Catholic sector

Monte Sant'Angelo Mercy College's use of The Le@rning Federation's learning objects

This case study of Monte Sant'Angelo Mercy College was undertaken as part of research by Professor Peter Freebody into the early-stage use of TLF's learning objects in schools.

Monte Sant'Angelo Mercy College is a Catholic secondary school for girls from Years 7 to 12, located in the heart of the north Sydney business district. It has a remarkable range and variety of buildings on the site where the school commenced in 1875. The school was founded by the Sisters of Mercy. It is a large school of 1,050 students, many of whom come from the north shore, although an increasing number come from the inner-west and the northern beaches – 47 feeder primary schools in all for the current Year 7 intake.

Despite the middle-to-high level of fees (about $9,000 annually), Catherine Alcock, the principal, described the girls as being representative of quite a substantial socioeconomic spread. Many of the students are daughters of ex-students; some families are drawn by the college's high level of academic success (about 80 per cent of students receive an offer of a tertiary place). She also suggested that 'Monte' girls had a longstanding and accurate reputation for being forthright, opinionated and willing to stand up for their beliefs. She emphasised the school's sense of mission in communicating a sense of social justice and willingness to act based on Mercy values. She described a range of activities in which the students are involved to support that view.

The school's program was described as 'very HSC-focused', but with a very wide range of extracurricular options for the girls to pursue – across the arts, sport, debating ... – a conventional list, but a long one.

In 2001 it was decided that ICT should be better integrated into the curriculum. Until that point ICT had been largely confined to courses defined for this purpose, beginning with elective studies in Year 9. Computers were available to staff but only in limited numbers and in annexes of staff rooms. ICT was not a part of mainstream teaching and there was little impetus for staff to change this situation.

The first step was to provide each teacher with a computer and to encourage computer use. (The first step may actually have been the simultaneous appointment of Diane Brook as the school's director of learning and technology, but Diane was describing this process.) Generally speaking, members of staff did not have a high level of skill and could be described as 'conservative' in their approach to this area of teaching and learning. Staff bulletins and notices were put online, as were student assessments. At the same time, the tasks of teaching various ICT functions were allocated to different faculties – for example, word processing to English, data management to Science, work with spreadsheets to Maths, and multimedia to Religious education – so that these various ICT functions would be taught in context.

Volunteers were sought to operate as a core group. The core group was provided with professional development to develop their own skills and to enable them to support other members of staff. This process has evolved to the point where 14 of the 110 members of the teaching staff are currently engaged in a graduate diploma in e-learning. Catherine Alcock describes the staff now as 'very IT savvy' and says that a feature of the school is the quality of the integration of ICT across the curriculum.

Both teachers and students are described as being 'comfortable' with this initiative. Students are constructing their own material (all Year 8 students work on the production of digital video), new software is constantly being investigated, and 60–70 per cent of teachers are using ICT in their teaching as a matter of course, with the background expectation that everyone will use them eventually. Diane noted that teachers have to 'let go a bit to do that', and also that one of the issues that they constantly battle is the 50-minute lesson period.

Moodle is being developed as the school's learning management system. This is accessible from the students' home computers. TLF's learning objects are loaded there, along with a wide range of tools and other learning resources for teachers. The school has about 300 computers, a mix of Apple and PC, with wireless internet coverage. There are several labs and several sets of laptops. The school has just bought its first electronic whiteboard, and is testing a range of options for future hardware expansion. The system and other equipment is supported in the school by a network manager and a full-time help-desk employee and another person who works on audiovisual equipment as well as ICT.

Observed activity

We observed a Year 9 Human society and its environment (HSIE) class, with 22 students in attendance, in one of the school's computer labs. We had a chance to review the digital resources available for the teaching of the topic 'Between the wars' and they were expansive. Using 'The Great Depression', the task set was to assemble a set of eight photos from the range offered by the learning object in an order chosen by the students to provide some narrative or other meaningful sequence. Students were also required to add a text caption to each of the photos.

The lesson began with a brief review of what they had done to this point – the purpose of the inquiry, the timeline of major events, and the generative causes of those events. The task was explained in terms of the preparation of a storyboard. Options were provided for the 'voice' to be present in the captions: a first-person narrative, a second-person reflection or narrative, or a third-person commentary.

The students opened the learning object at the right point easily and most were on-task quite quickly. This laboratory has two sections divided by a glass wall; and a second group of students who had arrived later were mostly in the second section of the lab. This second group was a little slower to get down to work.

The girls remained highly engaged. Some felt that the introductory character (an 'old man' with a very pronounced Australian drawl) was an oddity, but the task was clear and obviously interested them. As the photos were found suitable to the task, a range of different combinations was chosen. In the subsequent discussion, several students indicated that they would have liked more space for their captions, and some found the photos too small. They printed out their work and handed it in to Ms Brook for comment and assessment. In spite of a minor calamity occurring for one student who lost all her work just as she had almost finished it, it was a most effective lesson.

During a short discussion at the end of the class, one student noted that she liked this style of learning. 'It's visual, and you can play around with it. It's your choice.' There seemed to be general agreement with these views. 'So much more interesting than a textbook', although some of the students said they felt that you needed both (digital resources and a textbook). They appeared to be valuing the level of detail available in a textbook.

Our informants

As mentioned above, Diane Brook holds the position of director of learning and technology at the school. Like most of our other informants she is a very experienced teacher and, as it happens, a former student of the school. She taught in government schools for a number of years prior to taking up her current position. She is an English and History teacher who had not been particularly interested in computers until taking a 'relief' class of boys who were using computers, in the late 1980s. She remembers being struck by how absorbed these students, not normally absorbed by their school work, were. She thought then that ICT must have some significant potential for aiding teaching and learning processes. She undertook a graduate diploma to develop this interest and, after some time, became that school's computer coordinator. This led in turn to her working as a consultant in the government system and pursuing her studies further. She stresses that her interest is not in ICT for its own sake, but as media for teaching and learning.

She encountered TLF's learning objects via the Catholic Education Office's Advisory Group. Currently, she is an active member of a group of teachers from independent schools who are in similar situations to hers and who exchange ideas and information. She finds this a very focused and rewarding avenue for her continuing professional development.

The positive qualities of the learning objects she notes are the high level of engagement they engender in students – mostly.

We find that a good number of the [learning] objects are not sufficiently challenging for our students. They are too linear and don't offer enough complexity. The students like a very high level of interactivity.

She also notes that the absence of a 'save' function is a problem for use in her setting and again commented on the time issue. Nonetheless:

... they provide an opportunity to 'brighten up' teaching and learning, and they are very low-risk from a teacher's point of view. Once you've got them going they are self-contained and present little further technical difficulty. That is most important from a practical perspective.

They are part of learning through ICT, which is highly relevant in the world our girls live in. They are very active users of the web and sms and msn. What research suggests is that our students are increasingly going to be operating in non-linear modes, multitasking and ... pursuing multiple sources of information.