| An Interview with Rhonda Bunbury about literary studies | |
| “Int” refers to the interviewer and “RHO” refers to Rhonda Bunbury | |
| Int: | I'm interviewing Rhonda Bunbury who is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Arts teaching in the area of literary studies. Welcome Rhonda. |
| RHO: | Thanks Mary. |
| Int: | How would you describe your philosophy of teaching and learning and how have your views on this been shaped? |
| RHO: | For a start I have been teaching and learning for a few years so that probably makes a difference for a start, and one goes through certain phases over time but from where I sit now the emphasis really is on learning and helping people find intensive and exciting ways of learning. So that means I want interaction with people, and for people to have interaction together as students, but it also means that I would prefer not to be depending on lecturers. So any DSO site I am seeking for ways of encouraging interactive situations so that students can learn for themselves. |
| Int: | So what would you say is the nature of learning in that situation? |
| RHO: | The nature of me learning there well I think I have said it is learning for yourself. Interacting, finding out at the time when you are interacting. Being stimulated further by other people's ideas maybe to rethink your own position. |
| Int: | What are the components of your online environment and what were the design considerations when you were establishing it? |
| RHO: | Well there is a mixture here of what the faculty requires as a template and what I can add with the help of my Learning Services' colleagues. The template is very rigid. |
| Int: | What does it include? |
| RHO: | A unit communication site, getting started, some Faculty of Arts' messages. Beyond the template the best I can do at the moment really is to draw heavily on the interactive discussion side of things but that is possible because the unit content is there straight from the study guides. So for me the study guides are there, the readings are there with electronic connections to the library, and then the lively part which changes moment by moment is the actual discussions. |
| Int: | So one of the main components of your online environment are discursive activities, but you also have some multimedia do you not? |
| RHO: | I do but that is connected with the website but the faculty is going to close that down so I don't know what we are going to do about that. But there is the video which the students have individually and there are video clips on the web. |
| Int: | Would you consider putting them on a CD? |
| RHO: | Sure, whatever is most appropriate really. |
| Int: | But you wouldn't drop them? |
| RHO: | No not by choice, not at all. |
| Int: | What factors did you consider when deciding which unit elements to provide online and what to provide in print or on CD-ROM? |
| RHO: | A major factor for literary students is access and how familiar they are and how comfortable they are with the idea of using computers at all. You can imagine there are a lot of literary students who just want to read books and don't want all this new stuff. We don't want to lose those people because they are great readers, but we do want to encourage them and give them confidence to use the online stuff. |
| Int: | So how do you go about doing that? |
| RHO: | Usually by encouragement, through talking, through the messages. Simple as that. And if we have a look at some of the evaluation comments you will see that the students are responsive to that. So that is a key factor and I suppose having the study guide material there I would still find that useful to have ready at hand in the midst of a discussion. |
| Int: | In print form? |
| RHO: | I don't really mind one way or the other but the students might. Many would still want it in print form but some others are prepared to use it online. But mostly they are not. I was reading an evaluation comment earlier, a women with poor sight having a wonderful time with the unit and with DSO but she can't sit there and read it by the hour. And why should the students be paying the cost of downloading all that material it is just not reasonable. I know it is expected these days by the university but it is a real factor for the students. |
| Int: | Any other factors? |
| RHO: | The visual is something I have always appreciated online. Now that is not really from what I have seen, it is not really a strength of the system we are using. We tinker a bit with colours for headings and things like that. I guess we can do more with multimedia online but for the most part at the moment for me it is straight text. And the other things are available separately as CD or video, but they are not actually on the site. |
| Int: | Talking about the CD, in what ways do the digital media and also the online discussion contribute to students learning about cultural diversity and children's literature. So what are the special attributes of digital media and online discussions that help them learn? |
| RHO: | I really think it is right down to that process of conversational exchange via the communication, the discussion element of DSO. And you will see that in the evaluation comments that the students make, they are appreciating that even more than or as much as the study guide materials because they feel the conversation brings it to life and you see them learning from each other, having a bit of a rethink. I really think that that is the learning going on, whatever I provide as the study guide material … it is a bit like a lecture isn't it? Here is all this stuff you swallow it, you take in the learning. But really when they are having conversations either about that material or about primary texts or relating those texts to their own lives ... there I think is where you see the real learning taking on. |
| Int: | OK, so what role does the digital media such as video play? |
| RHO: | Well really that is alongside the printed study guides, it is a level of input. It depends what the students do with that, that is what makes a difference. |
| Int: | I guess I am asking whether you think the use of the visual as in video leads to more academic scholarly discussions than text? |
| RHO: | I would say not necessarily, not at all. But it is a lively source of input that I would really like to see more of. I would love to do more of that, but it is time and resources and those sorts of things. |
| Int: | What have been your experiences and the learners' experiences of the DSO environment and its integration with the CD-ROM and print resources? |
| RHO: | I have found it a very positive experience but I find with each new system that comes along, if you can learn about what it provides rather than regret what you have lost from the previous system then you are richer, and I think the students move along more readily. I would have to say that I actually can't answer some of your question because I don't know how the students merge the print materials, the video, the audio, the DSO site. I actually don't know that. That's in the students' own study, I can see the outcome of that if I am looking at a good essay or a poor essay but how they balance it all, juggle it, their preferences. It is only very occasionally that I would know about that, or that I even ask about it to tell you the truth. I actually ask for feedback as you do at the end of the unit and then some comments were forthcoming but it is still not how the material is used interactively. |
| Int: | By and large though how do you feel that it went? |
| RHO: | I would have to say in the absence of any complaints to the contrary that it is working okay. We think that the variety is important. I really value the visual as well as the verbal so I am going to try to introduce more visual stuff. Some of my material, the children's picture books is visual as well as verbal. So whatever the students think about it I will try to be introducing that kind of material anyway. |
| Int: | What might the assessment work that they do tell you about how they have experienced these things, anything? |
| RHO: | That is what I say a good essay or a poor essay will show you how they have used the materials effectively. Say for instance the video “Melting Point Performance,” a video of a group of actors acting out a short story for a couple of classes of adolescent students. One thing I have asked the students to do is to compare that video performance with the verbal short story. And that is one form of assessment where I would see how they have used different forms, verbal or visual. |
| Int: | Rhonda, how would you like to develop your teaching the learning environments in the future? |
| RHO: | I thought I would be prepared to have a try at role-play within the site. Now I know colleagues have not found that all good news and have hit some real problems but I would like to have a real look at that as a way of fostering interaction and as a way of bringing conversation about learning together with prepared academic materials. |
| Int: | Would you use it as an assessment? |
| RHO: | Sure, I think to actually get students to take this online material seriously you have to assess it. So I think apart from the first year where I didn't give any assessment for it every other year I have found that it is necessary. And for me at the moment it varies from 10% to 20%, but just before the DSO came along I was at the point where I wanted to make it 50%. But then new system, let's start gently, start slowly, learn it and see if it is feasible to build it up again. That is just where I am at the moment. |
| Int: | Any other thoughts on your whole experience? |
| RHO: | I would like to do more with the visual. But that is really only possible if your unit is given priority standing within the faculty. And I must be content to work without that these days. For cultural diversity and children's literature, the site is built within an arts template. So the headings getting started, unit guides, arts essentials, resources, and unit communication are all part of the template and we are required to have some sort of content. Ethnicity in children's literature, lesbian gays in youth literature are two of the four modules for the unit and they are set up on the site as learning modules. References is just a list of references from very early on in the unit when the unit guides weren't fully available. So that is what you can see. And to get into the actual discussion component you don't go in via unit communication. You can't. That is confusing for students and for staff just starting but it is not possible to do because you cannot build a category of discussion within a category. If you click on discussions up in the grey menu that will take you not only to the unit communication but also to the four different discussion areas for each of the four modules, so lesbian and gays in youth literature, ethnicity in children's literature. So that is two which are online and the other two which are not online, black fella story and diverse identities. They are not online at DSO because they are on a website. I think it is useful to be aware that to set up discussions it is very important to make use of that facility called categories of discussion and I have used that so that there is a separate category for each separate module. If you do that then the discussions don't get mixed up and merged and the students don't get lost. I have found that very rarely are the students putting the messages in the wrong place when I use those categories so of course you have topics within categories and you have messages within topics. You don't realise to start off with how that hierarchy of the message system is actually really very important functionally and for the teaching and learning as a facilitator. In the unit communication I think most of those headings were suggested by the faculty. Oh no they weren't. Welcome online office hours were suggested. Open forum and students questions is where I start students actually and it is where they might be asking the questions about where is the study guide or something about assignments or something like that but for the actual conversation about content I put that under a totally different area and that is under each module heading. Introduce yourself; I think probably every member of staff who uses DSO would be using that. It is a very easy way in for students to introduce themselves in some way or other. DSO hints I have gotten into a habit of putting those up just to help students find their way around or help them access readings via the library or something like that. If you have a look at the left hand frame which is called the table of contents or anxieties of masculinity you will see there a number of headings. Discuss feminism and boys schooling, discuss feminism and multicultural technologies. Every time something begins with the word discuss that is a queue to let you know that you are going to be able to discuss these issues that you have just read about in the study guide, so masculinity after feminism you will read about that if you click on that. That is the study guide material, and then if you want to have a discussion about that with your fellow students you will click on the words “discuss feminism impact on boys schooling” the discussion there leads you into that. Now I thought that was really useful but it took a lot of time to set it up like that for every part of the discussion. |
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