Presence, emergence and knowledge objects: user interaction in a virtual learning environment

Paul Maharg and Patricia McKellar, Glasgow Graduate School of Law

Presentation at Vocational Teachers Forum IV, 8 January 2005

• download the paper (RTF file, 5.33 MB, 34 pages). A longer version of the paper (58 pages) may be downloaded from the Glasgow Graduate School of Law website.

How do students study with webcasts? How do the new media change their ways of learning? How can video, sound, multimedia and text be combined optimally to produce a learning environment that is attractive, stylish, and productive of deep learning, for students, trainees and practitioners?

In this paper we focused on the results from a long term project tracking student use of a virtual learning environment. We demonstrated briefly the functionality of the environment, then summarised the extensive user data we have gathered. In more detail, we analysed the responses of users to the splicing of video and text.

Our findings verify a number of approaches to learning advocated by the phenomenographical literature, and we summarised this. Throughout, we offered practical guidelines to the use of webcasts in virtual learning environments and discussed the extent to which such environments can be used in legal education and training.