness, of the discussion board. However, class discussions proved to be much more lively than they had in the previous year, so perhaps in this case the VLE was merely supplemental and students did not feel the need to participate remotely so much. We might also observe that in the period under review participation in new social networking websites such as Myspace and Facebook was expanding exponentially among university students, while Blackboard technology was looking and feeling increasingly 'clunky' and out of date. We cannot discount the possibility that students who wanted to discuss issues on-line among themselves did so, but without our knowledge.
Both researchers are convinced of the value of a VLE as a supplement to a classroom course, and of the value of discussion boards in particular. We intend to continue using Blackboard or its successors in future. The research project has however shown up some of the limits of 'new' learning technologies in the face of a changing educational demography. A VLE, we have shown, cannot deliver a working inter-institutional learning forum, even if that is highly desirable and technologically readily achievable. On the other hand, neither do the unexpected results of our project suggest that new learning technologies generate as many problems as they resolve, or indeed more. Instead, the project provides good evidence that student learning at university level is an increasingly complex process, that it raises increasingly complex issues of ethics, law, freedom, privacy and other human rights, and that this complexity will continue to increase, regardless of the technologies we use to enhance student learning.
Reports and Dissemination
Two interim reports were provided for the Subject Centre during the project. Three public presentations relating to the project were made; one in Budapest at the regional conference of the EASR (September 2006), a second 'Out of Site: Out of Mind' at the BASR Annual Conference in Edinburgh (September 2007) and a third as a project presentation at the Subject Centre workshop held at SOAS in Deccember 2007. An article developing the themes discussed in Budapest was published in the CSSR Bulletin Vol. 36 No.4 (November 2007) pp.107-110 under the title 'Teaching "Asian" Religions in the "European" Classroom'.
This page was originally on the website of The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. It was transfered here following the closure of the Subject Centre at the end of 2011.
