The TLTSN initiative came to an end in December 1998.
Its Glasgow pages were maintained by Robin Shaw at the Robert Clark Centre for Technological Education
at which aspects of TLTSN's research and consultancy work continues,
particularly an evaluation service - ELICT.

Glasgow TLTSN products, case studies and other information can now be found at
http://www.gla.ac.uk/rcc/projects/tltsn.html

Examples of evaluation instruments to download and adapt have been moved to
http://www.gla.ac.uk/rcc/projects/resource.html

Below is a summary of TLTSN's work at Glasgow.

What was TLTSN?

The Teaching and Learning Technology Support Network comprised nine support centres funded by the four UK higher education funding bodies. They arose from nine of the institutional projects which were originally funded by the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme for a period of three years. The main aim of the institutional projects was to encourage and stimulate a new approach, within their own institutions to the integration of learning technology into mainstream education. The TLTSN aimed to apply the experience of the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme to support and encourage UK higher education institutions to integrate technology into teaching and learning to enhance the quality of provision.

• The TLTSN existed to disseminate the experiences of the institutional projects, in the area of learning technology, to the wider academic community.
• The TLTSN offers advice and guidance to all institutions in the UK higher education sector, directly funded by the four UK higher education funding bodies. Approaches from all levels of staff within institutions are welcomed
• The TLTSN worked closely with other relevant organisations in this area such as the Computers in Teaching Initiative (CTI) Centres, which worked on a subject discipline basis.
• TLTSN brought a focus to the many institutional issues which need to be addressed if learning technology is to be effectively integrated into mainstream teaching.

The Responsibilities of TLTSN Glasgow

The Centre at the University of Glasgow:

• assisted the integration of IT into UK HE teaching and learning by showing how to apply formative evaluation of the processes to assist active learning by all participants (e.g. students, teachers, courseware providers, support staff). In some cases supported teachers with classroom evaluations, to give teachers the information with which to adjust the integration of the material to their own students and situation.
• helped UK HE staff to identify, measure and evaluate the costs and benefits resulting from sets of alternative choices in investing in the application of IT to teaching and learning. To recommend ways of recognising IT solutions which are cost effective and provide value for money. To promote minimising costs by developing staff skills in providing low cost CAL software and recycling existing learning packages to suit their own students' needs.
• promoted the effective use of the staff skills and student study skills packages produced by TILT (especially information handling skills).
• established teaching strategies that utilise new student skills to improve the efficiency of their learning, and thus improve the productivity of the teaching staff.

Evaluation

TLTSN drew on the experience of the TILT Evaluation Group to give advice on classroom evaluation. During the three years of the TILT project, its Evaluation Group performed about 20 evaluation studies of teaching software in Glasgow University across a very wide range of subject disciplines. Some exercises were single episode field trials, others looked at CAL material in use within a full degree course. The Group's approach was empirical: trying to observe effects on students using both quantitative and qualitative methods. In the process, they learnt as much about evaluation as about the courseware. The Group employed a variety of instruments, eg student confidence logs, short quizzes and learning resource questionnaires.

TLTSN disseminated examples of Evaluation Resources developed and used by the TILT Evaluation Group and links to sites of particular interest.

Page last modified 5/4/01 by G Doughty