The present research aims to explore the different conceptions of reality that university and placement organizations staff, as well as postgraduate students have in the context of a project-based learning class in instructional design of online courses. The methodology used is phenomenography. This project contributes towards filling the research gap concerning technology enhanced learning in universities in Romania in the context of a student-centred learning strategy. The implications for policy and practice will also be discussed.
students of the faculty, and they only used it for this course. The existing practice in the faculty is to have a yahoo group accessible to students and teachers to facilitate all communication and transmission of materials. Assignments, either final or intermediate, are usually brought by the students in printed form and the teachers review them in an open colloquium, asking questions if necessary. Students are used to the project work, but it usually means they have to prepare, in teams, a report that will be presented at the final colloquium. Learning is not organized around the projects, and the projects are seen more as a means of assessment, rather than a method of learning. This is why having a PjBL approach, with real projects for real organizations, and an e-learning platform to support the learning, was a change from the usual experience of the students from many points of view. 2
An on-going preoccupation in the field of higher education is how to improve ways of
teaching and learning, and how to better prepare the students and to equip them with the
competencies necessary for the work market. The European funds available for the higher education
system in the recent years made it possible, since 2009, for many universities to implement
elearning platforms. However, this doesn‟t necessarily mean that teachers and students are
prepared to use them. Although relevant articles published in peer reviewed research journals
about Romanian experiences are scarce, one can form an image about the current state of
affairs by participating in conferences. An analysis is currently underway based on the articles
published in the proceedings of the eLearning and Software for Education Conference
(www.elseconference.eu) held in Bucharest, starting with 2009, in order to have a clearer
picture of the context and practice in Romanian universities. Preliminary results indicate a
focus on technology at the detriment of pedagogy, and reports usually concentrate on small
scale, specialized implementations, with little qualitative data useful to establish good
practices. The situation is quite different in primary and secondary education, where national,
government-supported initiatives are taken to ensure a systemic impact [
PjBL in Romania is widely promoted and used from pre-school to secondary education. However, at tertiary level, projects are seen as ways to assess students, not to organize their learning. Instructional design, although it is presented to students as a possible career option, is only covered by one course lasting one semester, at master level.
Therefore, although PjBL is not a new approach in the universities globally, technology enhanced learning is widely used, and instructional design is a program of study in its own right at many universities in the world, in Romania the situation is different. In what ways it is different, and how it can be improved – these are the research gaps that this PhD project is hoping to fill. 3
This qualitative research aims to answer the following questions, in the context presented above: • What different experiences students, teachers, and placement organizations staff have of project-based learning? • What are the perceptions of students, teachers‟, and placement organizations staff about the role of the teacher in project-based learning? • What are the students‟ and teachers‟ perceptions about the role of technology in learning instructional design? • How do students conceive of their own learning of instructional design? • What are the implications of the findings for policy and practice?
The research is grounded in the constructivist paradigm of learning. Constructivism is a
philosophy of learning that supports the idea that knowledge is constructed by the learners as a
result of the experiences they live. Learning is making meaning from the interactions with the
world, especially when the present experience conflicts with existing knowledge and creates a
challenge or a puzzle [
Building on Marton and Saljo‟s [
As a method that “organizes learning around projects” [
The chosen research methodology, phenomenography explores the various ways in which
people experience the world; it aims to describe, analyse and understand these second-order
perspectives called conceptions of reality [
Data concerning the students‟ experiences was collected using a variety of methods: questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, online learning journals. Data from teachers, managerial staff from the university, and placement organizations personnel was also collected using interviews.
Phenomenographic analysis will be used to identify “a small number of qualitatively
distinct descriptive categories of the ways in which the subjects experience (or understand, or
conceptualise) the phenomena of interest” [
The first stage of data collection resulted in a total of 18 questionnaires, 49 online reflections, 2 focus groups, and 4 interviews. The questionnaires were administered at the beginning of the course in order to determine the students‟ prior experience or knowledge about (a) projectbased learning, (b) instructional design, and (c) technology enhanced learning. Their experience in all three domains was scarce to none. All of them reported having worked on projects, individually or in small groups, for their final assessment in a variety of disciplines, but none of them participated before in a course organized around projects. Some of the students had previously seen e-learning platforms, but they did not use them with any consistency. None of them was familiar with instructional design. From the preliminary coding of the focus groups and online reflections, the main areas of variability appear to be: the way the students experimented teamwork (communication, roles, planning), how they balanced the focus between product and process, how they viewed the support they received, including: the online and face to face feedback, the meetings with the client, the pedagogical scaffolding of the course, and the technology support. Concerning the technology support, students report three types of approaches, not necessarily mutually exclusive: (1) using the e-learning platform (mainly the homework feature) as a planning and organizing device that helps them stay on track timeand quality- wise, (2) searching for additional online tools that would facilitate their collaborative work, with variable degrees of success, and (3) focusing on the use of the authoring tool and the technical issues associated with it, again with variable success. Out of the 4 interviews, 3 were with staff from the faculty and 1 was a group interview with the representatives of one of the placement organizations. The analysis of these interviews is in an incipient phase. The existing results are preliminary and although some categories are beginning to emerge, the results are not final yet. It is important that structures and relationships are not imposed artificially on the data by the researcher, so a more structured presentation of the analysis status is not attempted at the moment.
The second stage of data collection that will take place in the second semester of the 2013 / 2014 academic year will benefit from the lessons learned in the first stage concerning the students‟ availability to participate in interviews and focus groups. The focus of the questions will also be narrowed, and the frequency of the questions increased, in order to capture a rich picture of their perspectives on each of the elements of the course. 7
The higher education sector in Romania, as in other Balkan countries, has seen tremendous
change in the post-communist period, driven by a complex combination of factors, such as the
Bologna Process, the influx of European pre-accession and structural funds, the international
exposure and experience brought by the teachers and students mobility programs, and the
influence of international non-governmental organisations [
The main contribution of the present research is that it will document the students‟ experiences in using PjBL supported by technology in the context of a Romanian university, which should broaden the outcome space of the studied phenomenon.
Although the results of a qualitative study are not generalizable in the sense quantitative research results should be, this study aims to produce results that are transferable by practitioners in similar contexts, by providing sufficient information to support an informed decision. The results of the research can be informative for further improvements in the way PjBL is used in instructional design courses, and, perhaps, by extension, in other related subjects. To my knowledge, this is the first time that a course with an instructional design focus is offered in Romania at academic level. If it is successful, the course may become a permanent part of the curriculum and it may even extend to a stand-alone degree. On the other hand, projectbased learning, although not a novel method in the higher education, does not feature in many research articles. From the 17 accounts found by doing a review of the literature starting with the year 2000, only 2 articles present cases of implementations in graduate education, while 15 articles report cases from undergraduate education. In Romania, in the K12 education, PjBL is used and promoted, but I am not aware of any account of this approach being used for learning in higher education. By understanding the students‟ various experiences, teachers can improve their methods; faculty management can set realistic goals and implement adequate support for reaching them. If this approach is successful for these courses, it may extend to other disciplines, promoting interdisciplinary projects and a truly integrated curriculum. Another area that could benefit from the results is the professional training of instructional designers in organizations, by offering grounds to adjust the curriculum and the methods to better support the learners.
Technology support for learning is currently mainly used in technical universities in Romania, and less so in the humanities and social sciences faculties. Combining project – based learning with technology support may open avenues into how more student centred methods may be implemented in Romanian universities and may create a clearer picture of the factors and issues that should be considered when designing and implementing teacher development programs.
Moreover, instructional design teaching and PjBL were never documented at tertiary education level in Romania. This research has the potential not only to enrich the existing body of knowledge drawn mainly on Western or US experiences, but also to bring a fresh new perspective from the Eastern European higher education point of view.
Ioana Hârţescu is a PhD student in E-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning at the Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University, UK. Her supervisor is Professor Mary Hamilton (m.hamilton@lancaster.ac.uk). Ioana started the program in February 2010 and is expected to complete and defend her thesis by the end of 2014.